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CX Education 13: From focusing on the basics to successful digital transformation with Shameem Smillie from AlwaysTheOther Limited

Join Shameem Smillie and Gwen Lafage as they chat about contact center digital transformation and the increasing use of technology in customer service.

From focusing on the basics to successful digital transformation with Shameem Smillie from AlwaysTheOther Limited
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About this episode

Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is a cloud-based customer service solution providing businesses with features to manage customer interactions. CCaaS solutions typically offer a range of features: including inbound and outbound voice calls, email, chat, and social media support. One of the primary benefits of CCaaS is that it provides businesses with a scalable and flexible solution that adapts to changing customer demands and business needs.

But if a business wants to stay competitive and meet customer expectations, contact centers must undergo a digital transformation which can be complex and challenging.

In this episode of CX Education, Shameem Smillie, CCaaS Consultant at AlwaysTheOther Limited, gets into the digital transformation of contact centers and the increasing use of technology in customer service. Shameem and our host Gwen Lafage discuss digital transformation, improving customer service, and the position of women in tech and customer experience.

Image for Shameem Smillie, CCaaS Consultant | AlwaysTheOther Limited

Guest Speaker

Shameem Smillie, CCaaS Consultant | AlwaysTheOther Limited

Shameem is a CCaaS Consultant who specializes in digital and customer experience transformation. Leveraging diversity of experience, Shameem enables organizations to maximize the benefits of technology as the enabler for future-proofing their businesses while managing their bottom line to maximize investments.

She has spent her career working for technology vendors within the tech industry and is a subject matter expert in CCaaS and contact center technology and operations. She has partnered with many brands to deliver successful digital transformation projects which leveraged Mitel, Avaya, Noetica, Five9, Google CCAI, LivePerson, Calabrio, Talkdesk, and many more. Her holistic approach and passion for customer and employee experience focus on continual business and innovation improvements while supporting a culture of empowerment and inclusivity. She ensures people are at the front and centre of all interactions while humanising the interconnection between technology, business, and systems.

Image for Gwen Lafage, VP Brand & Content | Sinch

Host

Gwen Lafage, VP Brand & Content | Sinch

Gwen has dedicated her career to building strong brands in London, Paris, San Francisco, and Stockholm. She is a creative, global marketing leader with twenty years of experience in the best advertising agencies working on the world’s leading B2C brands before focusing on B2B marketing for tech companies in Silicon Valley and Stockholm.

Gwen is now VP of Brand and Content at one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world, the Customer Communications Cloud, Sinch.

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Key insights

Women are a minority in the tech industry – they’re also a minority in leadership positions. Many organizations and individuals are working to address these issues and promote greater diversity and inclusivity in tech. One of them is Women in CX, a community of over 7,000 women from 50+ countries collaborating globally. As a founding member of Women in CX, Shameem explains why she decided to join this community. “In 2023, there’s a huge gender imbalance in the tech industry. And even when you think about customer experience, according to the National Center for Women and Informational Technology, as well as the Office of National Statistics, women represent over 70% of the workforce in customer experience, but when you move up and start to look at leadership positions, they’re less than 30%. And I want to be part of the solution to make that number more favorable and make it more equitable for both men and women in all the different industries that represent women in tech — all technology and customer experience.” 

Customer service varies depending on the industry, company, and customer experience, but each has its challenges. One major trend is the increasing use of technology in customer service. According to Shameem, the pandemic has led companies to expand their customer service offerings beyond traditional phones and email to chatbots and social media. “What these channels do is they’re supposed to allow customers to interact with companies in a way that’s convenient and accessible, and what that should then do is lead to increased satisfaction, increase loyalty; the customer will stay with that business. And I think that’s the promise, for the most part, of a lot of organizations.”

Digital transformation involves using technology to streamline processes, automate tasks, and improve the customer experience. Omnichannel customer service is critical in digital transformation because it combines all the channels and touchpoints that customers use to interact with a company. However, embracing omnichannel is difficult for many companies. Shameem notes that many organizations fail from the start. “Where customers or brands and businesses should be looking at is looking at the bottom line and how they can optimize, streamline, and remove friction from that customer experience; that should be the very first thing. I also want to add that voice remains very important to a customer. If you’re implementing and pushing digital channels, there needs to be a mechanism in place so that if something goes wrong, and the customer wants to escalate, they should be able to pivot to a voice interaction – which is where omnichannel comes in.”

Episode highlights

Women in the CX community

“Currently, there are 7,000+ women represented from 50+ — probably more now — countries across the globe from all different disciplines within customer experience. I represent women in tech, and I’m pleased to say there are a lot more of us now. As well as joining the community, we champion and support each other, and shine the light on each other; if we spot an opportunity, make it known to each other, not just inside the community, but outside the community as well.”

Focusing on UX in digital transformation

“First of all, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? If it’s just to stop customers from calling in, then that on its own isn’t enough. There have to be other meaningful problems that you’re trying to solve, both operational as well as things that affect the bottom line. Once you are clear on the problem that you’re trying to solve, then it’s, ‘How do you go about doing it?’ Identifying the right use cases: are these user cases valid, are they viable, and does it make sense?”

Improving customer service

“Identify the problems and identify the business problem; the opportunity as well as what is this going to address internally for the business as well as for the customer. It’s all about the different use cases and making sure that you’ve got the data. What is the data telling you at the beginning, and what data is this going to yield as you go through the journey?”

Digital transformation and contact centers

“If you’re a small organization, you can still have digital capabilities, but it’s all about knowing what your customers want. How do they want to engage? What is it that they want to do? When do they want to do it? If you are a bank, let’s say a building society, and your demographic is of an age where their preference is they always want to phone in, you should be talking to them. If you want to implement a move to digital, take them on the journey with you so that they embrace it.”
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