Genesys sees boom as clients merge links with customers

MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015
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GENESYS, a provider of multi-channel contact-centre solutions, targets double-digit sales growth in the Asia-Pacific region and Thailand this year by helping clients integrate their communications with their customers.

“Increasingly, businesses are prioritising customer experience as a strategic differentiator and are turning to Genesys solutions to help their customers have an effortless experience in their journey across all channels,” said Tan, managing director for the Asia-Pacific region. 
Genesys is banking on its customer-experience platform, which could help companies manage their customer journey from “end to end”, he said.
An explosion of digital channels – from mobile apps to websites and social media – over the years, while offering more contact points for consumers to reach companies, is making firms struggle to deal with their internal organisational “silos” and to ensure consistent communications with their clients that can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty. 
“A customer’s journey can go from social media to website, in-person, [interactive voice response]/contact centre and mobile [phone network]. 
“The problem is the agent [of a traditional contact centre] sees little of the customer’s journey. She does not know the customer had surfed the Web for half an hour [before making the call]. 
She has to ask the caller what’s going on. Everything has to be repeated over and over again,” he said.
The Genesys executive was giving a press interview last week on his visit to Bangkok to hold a workshop with Thai customers and a demonstration of the company’s customer-experience solutions.
In one case study, solutions for airlines enable a customer to start booking a flight on a mobile app, resume doing it on a website and complete it with an airline’s contact centre. 
The customer does not have to repeat the procedures or conversations with the contact centre’s agent since the agent receives information from every contact point that this customer had gone through before making the call.
“Customers want services that are convenient, context-based and personal, regardless of channels. They will buy more or repurchase if the journey is effortless. They will become disloyal if the effort is high,” he said.
Burin Nopparatwong, Genesys’ manager for Thailand, said the firm had about 10-15 customers that had bought licensed software and continued buying annual maintenance services from the company. 
Its client base goes from a small company that has only 20 contact centre staff to a large firm like Total Access Communication (DTAC) that employs 2,500 agents in its contact centre.
Genesys has appointed five resellers – two global system integrators (NEC Thailand and Hewlett-Packard Thailand), two local system integrators (Callvoice Communications and The Communication Solution) and a contact-centre operator called One to One Contacts.
Tan said Genesys was in talks with another potential reseller but no conclusion had been reached yet.
Both Tan and Burin just joined Genesys a few months ago. 
The US-based company reported revenue of US$850 million (Bt27.8 billion) last year from 4,500 customers in 80 countries worldwide, including 700-plus in the Asia-Pacific region.