StarHub launches SmartUC service for Singapore businesses, powered by Avaya

Avaya, a customer and team engagement solutions provider, and StarHub, an integrated infocommunications company in Singapore, have launched a business communications service, SmartUC, for businesses in Singapore. 

The benefits are fourfold: SmartUC can help businesses become more productive, deliver a first class experience for their customers, differentiate their products and services, and expand.

“The expectations of business users and customers have rapidly evolved in recent years, and that change will only accelerate. We now expect mobility and apps and social and cloud. We expect video and chat and flexibility and ease of use. We expect the world at our click,” observed Pamela Tham, Singapore Country Leader, Avaya.

Providing a suite of unified communications capabilities, SmartUC will be delivered in two different offerings – a Standard option for small businesses with fewer than 50 users, and a Premium option for companies with over 50 users, allowing for seamless business growth and flexibility. The SmartUC Premium option includes all the capabilities of the Standard version, plus support for Android, IOS, Windows and Mac devices, contact centre self-service and multimedia capabilities.

"With SmartUC, we bring about a cost-effective value proposition to help Singapore companies to operate more efficiently, while maintaining the fine balance to scale and grow more competitively. Through this innovative approach, we aim to partner our enterprise customers to deliver outstanding service to their businesses,” said Sebastian Tan, Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, Services and Delivery, StarHub.

For small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in particular, a cost effective and high-performance technology solution can help to deliver quicker decision making and better business results. The SmartUC solution ticks all the boxes to help Singapore businesses grow and deliver exceptional service:

· Simple to use and easy to tailor; can be deploy with managed service support

· Monthly subscription offering without the hefty upfront IT expenses or costly feature upgrades associated with traditional corporate phone systems

· Supports a handful of users all the way to 2,500 users

· Integrates easily with existing solutions

· Can work at the workplace, or in the cloud 

SmartUC is based on the Avaya IP Office platform, a solution for SMBs with over 480,000 midmarket systems installed around the world. IP Office helps connect businesses with their customers using the methods those customers prefer - including voice, SMS, web chat, video, email, or fax. IP Office also helps people work from anywhere.

Mango Routes uses Ameyo to manage customer campaigns

Source: Mango Routes website.

Mango Routes, a Gurgaon-based travel service company, has implemented technology from Ameyo for customer engagement.

As a startup, Mango Routes needed call technology that provided a better customer experience. The solution had to integrate seamlessly with its customer relationship management system while ensuring best-in-class customer support, first call resolution* (FCR) and streamlined communication processes. 

"As a complete travel services company that offers its services to businesses and retail customers alike, taking care of their end-to-end travel requirements, we needed a communication platform that could enable us to provide hassle free services. We chose Ameyo over other vendors because of its one stop solution, technological advancement and its solution oriented approach. 

"Our entire calling setup is built on (Ameyo) and it works as a heart for our system. Within months of deployment, we were able to see better management in our outbound campaigns. We believe that Ameyo will help us in understanding our customers well in the long run," said Amit Nautiyal, Travel Expert and Contracting Head, Mango Routes India.

*FCR refers to resolving the customer's request without requiring further calls.

Personalisation is key to e-commerce success

Online revenues boil down to knowing what the customer wants and personalising the experience for him or her accordingly, says online fashion marketplace Zalora, which was at the 2014 Influential Brands: Celebrating brand leadership and Asia brand heroes conference to speak about reaching out to different audiences for digital business.

Founded in 2012, Zalora carries 20,000 products, more than 500 brands and supports multiple touch-points for sales. “We make it as convenient as possible,” Zalora Marketing Director Dione Song said, pointing out that Zalora purchases can be collected at 7-Eleven convenience stories, SingPost's POPStations, or through cash-oh-delivery arrangements.

The company recently invested in a pop-up store at the popular Ion Orchard mall to bring the products to those who are still uncertain about buying online. “Our vision was to bring e-commerce to the offline space. We allow you to get over the barrier of online shopping, show you the product, allow you to try it, but you can’t buy it,” Song explained. The experience can help people to get used to the idea of ordering online and getting their purchases delivered in one or two days instead of the inconvenience of carrying the purchases around, she said.

Song added that Zalora does not segment its customers into ‘Gen X’ or ‘Gen Y’ as the company believes customers are not homogeneous in age segments. “It doesn’t mean that if you’re in an age class that you all act the same way. Customers are very discerning. They know what quality is, they know what they want to pay. We target customers as individuals,” she said.

The experience goes all the way down to personalised web browsing experiences and newsletters, she said. Customers who have browsed one brand are shown complementary brands that are similar. New customers may receive an added incentive to buy, while repeat customers are introduced to in-house labels which they might not have been open to as new customers.

‘Sharks’, people who hunt for discounts, are given bundled deals, whereas those who are more likely to spend more are shown designer brands. “If a customer has looked at shoe pages 10 times, we show you shoes. Everyone has a personal experience. They see a different page but they do not know it,” she said.

Newsletters from Zalora.

Zalora even knows how many times its e-newsletters are read per month, and may change the email subject titles or push special promotions to inactive customers.

"Understanding of a consumer through a behavioural analytical study is important for businesses, not only for the digital businesses. The brand’s strategies should be mapped against the consumer purchase journey which covers multi platforms from which consumers are most likely to be reached when they are commuting to how they purchase, where and why,” said Song.

Social media tracking reveals Formula One sentiments across Asia Pacific

To help sales, marketing and customer care professionals listen, gain insights and more effectively engage with customers across social channels, Microsoft unveiled Microsoft Social Listening in July in eight Asia Pacific markets*. This new service adds the capabilities for people to analyse and act on market intelligence from social conversations, including measuring sentiment across a wide array of social channels. It also allows users to track product, brand, competitor and campaigns globally and in real time to gain true understanding of their customers and their business across the social Web.

Microsoft Social Listening will be offered as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online professional licenses at no additional charge; on-premises customers can get Microsoft Social Listening for an incremental cost. In addition, Microsoft Social Listening has expanded to include monitoring news – making the latest breaking news and relevant stories easily accessible for all.

To show the power of the Social Listening feature, Microsoft tracked social chatter in Asia Pacific on Formula One from 26 August to 17 September. Over 6,000 posts were discovered, an average of 209 a day. The most mentions were from Australia, followed by Singapore and then Indonesia, and overwhelmingly from Twitter (99.7%) as opposed to other social networks.

Team Ferrari clocked in 587 posts, and was most popular in Australia, while Lotus had 286 posts and was most popular in the Philippines. Team Mercedes received 249 mentions and is an Indonesian favourite.

Vizury tracks users across different screens to understand them better

A consistent and personalised customer experience is a prerequisite for marketers who are keen to build relationships with users. Ahead of ad:tech Tokyo, Vizury, a digital CRM company, has shared some views on evolving a cross-device targeting strategy.

A true view of a user depends on consolidating data from multiple touch points spread over desktop browsers, mobile websites and apps. Vizury believes that the key to an effective cross-device strategy lies in accurate user identification across devices to understand the user's journey from product view to purchase.

"In markets like China and Japan, where a huge chunk of users are multi-screeners, cross-device targeting is very critical," said Subra Krishnan, VP Product Management at Vizury.

Vizury has been working on a cross-device user identification technique that can unify user data sprinkled across devices and channels. "A very important finding is that users show very different behaviour while researching and buying products of different industries like flight travel and e-commerce. This in turn implies that cross-device targeting techniques that rely on broad audience segmentation will not deliver the best results for advertisers," he added.