Most businesses that are considering adding digital channels like email or chat see the value of a consistent communications platform with one set of agent and management tools for processing all customer requests. Upstream Works provides an omnichannel single agent desktop application that helps organizations deliver a better customer experience that results in more successful business outcomes. It brings the customer journey together for all channels, interactions, applications and platforms, using a single intuitive agent desktop with comprehensive management tools. Improving the agent experience results in an improved customer experience, which helps the business retain and attract customers.
Upstream Works Defines Success
Rob McDougall is the President and CEO of Upstream Works, and sees his role as an opportunity to set the vision and realize that vision through collaboration with a team of talented and creative people. “Working with a great foundation of people, many new and many who have been with us since the start, makes life a lot easier,” Rob said. He describes his focus as maintaining a great corporate culture, growing the business, and continuing to innovate their omnichannel solution so as to improve the contact center experience for customers and to exceed their expectations. “In the last 15 years, we’ve built a solid company that delivers to the needs of our customers. We remain focused on improving and simplifying the agent and customer experience, and it’s paying off. It’s an exciting time right now as we are seeing a lot of growth, our team is expanding, and we’re adding new partners and expanding our geographic reach,” Rob added.
Rising to the Challenge
There are several different but related challenges to overcome, and they all stem from the same underlying root cause – that customer expectations are higher than ever and continue to rise. Today’s customers are connected like never before, and have an almost unlimited ability to research companies, products, and services before making purchasing decisions. It has become a self-service society and as such, customers are armed with information and interact with businesses on their own terms, with high expectations for an easy and rewarding experience. In order to meet these expectations, a contact center solution must:
- Provide consistent service across all channels and be able to accurately measure, report, and analyze activity and service levels across all channels.
- Ensure agents have a single and intuitive tool for handling all interactions that is easy to learn, use, deploy, and integrate.
- Consolidate and leverage all customer information into one flexible and scalable solution.
Tailoring Exceptional Solutions
A Single Agent Desktop that connects everything – every channel, every interaction, all CRM platforms, and applications, across the enterprise and with a 360 degree view of the customer – is what sets Upstream Works solutions apart. “Our Single Agent Desktop presents full customer interaction activity, history and context with easy to use tools and a simple, elegant interface. The typical agent desktop is complex, often with seven or more applications on the go. We eliminate the silos, pulling all the information needed into one easy to use agent interface,” Rob explains. “With Upstream Works solutions, customers begin to see a shift in the treatment they receive, i.e. the “Oh, they remember me!” effect. Agents begin to see their solve rates improve and overall job satisfaction increases,” Rob adds. With a fully connected agent desktop, organizations benefit from greater customer retention, bigger overall spend, and lifetime value.
What’s Hot in Contact Centers
Organizations want to extend the life and value of existing systems because ‘rip and replace’ is an expensive and an unappealing last resort. Upstream Works sees this as a great opportunity to leverage the strengths of its integration capabilities. According to Rob, “integration is a key consideration as we see companies every day challenged to unify disparate channels, merge systems, and assign capabilities to applications that they weren’t designed for.” Upstream Works is in a great position to help because of its depth of experience with organizations and applications across virtually every industry – medical records systems, CRMs, legacy AS400 systems, business, and vertical specific applications. Upstream Works understands the value of the data that’s contained in these applications and they help businesses unlock that data and make it easily accessible to agents from their Single Agent Desktop.
Company Culture and Environment
Across the organization, and in all departments, Upstream Works team members have a common goal of ensuring that contact center customers and agents have easy, rewarding experiences. The work environment is collaborative, agile, and cross-functional. Rob attributes their great reputation in the industry to the creativity and teamwork of the workplace. “It’s fast-paced and dynamic, especially in this period of growth where we’re adding functions and bringing in new ideas. We’ve got a good mix of experience and expertise in each of our teams and a company culture that makes it fun to exchange ideas, challenge each other, and collaborate,” Rob said. Accountability, communications, innovation, and excellence are key when the company mantra is “we do what we say.” Staff development is a priority, and the team members are encouraged to take every opportunity to advance their knowledge, skills, and careers. They are always learning, growing, advancing, and innovating – striving for excellence in all that they do.
Evolution of Product Offerings
Upstream Works originally offered a Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) middleware product, which evolved into an agent desktop that collected information on all the channels it supported. Rob describes the company’s journey to success: “We were in the omnichannel business before omnichannel was even a thing. Our product today is a result of iterative enhancements based on research, ingenuity, and most importantly feedback from customers and partners. Our latest release is leading edge in its approach to personalization, depth and breadth of integrations, and agent empowerment.” Upstream Works is committed to providing innovative solutions that simplify and improve the agent and customer experience.