Conversant Technology: Enabling The New Normal

Conversant Technology: Enabling the new normal, collaborate, communicate and connect

It’s an exciting time to be in unified comms technology. The world has never been so diverse in terms of how people connect with each other, and this has affected how we all live, work and play. We have never been so together, and yet in many ways we have never been so fragmented, nor needed to multi-task quite so effectively.?

At Conversant, my goal is to bring people together, whether internally or externally in an organisation; in the office or at home. Covid has changed the way we work, and in the past two years we have all seen immense changes in terms of enabling remote working, and indeed schooling. I get it personally as well as conceptually – I have also been that dad running meetings from the dining room, while logging on to Google Classroom to try to teach fractions to my little boy before continuing a meeting from the car.?

We therefore find ourselves at a junction, but one direction we know we won’t be taking is back to how things were. Hybrid working, which at Conversant we are dedicated to enabling, is here to stay, and brings untold benefits to people’s work/life balance. Women and working parents have benefited especially, while for many younger people it is about choice and options. The opportunity to bond socially at work and ‘be seen’ – in the end humans are social animals – and the opportunity to focus at home and get things done without the need to commute. It is even possible to take a working sabbatical and be just as efficient from a beach hut or a remote mountain top – my personal ethos is that I don’t care much where people are or how they do the job, as long as they get it done.?

We also believe in giving back. Carbon emissions plummeted during the pandemic, especially during periods of forced lockdown, and hybrid working is definitely a positive driver for sustainable working practices. With rising utility bills, the chance to save on fuel is a huge plus; on the flip side there are implications for city centre retailers and the future of office developments, the outcomes of which will only become known as a new balance evolves. HR departments, meanwhile, are grappling with hybrid contracts, lack of visibility in line management and ensuring fairness, while we deal with the IT. But we are determined to be at the forefront of these new developments, playing our part in enabling greater productivity, efficiency and integration in the brave new world we are navigating.?

The power of serendipity and ‘going for GOLD’?

We did happen to find ourselves in the right place at the right time. I’m not being disingenuous, as of course my overarching role is to enable Conversant to excel at what it does, ensure we provide the best service to our clients, and to be a profitable enterprise. But winning ￡500,000 of investment in 2018, a year or so before the pandemic which thrust home working onto the agenda and forced the pace of change far faster than would have otherwise been the case, did a great deal to help our particular cause.?

This investment has been put to excellent use, helping us grow and also to specialise. One of our next challenges is to further develop sector-specific solutions, initially in healthcare, finance and the public sector.?

In a nod to this success, we have in fact just heard that our Microsoft Gold Communication status has been renewed – in our previous guise, we were in fact the first UK firm to gain the gold standard in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. As you can imagine, Microsoft has an extremely strict policy when assessing their chosen partner's technical competency, and only 1% of partners actually get that gold in their medal collection.?

When David met Goliath?

When I started to write this article, the question on my lips, which partly answers the ‘how we got gold’ element, was ‘what makes us different’? After all, there are several companies out there providing SaaS UC solutions. The difference is, many of these are the behemoths of the tech world, and while they harness huge power, they are unable to offer the levels of flexibility and personal response of a smaller, more agile one.??

At Conversant our true strength is that we can do both. We mobilise the considerable might of Teams, which can already enable every aspect of an organisation’s internal communications in terms of voice, chat, file and screen sharing, scheduling and groups for specific teams or communities – and add to it a raft of combined external voice comms forces including call centre capability (enabling, monitoring and controlling all aspects of incoming and outgoing calls), call recording for compliance, CRM and social media integration (web chat, Twitter, SMS and What’s App), in conjunction with one or more of our carefully selected partners.??

We configure your services to your individual specifications, and instead of finding yourself on hold for three hours trying to obtain resolution on a problem from a tech giant, there will be a customer or technical services agent ready to take your call in person, 24/7 if you need it. So we are David, and we are Goliath.?

100,000 simultaneous transactions, or more… simplified, streamlined and integrated?

One of the many reasons we have not only reached, but remained at, these dizzy heights lies in the strength of our platform, which can handle up to 100,000 simultaneous transactions, and is duplicated so as to guarantee no more than a few nano-seconds of down time in case of a problem, as well as the absolute security of our clients’ data. When required, this capacity will simply be increased, so the possibilities are quite literally infinite.?

We move in tandem with Microsoft in not only super-charging the power of Teams, but also in implementing all relevant MS innovation and adding it to our clients’ platforms. We guarantee the continuous customer support they require; are first in line for updates, and our consultative expertise in terms of implementation and deployment has to visibly be upheld as ‘best in class’.?

Seamless efficiency, effectiveness and productivity?

So what else is in it for you? The fact that we provide all your contact solutions on one interface under the Teams umbrella will not only make your organisation more efficient, with infinitely less down time or time wasted hopping from one platform to another, or retrieving data from one place to import it into something else, but also more effective and productive. If you use our call centre features, your supervisors will know at a click of a mouse which agents are busy, who has capacity, when the quiet times are and when more resource might be needed. Calls can be routed to the right agent or team with the right skill base, such as a specific language, and outcomes and contact notes added to the system in a form of CRM. Moreover, with staff working from home, line quality will be guaranteed and time spent online with customers or service users monitored.?

Calls in Klingon, and anything else you might wish for?

If, however, your focus is wanting to be able to engage with different customer types on different platforms, your agents can seamlessly switch from What’s App to Twitter to a web chat or SMS. If you need to record calls for financial or legal compliance, we can not only offer that, but your agents can start and stop recording on demand to cut out the waffle or pleasantries, while calls can be translated, transcripted, or both, with key word searches and filters to highlight – for example – calls relating to product issues, or calls coming in from a particular user group. Call transcripts are even available in Klingon, as part of our provision of over 80 global languages…?

The point is, our customers have (almost) free rein to design their dashboards in line with their specific requirements, and in tandem with our partners, we will go the extra mile to configure bespoke solutions to address their particular needs.??

Our clients also benefit from a clear and transparent pricing policy, which is based on licence or user numbers, 24/7 support and all the assistance needed with setting up and transferring away from your old legacy system to Conversant, with full training during implementation.?

There are so many reasons to choose Conversant – our promise to you is that we will become truly conversant with your business. We will offer you the service you need to both get the most from the considerable power of Teams, and seamlessly add to this the technologies you need in pretty much any voice communications field, be it call centre management, call recording or omni-channel integration.??

We will be with you during implementation, for training and with personalised support. And your organisation will work smarter, enjoy enhanced efficiencies and give you full control and feedback over all the communication and collaboration elements you need to succeed.??

We see what we do as being like a car - you may be all right with the basic version, but your journey will be hugely enhanced, and go much smoother, if you add sensors to avoid colliding with a wall, alloy wheels for improved road traction and fuel efficiency, and Bluetooth to keep you connected while you drive.??

So the question is, where do you want to go??