Digital transformation provides a 360-degree view

Grupo Vanti, the leading natural gas in Colombia, unified its business processes and achieved a 360-degree view of its entire operation by migrating to the Genesys Cloud platform. With this all-in-one solution, Vanti now has full visibility of its providers and contact center operations — and can measure and balance workloads in its contact centers. Upgrading these call centers to an omnichannel customer experience center was a key piece of the company’s digital transformation.

“The Genesys Cloud solution gave us the great advantage of omnichannel operation,” said Raúl Burgos, Systems Engineer and Technical Administrator for Vanti. “Having everything in a single platform, where we could integrate both voice communications and digital channels, is a very significant added value. And the efficient integration with the SAP CRM system gives contact center agents support from back-office processes.”

Achieving full visibility

With a presence across 105 Colombian provinces, Vanti has over 3 million residential and commercial customers. In 2018, a new group of shareholders took control of the company, driving a major internal digital transformation.

Vanti knew it needed a transformation to modernize its platform and gain full visibility of its providers — four companies that operate and manage the entire operation of three contact centers and more than 400 agents. This full visibility would help Vanti automate its data feed and provide real-time insights to measure and balance workloads in the contact centers. And it would provide valuable customer experience (CX) insights.

Even before the transformation, Vanti had prided itself on providing outstanding customer service, an advantage it did not want to risk. And it needed to migrate quickly and effectively without affecting business continuity.

“We had to maintain our high service indicators, with averages ranging from 95 percent in level of service to 80 percent in quality of service, and an average handle time between five and six minutes,” said Rolando Bermúdez, Manager of Implementation and Customer Support for Vanti.

Enabling the best experience

With the Genesys platform, Vanti agents now guide customers from start to finish by understanding the context of each step in their journeys — and can even predict customers’ needs.

“The Genesys Cloud platform gives us the unbeatable advantage of having all our information online, making it easy for us to analyze the performance and operation of our management of our various providers and agents,” said Gloria Carvajal Álvarez, Call Center Coordinator for Vanti. “This lets us manage their workloads and provide the best experience to our customers.”

Vanti can now add new capabilities — or a new digital customer service channel — quickly, easily and inexpensively. “Previously, it took us up to two months to make any change or update to the IVR, and up to three months, working long hours, to develop new capabilities,” said Leonardo Venegas, Senior Professional for Saab CRM and Support Manager for Vanti.

Vanti can now integrate new capabilities in a few hours without contracting outside personnel. It can also add new web services, such as artificial intelligence (AI)-based Google Cloud Dialogflow chatbots, email and additional IVR self-services — all in the same package, without making changes to other platforms. This lets Vanti enhance its services easily, saving significant time and expenses.

“With the Genesys platform, Vanti takes advantage of the additional IVR self-services capabilities to attend 20 percent of all customers’ contacts, 17 percent through WhatApp, and 11 percent via email,” said Bermúdez.

By implementing Genesys solutions to integrate and automate its business processes, Vanti created an efficient CX orchestration solution that includes web chat and callback capabilities throughout its contact centers in Colombia. When customers browse the Vanti service website to report a problem with their gas service, they can submit their basic information online. And, if the line is busy when a customer calls to report a problem, they can schedule a callback in 15 minutes.

Working with the best partner

Previously, Vanti had an on-premises solution from Avaya that couldn’t provide the competitive advantages it desired. Now, with the Genesys platform, Vanti has emerged as the icon of the Colombian gas industry.

“We evaluated different technological solutions, such as Cisco and Avaya, but they were very expensive,” said Venegas. “In addition to a 360-degree view of the operation, Genesys offered us many possibilities, quick implementation at a lower cost and the elimination of time-consuming communication silos.”

“To migrate to the new cloud model, it was very important to find a partner like Global Networks Solutions, which gave us rapid implementation within the established budget, ensuring operational continuity above all, so that our customers would not have any negative experiences,” added Bermúdez.

Compliant with every regulation

As a public enterprise in Colombia, Vanti must comply with various government regulations. Genesys Cloud makes it easy to ensure end-to-end data protection while meeting numerous domestic and international security standards.

“It was very important for our business to record 100 percent of customer calls because the government requires us to keep evidence of all calls that our contact centers receive,” said Bermúdez.

Before implementing the Genesys platform, Vanti lacked an organized methodology to record calls, monitor agents or optimize agent skills. Previously, agents spent much of their time determining which customer engagements to record, save and archive.

Now, Genesys Cloud seamlessly integrates and automates processes, so all engagements are automatically recorded — lowering agent stress and giving them more time to serve customers directly.

“With the new Genesys Cloud platform we can keep and access a complete file of all customer calls nationwide,” said Álvarez.

Coming through in a crisis

Soon after the migration, Vanti had to respond to the business challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vanti started by sending more than 400 agents to work at home. It also contracted 140 additional agents to deal with a surge in calls. Despite these challenges, Vanti maintained 100% availability, ensuring the service and delivery of natural gas. During the worst months of the pandemic, calls increased from 350,000 to 900,000 per day. Because of its Genesys platform, Vanti responded to this increase with just a 30% increase in its number of agents.

“The flexibility of the platform was a very important advantage during the health crisis,” said Burgos.

Vanti also implemented self-service using Genesys Web Service. By answering basic questions quickly, the chatbots reduced pressure on agents and provided exceptional 24/7 service that combines web chat, email, mobile applications and social media.

“With Genesys, our Web Service capabilities of self-service allow us to provide personalized service that improves the customer experience by offering anytime, anywhere service,” said Burgos. “We can put our customers first, which is vitally important to us.”

Ready for the future

Vanti is confident about the future. Recently, it added a new emergency contact center to handle future contingencies — and a new SMS channel for special campaigns.

In 2022, Vanti plans to add other capabilities to its IVR, such as new WhatsApp channels, IVR callback and transfer controls for inbound and WhatsApp queues.

“Switching to the Genesys Cloud platform has been really great for Vanti — a phenomenal change!” concluded Carvajal. “I’d recommend it to anyone considering a move to an all-in-one, cloud-based solution.”