As a customer of cloud contact center software company, Five9, I was recently invited to attend a user conference to learn all about their new Freedom release along with a bunch of cool tips and tricks about the product. The conference was at the swanky Torrey Pines Lodge which made attendance a must.
This being my first such user conference experience, I found it to be interesting and insightful both from the perspective of a user of the product, and as a student of the customer experience. Here are four lessons I learned.
1. Share Your Vision- Guarav Passi, Executive Vice President of Product Management was particularly insightful when talking about the new Five9 Freedom release. He talked about the goal of simplifying and improving the experience for their most important customers– the agents using the software. To achieve this, they made the platform web-based, eliminating the need for Java. (Yay!) They also made it easier for agents to disposition calls and integrated email, chat and social media into the platform with the purpose of minimizing the number of windows to have open while supporting customers.
2. Sharing User Stories- A few satisfied Five9 customers shared their story of how they are using the system. Raj Patel from Lending Tree spoke of the ability to dynamically configure his IVR and even A/B test between two IVRs to gauge success. Dan Cartmell from Greenwood Hall spoke of the way a cloud contact center solution allows agents to work from home and the improved speed of the dialer for outbound calls. In both cases, the reporting and analytics were vastly improved over their previous solution. In this setting, the real benefit was to be able to then ask these users some of the questions I had about using the service.
3. Be Transparent- Scott Welch, Executive Vice President of Cloud Operations revealed the Five9 network topology. Most impressive was their four different points of presence around the world, ensuring superior redundancy and reliability. I guess that’s to be expected with a name like Five9, right? He talked about how his team does fire drills to practice for outage conditions. What a great idea! When company leaders take the time to share these plans, it shows transparency and goes a long way to instill confidence.
4. Share Tips and Tricks- In the final session, various employees shared tips and tricks of how to best use Five9. They spoke of ways to optimize call quality, tools for workforce management, ways to improve the already awesome queue callback feature, and a cool statistics portal I didn’t know about. Tips and tricks are such a great way to help users make better use of the product and increase the value.
A good user conference can go a long way to build loyalty to your product and brand. By allowing your customers to talk to one another, share their stories, and hear from key company leaders, you increase user trust in the product and the perceived value. I can’t wait to see the new Five9 Freedom release!
