CX Solutions Suck for Small Businesses – Here’s Why

By Michael Tessler, Managing Partner at True North Advisory

Many excellent CX products are specifically designed for mid- and large-sized customers. These solutions are tailored for formal contact centers, where the primary job is interacting with customers across their journey, from buying to support. They constantly evolve, incorporating more support for digital channels, automation, and conversational AI.

However, these solutions don’t scale down for small or highly distributed businesses. Small businesses have many unique attributes. These are;

No dedicated call center employees

All employees in a small business are engaged in solving customer interactions. This means the idea of a queue just doesn’t work. There are no dedicated agents, and employees are expected to jump in and serve the customers.

Mobile is the primary experience

Small business employees have the convenience of using their mobile phones as their main communication device, whereas formal agents use desktops. This requires the application to be designed and tailored to work on mobiles, empowering the employees with flexibility.

No formal CRM or tracking software

Most small businesses do not have the systems that larger companies have deployed for tracking customer interactions and contact information. These systems of record are designed for larger companies and require extensive setup and administration.

No dedicated IT staff

Small companies typically do not have dedicated IT staff and an office manager or owner needs to be able to set up and onboard the employees. This means that any offer for this segment needs to be simple to set up and maintain.

Not enough employees for timely responses

Many small businesses with multiple communication channels (phone, text, social media) do not have enough resources to respond to customers promptly.

We recently started working with an old BroadSoft friend, Pavel Chlupacek, who started a company focused on solving these challenges for small businesses. Spinoco has been doing business in Europe for ten years, perfecting the experience for small businesses and their employees. They have also recently focused on selling their solution through mobile operators, really focusing on the importance of mobile in the solution.

The Spinoco solution has been built from the ground up and focused on small businesses where all employees contribute to customers' needs. It treats all incoming and outgoing interactions across any channel in the same way. The system has built-in capabilities to help track customer issues to closure. A shared address book makes it easy for all employees to access the customer on their preferred channel. Finally, the system is easy to set up and use, a must for small business owners.

You can check them out at https://www.spinoco.com/digital-front-office

Let me know what you think or if you would like to meet with Pavel and his team to learn more.