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The peak holiday periods can be stressful for businesses, particularly those in a retail customer service environment, and can lead to a potential breakdown in systems and poor customer experiences if they don’t have a solid foundation in place to handle these spikes in activity. However, with the proper systems and processes in place, organisations can plan ahead and be better prepared, and take advantage of the opportunities at hand. There is nothing new about this: surges happen every year during specific periods, such as the Easter weekend, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and the longer December holidays. And, increasingly, there is technology that can solve these customer service challenges. Technology that helps companies manage multichannel communications, manage their workforces, and to look at past performance in order to identify trends and make predictions. A challenge however is that there is often

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AnD Communications, based in KwaZulu-Natal, has completed its rebranding to Telviva, marking the culmination of an acquisition that began six years ago. The evolution has seen the company transition from being a reseller of PBX solutions to a becoming a telco that enables its clients to meet the growing requirements from modern customers for what is predominantly digitally-driven omni- and multi-channel communications. Formed in 1988, AnD Communications (AnD) has a proud history in voice and data communications solutions, servicing primarily the KwaZulu-Natal market. Originally, Telviva and AnD entered a white label partnership in 2015 to provide customers in that province with access to the greater range of services that the cloud would unlock.  Over the years, the company built up a substantial customer base as a white-label partner of Telviva, and at that point started looking for a suitable provider of cloud-based

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To ensure that we continue to stay at the leading edge of a growing unified communications as a service (UCaaS) industry, we have extended our services in the UK, offering attractive margins to partners who can label the offering as their own brand. The move was designed to answer the call from partners who are looking for a future-proofing decision by dealing with an actual operator and not just someone selling software. In addition to this, our extended offering also benefits existing South Africa-based customers with UK requirements. Our successful presence at Channel Live in the UK made it abundantly clear that not only is Telviva delivering world-class UCaaS in the form of Telviva One, but there is also robust demand from channel partners for the types of solutions we already offer to sub-Saharan businesses, as well as our AWS-enabled customer

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More businesses are seeing the benefit of using digital channels to engage with their customers, and there is a growing interest in the use of AI-powered technologies in order to enhance the customer experience and improve efficiencies. However, what needs to be kept top of mind is that while it is easy to enable more channels of communication, a failure to align with backend processes can easily result in a poorer experience and further frustration for customers. I recently had a poor experience when interacting with a brand through WhatsApp. While the advertised promise was one of a quick signup within the messaging app, this was not possible, and I had to first engage with a sales agent via the WhatsApp chat, and then, after this interaction failed mid transaction, revert to a voice call where I was placed at number

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While local businesses might want to hold onto their on-premise PBX systems for as long as possible, advances in technology would likely see them losing their competitive edge to those organisations that invest in enhancing communications between employees, and with customers and suppliers. They are likely to be hampered further as traditional premise-based PBX systems become obsolete, with vendors following a strategy of bringing PBX to end-of-life and are no longer supporting them. While small companies can look to sweat their old PBX systems, larger businesses with compliance obligations, for example ISO27001, need to upgrade to supported hardware and current operating systems that have support, are patched for security, and can be reliable as they age. The required upgrades, as well as support for changes, repairs and moves are expensive. Furthermore, the costs for providing the infrastructure to house the equipment and

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Today’s customers are demanding for personalised engagements with brands on the channels of their choice, and organisations have had to respond by investing in technology solutions to meet these needs. Companies making the change to omnichannel environments are often still held back by defaulting to using traditional channels such as the telephone and email, and need to look toward developing living customer journey maps in order to optimise touch points, personalise engagements, drive innovation and enhance customer experiences. There is a wealth of resources online around customer journey mapping, but at the very basic level it is about an organisation putting themselves in their customers’ shoes and looking at what experience they have with the company. Through user personas, businesses can build a view of what a typical customer will have to go through when they interact with the brand, right

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Cloud-hosted communication platforms have reshaped the tariffed voice routing landscape globally, and are making a similar impact in South Africa. With a growing requirement for multi-channel engagement however, businesses are now looking beyond a basic Cloud PBX, and toward a unified communications as a service (UCaaS) that provides them with a scalable, cost-effective and feature-rich alternative to traditional phone systems. Looking beyond on-premise Organisations that have held onto their on-premise PBX are facing a growing number of challenges with maintaining these systems, and stand to gain from multiple benefits by switching to a Cloud PBX, including: Reducing their capital expenditure as a cloud-hosted solution means that there is no expensive on-premise PBX equipment to maintain and upgrade. They can also reduce their voice call costs by up to 40%, as experienced by Telviva clients. Scaling their communications systems up or down based on their

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Telviva has improved Telviva One Premium by bundling additional features such as multi-channel engagements and customer relationship management (CRM) system integration while leaving the subscription cost unchanged. This enhancement offers local small and medium-sized businesses a simple and cost-effective way of enabling better quality conversations with their customers without having to invest in a full contact centre solution. With the enhancement, Telviva One Premium now gives businesses access to the feature-rich Telviva Cloud PBX, a browser-based webphone, the Telviva Mobile app, internal company chat, Telviva Meetings (video conferencing), multi-channel engagements, and CRM integration. Telviva One helps businesses lower operating costs and increase productivity by enabling remote and hybrid working environments. Organisations can further reduce their total cost of ownership by being part of South Africa’s largest cloud-based free call community.  As a locally-based company, rand-based costs apply and businesses do not need

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In an era where good customer experience (CX) is key to attracting and retaining customers, businesses are turning to omnichannel solutions to ensure seamless engagements across all communications channels. However, with complex integrations, sound processes and customer journey mapping becoming more crucial, businesses should look to partner with a Managed Contact Centre Service provider that can walk the journey to enhanced CX with them. With a managed contact centre service, businesses are not just given some software and then left alone to figure it all out. The right technology partner acts in the interest of the customer, and cares about how they can enable better quality conversations between organisations and their customers.  A further benefit of taking the managed service approach is that the provider will work with the business to slowly expose its customer-facing people to additional channels and work with

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Telviva, as a Technology Partner, has assisted Vodacom Lesotho in launching Vodacom One Connect, which provides local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with a cost-effective cloud-based UC&C platform that synchronises voice, video and chat. The solution includes Direct Routing, which enables businesses to use Vodacom’s voice services directly within Microsoft Teams - the first by an operator in the Lesotho market. The Telviva platform provided to Vodacom Lesotho is hosted on their own platform, and the operator in turn provides UC&C services to its customers in that country. As part of the agreement with Vodacom Lesotho, Telviva provided technical training for the core team, sales training, field services training and relevant marketing collateral that can be used as a guideline. In addition, Telviva has signed a year-long technology transfer agreement to assist Vodacom Lesotho in deploying leading cloud-based technology to both