This article was originally pubished on CIOBulletin.com.
An innovator in the contact center space for over two decades, Upstream Works is redefining agent and customer engagement on a global scale across all industries.
Customers today expect a consistent experience across a brand’s communication channels. Organizations with an omnichannel contact center at the heart of their customer service strategy can understand their customers’ needs, create meaningful engagements, and consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. With contact center automation and innovation, organizations can assist agents and provide a better customer experience, while improving contact center performance. That’s why it’s worth investing in these capabilities sooner rather than later.
Upstream Works provides agent- first contact center solutions that improve customer engagement and agent success. The best-in-class omnichannel contact center software includes an advanced Agent Desktop that seamlessly connects channels, interactions, artificial intelligence (AI), business applications, and CRM systems. With the help of Upstream Works’ solutions, agents and supervisors can easily create knowledgeable and personalized customer experiences while gathering crucial conversational data. Organizations in many sectors have benefited for more than 20 years from Upstream Works’ experience and expertise, increasing operational efficiencies and improving engagements.
Rob McDougall, CEO of Upstream Works, spoke exclusively to CIO Bulletin about how his company is creating solutions that help organizations improve agent experience, efficiency, and business outcomes.
Interview Highlights
Q. What was the idea that inspired you to start Upstream Works? Brief us on the history, its beginning and where the company stands today.
We learned what the demands of the market and clients were. We did a management buyout to become Upstream Works and we were successful in establishing ourselves as a boutique provider of computer-telephony integration solutions. But our ‘bang the fist on the table’ moment, as I like to refer to it, happened five years later when we saw the level of desktop complexity that agents had to deal with due to inconsistencies and the number of applications that needed to be accessed. That is when we realized there must be a better way to resolve this. As a result, we developed our omnichannel Agent Desktop application, which is the sole product focus of the company.
Q. What sets Upstream Works apart from the competition?
We have a very narrow focus on businesses with complex contact centers. Our omnichannel desktop solution normalizes communication channels so that they are handled consistently regardless of source. For example, if a business already has chat and wants to add SMS or WhatsApp, they can do it easily because the infrastructure supporting those channels is the same. Agents don’t need to be retrained, and there is no need to develop new reports. Due to our product’s high level of integration, everything just works. A benefit of our approach is that it provides flexibility and doesn’t force clients into pigeonholes; rather, it lets them utilize the technology and equipment they already own, which they have invested in and want to keep using.
We work with our clients to understand their business goals, what technologies they are utilizing, what are they are trying to do, and how we can combine all of these elements, so that our agent desktop software provides the greatest possible agent experience. In a complex contact center with many different integration points and large number of agents, it is really our integration flexibility and enterprise-ready solution that sets Upstream Works apart.
“There is a true synergistic relationship between what Cisco does and what Upstream Works offers when it comes to complex enterprise contact centers.”
Q. What roles do AI and machine learning play in the services you offer? How can you use these technologies to enhance the customer experience?
AI is an extremely powerful tool, but there are some very tight restrictions that you need to be aware of. AI in a contact center can be quite effective, whether it is for contact routing and allocation, sentiment analysis, agent guidance, or chatbots. The problem is that not all requirements can be addressed by one AI application. Also, the unified agent desktop view can be broken by AI, as it can introduce new silos and add desktop complexity.
This is where Upstream Works comes in. As an integration platform, we assist in the operationalization of AI as part of the omnichannel agent desktop. Different AI applications perform different things. Our objective is to normalize this, make sure that what the agent is seeing is consistent and easy to use and improve their experience.
Q. How does your extensive partnership with Cisco help your clients simplify customer engagement and achieve digital transformation?
There is a true synergistic relationship between what Cisco does and what Upstream Works offers when it comes to complex enterprise contact centers. Cisco focuses on infrastructure, handling contacts and routing them to agents, as well as other factors that are crucial to the smooth operation of a contact center. The identical details are actually handled by Upstream Works, but at the desktop level. And in a complex or large business environment, Upstream Works offers that same value across the Cisco solution set.
Presently, Upstream Works enhances the Cisco Finesse and Webex Contact Center platform with advanced functionality, additional digital channels, integrations with business applications and artificial intelligence.
The goal is to further simplify what the agent is doing, streamline customer engagements, and enable our clients to achieve digital transformation. Our staff is dedicated to innovation and quick time to market. Therefore, in the Cisco ecosystem, we are frequently seen as a source of innovation. Together with Cisco, there is a fantastic synergy in how our products fit and function.
Q. What new endeavors is Upstream Works currently undertaking?
We have developed a custom application called Ripple that acts as a wrapper for all our other applications, giving us the ability to run them on top of virtually any other telephony platform. We now have Amazon Connect application support and recently announced new platform support with Webex Contact Center. We’re continuing to explore other industry platforms that could benefit from bringing our products to their platform.
Our main concern is ensuring the agent desktop software meets the demands of the enterprise and becomes independent of the infrastructure clients are using. Therefore, a large portion of our effort is focused on extending the telephony platforms we support so that our clients have more options and can pay more attention to how things function on the agent desktop and how to improve the agent experience.
Q. What’s that one thing you want Upstream Works to be known for?
There is a Latin saying, “Faciemus Quae Dicimus,” which translates to, “we do what we say.” We’ve always made an effort to find solutions for practical, real world contact center issues. Evaluating what we can deliver to clients and how it inevitably leads to us saying, “yes, we can do that.” Our product is capable of a wide range of omnichannel and integration capabilities, and we frequently engage with clients who talk about the things they have trouble getting from other vendors.
It would be great if people knew that we follow through on our promises. That would likely be the largest benefit I could ask for in the current market.
About | Rob McDougall
Rob is the CEO of Upstream Works, a provider of omnichannel contact center desktop solutions that simplify and improve agent and customer experiences. He is an accomplished contact center leader and catalyst for change with a track record for raising industry awareness of first contact resolution. Rob leads the strategic vision of Upstream Works with a continued focus on omnichannel innovation and enhanced AI integration capabilities.