Customer Success
Top-Rated SMTP2GO Moves to Talkdesk for Reliability and Cost Savings for Their Global Organization
By Liz Pedro
0 min read
We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Charlotte James Lisbonne (Customer Success Manager) and Lukas Williams (Head of Tech Support/Business Development Manager) from SMTP2GO.
SMTP2GO, founded in 2006, is headquartered in New Zealand with customers in 130 countries. Their mission is to provide the fastest, most reliable SMTP service on the market. In this blog find out why they chose Talkdesk and how they’ve benefited.
Q1. Tell me about yourself, your current role, and how you got to where you are today.
Lukas: I trained in IT at University, worked as an IT manager, moved into teaching and then back into IT. I have a couple of titles – Head of Tech Support and Business Development Manager. In my roles I’m looking at ways to improve processes working with customers, reaching out to customers who might slip through the cracks and of course looking at ways to increase business.
Charlotte: I have a journalistic background. I studied journalism at university, I landed my first job on graduation with the BBC and then worked in newspapers. My title is Customer Success Manager and I help with content. Our customers are happy and we recently were recognized by G2 in their 100 best software companies in EMEA list.
Q2. Can you provide some background on SMTP2GO (e.g. what makes your company unique)?
Lukas: At STMP2Go our company culture focuses not only on customer success but also ensuring employees are happy. Because the staff feels valued, we are keen to make customers happy which results in great retention rates.
Charlotte: One of the things which make our company special is that we have a great CEO. He is flexible and receptive to hearing new ideas or suggestions on how to help the company grow and improve.
Q3. Tell us about your contact center.
Lukas: Our use case is quick and quality communication with customers when they need it. We run a 24×7 contact center so customers can reach us anytime they need support or have questions.
Q4. What did you have before, what was the main driver for a call center solution?
Lukas: We had open source VoIP software, PBX, which was expensive. It had to be fixed regularly, which cost us money and time, plus we had to buy hardware and IP phones. In addition, the system was faulty and was always going down. Ultimately, it was too expensive and not worth the effort. We have eight locations and remote agents so it was important to have a solution to handle those requirements, support us as we are growing and handle a variety of connections for our global agents.
Charlotte: Five years ago when I started, SMTP2GO was using IP phones which were a nightmare. We had to plug special phones into our computers, the quality of calls was awful and calls would just drop. It just didn’t work which frustrated not only the agent but customers as well.
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Q5. Why did you choose Talkdesk?
Lukas: When we select a software solution we tend to do a lot of research, including looking at online reviews and ratings. Talkdesk had great ratings and reviews and we also liked the integration options.
Charlotte: One of the key reasons we chose Talkdesk was the great integration with Zendesk. Talkdesk integrates nicely with our Zendesk solution.
Q6. What benefits have you seen from implementing Talkdesk into your contact center?
Charlotte: First, the quality of the calls with Talkdesk is great. Another thing I like is the Talkdesk Academy. We’ve taken courses and learned how to administer Talkdesk better, learned tips and tricks such as how to handle an angry customer on the phone and tips or best way to leave a pre-recorded messages.
Lukas: Talkdesk covers what we need, easy access to technology and easy to set up new users. I can log in, add a new user and they can start taking or making calls in a few minutes.
Q7. How important is customer experience for SMTP2GO?
Charlotte: A company mantra we have is taking responsibility for customer requests and own it, see it through and if something is wrong we all own the request until it’s closed. I have worked here for five years and I feel lucky to work at a company that makes the customer experience the top priority.
Lukas: Customers like that we treat them so well. We don’t have scripts for our agents, instead, we provide guidelines and suggestions. This is important culturally as we have agents working globally. We want our agents to listen and ask the right questions in language and colloquiums they feel comfortable with.
Q8. What tips do you have for your peers to improve customer experience in their contact center?
Charlotte: My tip would be to listen (genuinely 100% listen) to your customers to make them feel like they’re heard and someone cares.
Lukas: One of the biggest things I’ve found for CX is listening to the support team. Support teams tend to know what customers are thinking and need. instead of making assumptions about what your customers want, check with your support team. Knowing this information drives positive results for everyone.
Q9. What is your next step with your contact center and Talkdesk?
Lukas: We know there’s a Talkdesk mobile app coming soon which is exciting. The ability for us to make and answer calls on cell phones will be helpful especially when traveling. We go to a lot of events and being able to take a call from our phones and will be helpful.
Q10. Any final thoughts to share?
Charlotte: I go to a lot of customer-centric conferences and it’s a nice feeling when I sit in these talks and we are doing everything the big hitters talk about. Our founder built into our culture early on that every employee should be customer-focused and this includes providing exceptional customer experience to every customer every time.
