Contact Centre Case Study with Mazda

Mazda had previously outsourced their contact-centre infrastructure and was able to achieve major cost savings and increase customer experience by moving to a cloud-based solution.

The transition was completed in two stages. First, they moved their phone system to Teams Dialling. Then, they needed to follow suit by migrating their contact-centre IVRs.

Having done their homework thoroughly, Mazda started looking for a solution that would replicate all the features of their current contact centres. The timelines involved were extremely tight due to a hard contract end-date with the existing service. The new Microsoft Teams contact centre simply had to be in place by then or else Mazda would be cut adrift from their customers. That kind of challenge certainly focuses the thinking.

Mazda had already implemented Microsoft Teams and subsequently deployed Teams Dialing to satisfy the voice-telephony cloud requirement. It was obvious that a Teams-Dialing-integrated solution was the right choice to satisfy the requirement of a Teams-certified contact centre.

That left them needing to select a platform vendor and a delivery-and-support partner based on capability. They selected CentrePal for its advanced feature set and deep use of existing Microsoft 365 capabilities, and BulbNorAm for technical expertise and a highly qualified delivery team.

Mazda needed a solution that delivered like-for-like capabilities from day one. In addition, they needed to determine if and how their legacy CRM could be integrated. Lastly, they wanted to ensure they would have the opportunity to add digital omnichannel features in the future.

The platform was selected as the best option from a feature perspective, as well as the opportunity to leverage the wider investment Mazda had already made in the Microsoft 365 suite. This choice meant the data would be held internally on SharePoint and Mazda could use tools like Power BI for useful data analysis.

Despite reservations about going with a delivery partner rather than direct, Mazda found that the experience working with the partner delivery team exceeded expectations. It certainly helped that the delivery team had a strong technical background. So strong were the features unlocked by the platform's flow-designer tooling and the partner's expertise that, in the project phase, they were able to increase the scope of the project to include integration with their legacy on-premises CRM — bringing even more agents online. Knowledgeable staff were able to problem-solve in-project and successfully design a solution that integrated the legacy CRM.

• The net savings of implementing the new solution were $1.8M USD, achieved by terminating the original contract with the outsourced provider and retiring legacy contact-centre equipment.
• Customer experience improved beyond recognition by moving to a more ‘human’ model: knowledgeable internal staff working within Teams offer customers a range of seamless digital contact options.
• Scope for further improvement remains — with the immediate opportunity to enhance capabilities around omnichannel and voice recognition.
• The legacy on-prem CRM was successfully integrated in the same project phase — an outcome originally outside the project scope.