Leading Mobile Software Company Uses Plum Fuse to Create, Manage, and Deploy Voice Applications

It’s no secret that telephony is one of the most complex systems a company has to manage. Yet having complete, in-house control of their voice-based customer service and IVR applications emerged as a critical necessity for MSC. The company already had developers managing code bases for multiple products and information systems, but none dedicated to telephony. The idea of adding to their developers’ already heavy workload and building something from scratch wasn’t very appealing. To do so would mean pulling developers off of product development and have them learn a new programming language.

For MSC the issue was less about having developers on staff, and more about prioritizing developer resources in the smartest way possible. The goal was to tip the scales of productivity in their favor, not the other way around, while at the same time gaining control over their telephony systems. Because telephony is so complicated there was little that non-technical staff could do to help offset the development and management needs of a self-service voice application. However, giving non-technical members of their marketing and customer service teams the ability to modify certain aspects of their voice applications was precisely what MSC wanted.

On the other side of the equation, MSC also had a limited number of customer care agents available to field calls. Therefore, they sought to achieve a better balance between agents and self-service phone options. “We wanted to be able to allow the customer to self-serve before deciding to transfer to Customer Care,” said MSC’s Senior Manager of Customer Relations. As the company continues to grow in foreign markets, efficient self-service became increasingly important to provide support to customers who spoke languages that their agents did not.

Was there a way for MSC to have complete control over their call routing and IVR applications without overburdening their developers? MSC considered a number of different software solutions for their self-service needs, but ultimately found that Plum Voice’s Plum Fuse platform did everything that they wanted it to and more.

No Coding Required

Fuse’s visual call-flow editor and user interface makes it easy for anyone to create, modify, and manage powerful communications applications that automate customer interactions without writing code. That meant that MSC developers could farm out development tasks to other people at the company, including non-technical customer service stakeholders. Fuse’s graphic user interface lets users visually model workflow logic and design applications by ‘snapping together’ components from a library of modules that cover all of the requirements for IVR, messaging, telephony, and data management.

This visual interface was a boon to developers as well. Coding styles are as different as the people who write that code. Fortunately, with Fuse, MSC’s team didn’t have to worry about trying to decipher someone else’s code. A quick glance at the application is all anyone needs to understand how a call-flow functions. This type of seamless development approach was just what MSC’s developers needed. On top of all this, Fuse’s intuitive, visual interface renders the need to learn or manage legacy code null and void.

Easy Life Cycle Management

Divvying up responsibility for creating their app was made easier thanks to Fuse’s native life cycle management features. These enabled MSC’s team to have the control that they wanted over their communications application. Administrators can control, at a granular level, the type of access other users have in modifying the application. For example, MSC’s expansion into Latin America brought with it a significant number of Spanish-speaking customers. When looking at the service their IVR application provided to these customers, MSC noticed that many of them called with the same issue and were transferring out of the IVR to speak with live agents.

Fuse eliminates the burden of updating an active application. For example, an MSC administrator clones their application for the purpose of updating Spanish-language audio. The admin then uses permissions controls to determine which team members have access to the app, effectively delegating the task to another stakeholder. Once the audio is updated the administrator can test the revised application to check proper functionality before deploying it. The benefit here is that anyone can update a given component in the application without breaking the entire thing.

When it came to MSC’s Spanish-speaking callers, the company was able to implement an easy modification to their IVR application by adding a new message for those callers that drastically increased call containment. “Not only did this provide a quicker response to our customers, it also improved our employee satisfaction,” said MSC’s Senior Manager of Customer Relations. By allowing agents to focus on more complex customer inquiries, Plum Fuse enabled MSC to provide better, high-touch service to its customers.

Cloning Makes the Iteration Process Made Easy

Now if MSC was just creating and managing voice applications in North America that would be impressive in its own right, but the company has a global reach and user base. Fortunately, a simple remedy existed for the problem of extending their Fuse application to cover other regions and languages. Not only does Fuse natively support dozens of text-to-speech languages, but its one-click cloning feature means that there is no need to build an application from scratch for each region.

Once MSC had a call-flow that did what they wanted it to all they needed to do was clone it, adjust the language settings, and deploy the modified call-flow to a new phone number in a new region. Updating these applications to reflect regional or linguistic differences by translating scripts or prompts and uploading new voice-over audio is a breeze because anyone with permission can do it.

It may seem that Plum Fuse was custom tailored to fit MSC’s needs, but that wasn’t the case. All of the features that solved MSC’s business problems are native to the Fuse platform. In the case of MSC, the reach and scope of their business meant that they were simply able to utilize many of Fuse’s features.

Plum Fuse helped MSC harness and control their telephony technology and self-service offerings. Using Fuse, MSC was able to deploy its first voice app in a mere two weeks. The cloning feature meant that additional apps were not far behind. All told, the company’s Fuse apps increased call containment and improved their customer service around the world without taxing their developer resources. At the same time, the IVR apps delivered a better customer experience that made life easier for their live agents as well. That is what’s commonly referred to as a win-win situation.