8x8 is shining the spotlight on customer-focused brands and individuals. This post features customer-obsessed change agent Lynne Barby of dsb.net.

Building out a vision for the contact center

Lynne Barby has been a contact center manager for more than 15 years. Prior to joining dsb.net, Lynne was the customer service manager with a contact center for Avon Cosmetics, where she also became involved with various technology projects. “I’ve always been quite techy,” she says, “I love knowing the inner workings of things.”

At a big company like Avon, Lynne had access to staff with telephony infrastructure experience. “At dsb.net, I’ve got that responsibility myself, so I have to rely on the professionals at 8x8 to guide and educate me. Moving to a smaller company has opened up different avenues for my career,” she says. “I manage all the telephony and new technical initiatives, like web chat, as well as other initiatives that 8x8 has enabled for us. And, I like being able to troubleshoot issues myself and get to the root cause of a problem.”

In a recent example of her troubleshooting prowess, Lynne noticed that the team had a short abandonment rate on one particular line. Looking deeper, she was able to see that a temporary message had been put in the wrong place in the call flow. Insights such as this helps her continuously improve her team’s operations and performance.

For Lynne, the freedom of her multidimensional role, supported by the flexibility of her tools, has been super satisfying. “dsb.net allowed me to really build out my vision for the contact center.”

Lynne’s advice to other contact center leaders? “Network with others. I’m a great fan of LinkedIn and industry newsletters. If you get stuck, there’s always people out there to help you. Learn from others—you can’t do it all on your own.”

Putting customer experience front and center

For Lynne Barby, customer-obsessed brands put experience front and center. “I’m obsessed about the longest call waiting times,” she says, “because I always think that as soon as the caller is connected to an IVR system or an agent, that person may be paying for the minutes they are on hold.”

As a customer herself, Lynne finds it particularly aggravating when companies ask her to input account numbers or other details, and after sending her through a complex routing system, the agent at the other end asks for the exact same details. A customer-obsessed brand, by contrast, will empower their agent with all customer’s data, so that the agent can lead a personalized conversation right from the start.

She sees that some brands try to be smart in how they route customers through their contact center, but they sometimes forget how the experience might make customers feel. If someone has to jump through numerous hoops to finally get to the right person, that customer will already be frustrated by the time they get to an agent. This makes it harder (and less pleasant) for the agent to provide the best service experience, and it doesn’t reflect well on the brand either.

“The customer is the heart of the business,” says Lynne, “A good contact center thinks about the customer journey and how their telephone system is impacting that journey.”

Always seeking ways to optimize

At dsb.net, Lynne Barby has single-handedly transformed the contact center using the 8x8 eXperience Communications Platform. When she started at dsb.net, the company was using a different cloud platform that was basic and inflexible. She couldn’t optimize her system, such as prioritizing calls or configuring call queues in a way that matched her business, and it showed in the performance numbers.

After moving to 8x8 Contact Center, Lynne and team have been able to dramatically turn that around. Now, they are performing at a service level of 80%, with an average answer speed of just 30 seconds, even during very busy periods. During slower times, the team easily exceeds their 80%/20-second goal. This has resulted in 50% lower call volumes due to fewer repeat calls as callers now get through to an agent right away on their first try. Faster call handling times and efficiency gains allowed the company to more effectively manage agent resources.

“8x8 gives us proper call routing and queue management,” says Lynne, “as well as tracking and recording, literally everything we need in one package. This has helped us improve service levels, reduce call volumes, and optimize staffing.”

Want to learn about other customer-obsessed change agents? Check out this feature on Agilsys Customer Service Design Analyst Ian Palmer.