“When nine hundred years old you reach look as good you will not”

Another ball drops, yep, I am old.

My personal life is where I am most often reminded of my advancing years. Musical debates with my son (of course Grandmaster Flash were definitive and hell, what is wrong with Roxy Music) and the constant smothering of my knees in in Nurofen Emulgel are just two examples but sometimes age challenges me as well in my professional career.

Experience is valuable but it can, if not consciously controlled, blinker you. A good example here could be my ZDNet blogs in 2016 when I called out SD-WAN as perhaps just another vendor propelled overlay fad, you know, like DM/GetVPN, oops, d’oh. I thought I had seen it before, I hadn't.

Old habits do however die hard and in the last few years I have questioned, on the basis of what I think Enterprise, Government customers in particular might actually want, the digital experience or “DX” stampede. When DX gets over-indexed the suggestion is sometimes made that customers do not want to talk to their service provide sales team anymore and that through solution builders etc they never should have to.

When I disagree with these views, I can see the digital zealots put me in the “old guy” category but I genuinely think for certain markets/segments in particular, customers still want to talk to, and buy from, well, people. Taking this track further, I have been on my “rantbox” already (it’s like a soapbox but more exuberant) in Vocus quoting a personal view that customers do not bound out of bed in the morning to logon to their service provider portal and that we should be focused equally, if not more, on staff experience (SX) so that when our customers call us, we can be the “rockstars” our customers want in the way we respond to their request/enquiry.

As I have found regularly since joining, the Vocus team listen respectfully but were already a mile ahead of me. As an example, on the assurance side, we recently launched some exciting support improvements that provide our customers with faster, brilliant, simple and more secure online experiences but importantly these changes do not replace our customers’ ability to simply call us, with the person on the other end already the beneficiary of our parallel SX development focus.

The customer facing changes, founded on the introduction of the Vocus Support Portal I should state are pretty neat. As you would expect, we are on a journey with our customers, like forming the Rebel Alliance to create and fight together for a great digital experience but customers even today can securely log into their Vocus support portal and troubleshoot their issues. They can also obtain expert guidance from an extensive knowledge base of technical articles, resources and guides, lodge a trouble ticket with their specific concern and, where needed, escalate their issue to a Vocus support team member with expert skills to help with any issues.

Early customer feedback has indicated that the changes we are making are working with already a lift in Assurance Net Promoter Score but I always come back to last part of the paragraph above, expert skills. Specific to the solutions my team looks after at Vocus, I am thrilled that our customers are supported not only by our Account Managers but also account aligned Solution Consultants who will understand your business and technical requirements and design a technically appropriate and financially viable solution to suit your needs.

Yep, our solution builder is an old-school human who knows their stuff and our AM’s and SC’s are the front/sharp end of your comprehensive people oriented, digitally enabled, support experience from Vocus.

So, is my age showing through with my “people buy from people” viewpoint? Obviously, the right answer is one around balance. Yes, we support/offer and continue to develop API’s and we remain focused on a better customer digital experience (sending emails btw probably does not fall into this category) but we also through improved staff experience are ensuring that when you do call us, our people have the tools to help you quickly.

Want to know more?. Get started on our new Vocus Support portal here or just call your rockstar Vocus Account Manager 😊

Note/Disclaimer: Roxy Music did to be fair release some fairly average music. What was that one about the doll all about?. Same Old Scene for some reason I cant remember reminds me of Amsterdam, possible substance abuse at play.