DXI originally supplied its cloud-based contact centre solution EasyContactNow™ to Sky’s employee IT Service Desk Centre. Part of Sky’s ‘Believe in Better’ philosophy, the deployment demonstrated within a very short period of time improved productivity, increased analyst efficiency and interoperability capabilities with existing systems.

The intuitive EasyContactNow solution, which was championed by the Service Desk management team led by Jack Diamond, Sky’s Head of Infrastructure, as a replacement for an on premise system has enabled the service desk team of 30 to handle over 10,000 calls per month more efficiently, and deliver the high standard of support needed to meet the daily IT requirements of Sky’s 30,000 employees worldwide. Together the teams from Sky and DXI won the Service Desk Institute’s ‘Best Implementation of an ITSM Solution’ Award in April 2015.

The success of the original implementation led to interest from other departments within Sky keen to benefit from DXI’s approach to cloud communications and help them to achieve their own efficiency and performance improvement goals.

Sky People+

The Sky HR department, known as Sky People+, wanted to improve the service that they provide to employees. Sky People+ has approximately 70 HR agents using EasyContactNow, addressing the needs of 30,000 employees from installation engineers through to sales people.

As a verified, secure supplier, DXI already connected to the Sky network was ideally positioned to respond when the HR department was looking for a new solution. The department uses Peoplesoft as its HR system of record and Salesforce for case management. By working closely with Sky’s People+ team DXI was able to ensure a thorough understanding of their requirements, winning the business ahead of larger competitors. The key factors were:

• Speed of deployment for phase one of the project. DXI was able to agree to a fast implementation of EasyContactNow that the competition was unable to commit to.
• Easy integration: all employees are synchronised with EasyContactNow through Microsoft Active Directory. When the employee calls People+, they give their employee reference number and their record can be identified before the call is put through to the agent. From day one records could be identified through Salesforce.
• Minimal disruption: Just one day of face-to-face training was all that was needed! The remainder of the set up process was delivered in an intuitive way over the telephone. A good demonstration of how something that could have been very complicated was made very simple.

Next Steps

Phase two of the EasyContactNow implementation involves full integration with the Salesforce case management system. The anticipation is that downtime and disruption will be minimal with no additional agent training needed due to the intuitive aspects of the system.

Benefits

DXI delivered the solution on time, going live as planned at the beginning of May 2015. There were no significant issues during the implementation despite this being a major new Sky initiative in the advancement of HR services.

Prior to launch DXI was able to proactively empower the key users of the system with training on how to utilise and manage the system, ensuring they could get the full benefits immediately. This process identified some additional feature requests from the users, which would further enhance productivity. Although these were not included within the original proposal, DXI was able to deliver the additional functionality, namely ‘Idle Time’ which allows the agent time following the call to close off any notes before they are identified to the system as available for the next call.

Sky Switchboard

Sky Switchboard has also taken advantage of the agile approach of EasyContactNow. Their project involved updating the existing legacy technology that was outdated, inflexible and expensive to run and no longer meeting the needs of the business.

Challenges for the project:

• Legacy processes both manual and automated had been in existence for some time, and although laborious, the switchboard operators were comfortable with the processes and resistant to change.
• There were some concerns from the team that this was ‘technology for technology’s sake’. This stemmed from concerns that the system would be too complex.

Ensuring the switchboard operators were involved in the process rather than sidelined during the integration was an important part of the project.

Benefits of the new solution

• The results to date have been positive with the new technology automating many of the clunky and manual tasks the operators once performed. This has increased productivity and through these positive results enhanced the reputation of the team and improved service perception.
• The automation and streamlining of simple tasks that had previously been painstakingly completed manually has freed up the time of the operators to take on more proactive tasks.
• The fact that EasyContactNow can be accessed from the Sky Cloud from any Sky workstation (or from home if user privileges allow) provides effective business continuity. This was put into practice soon after implementation when an unexpected fire alarm necessitated the building to be evacuated, but no disruption to service was experienced.
• Sky now has a switchboard solution that delivers analytics in a number of key areas. This was a particularly important element of the project as Switchboard is the first contact for any interaction with the company and Sky wanted it to meet the needs of the caller by delivering a pleasant and efficient experience, again in line with the company’s ‘Believe in Better’ ethos.

Change for the better!

The Sky Switchboard implementation has demonstrated the benefits of well managed change, where new technology has enhanced the working environment, and reduced the day-to-day workload of functional teams.

DXI is now recognised as a valued go-to partner at Sky for flexible solutions that support their business goals and aspirations. DXI has achieved this reputation from a solid track record of delivering solutions that meet the requirements of differing functions and departments within the SKY enterprise and continues to receive internal endorsement from system users and project team participants.