On 27^th April 2012, ONI Plc, one of the fastest growing Gold Partners in the UK has once again achieved Cisco Customer Satisfaction Excellence.

ONI is extremely pleased to have achieved another year of positive responses highlighting their ongoing commitment to delivering the best possible service to their customers.

Achieving Customer Satisfaction Excellence is the highest distinction a partner can achieve within the Cisco Channel Partner Program.

30 surveys were completed in P4, 2012 achieving a score of 4.74, scores were based upon the customer satisfaction results captured in the Cisco Partner Access Online tool.

The results have been well received at ONI, who have recently moved their entire Technical Assistance Centre into their brand new, £3M data centre facility, offering remote hands assistance to all customers. The move was made to ensure that customers’ receive the highest levels of support and attention that they deserve.

Kevin Kivlochan, Director & Co-Founder of ONI comments, “Once again, this is a tremendous result and further demonstrates our commitment to customer service excellence. We take great pride in ensuring we are fully equipped to respond quickly and efficiently to customer service requests and always continually trying to improve.’’

This important new framework will enable ONI to offer a range of cloud-based services to Public Sector organisation’s across the UK. Services will include :-

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Unified Communications
• Disaster Recover services
• Storage Services

All cloud services provided by ONI are hosted in our purpose built UK based Data Centre’s assuring all data resides on UK shores.

 To find out more about how ONI G-Cloud services can assist your organisation call the ONI Public Sector team or use our live chat service.

In all honesty, getting something they actually asked for would be far more straightforward, acceptable, and all round easier but if your wife is anything like mine, you are never going to be told what that is. But on just one occasion, I absolutely nailed it….

The occasion was one of my wife’s more significant birthdays; she was my girlfriend at the time and some form of divine intervention/apparition had provided me with the knock-out idea – tickets for Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House. Heaven knows how I worked this one out, but as the perfect present – it was gathering weight like an avalanche. The only problem was I couldn’t get any tickets.

The usual calls to the usual places turned up nothing, practically sold out everywhere. I started to venture further afield from the box office, ticket shops, eBay and approached a few, shall we say, ‘unusual resellers’. One in particular called me back to explain that he would buy them from an existing ticket holder for a price, only I had to name that price. It became apparent that a £50 ticket was only going to be obtained for closer to £2,000. A couple of weeks after agreeing such an extraordinary sum, he called me back to say that at that price nobody was going to sell.

It was at this point I began to realise the enormity of the problem: Tickets for the Royal Opera House on that night (her birthday) were particularly in demand because the ROH had been closed for refurbishment for over two years, it was the opening night. To add, the opening performance was Swan Lake, apparently one of the favoured performances of the Royal Ballet, and as if to stick the knife in and give it a good twist, staring Darcey Bussell (principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet).

Now, as with Christmas shopping, the amount of time, effort and desperate offers of cash was leading to despair. I had excluded all other ideas of a suitable present, because this was becoming the one and only perfect birthday gift – Opening Night, Swan Lake, Darcey Bussell – it was the mother of all birthday presents!! If I could have thought of something else, it was never going to compare and I didn’t believe I was ever going to keep this one a secret.

As luck would have it, I was explaining all of this to a colleague who just happened to have an American Express Black Card. I think you know where this is going!!!

After he explained what the Amex Black card was, I went away considering how broke I was going to be if he managed to secure them. Five days later he said he had left them on my desk. What!! Just like that, and besides who leaves such valuable tickets just lying around on my desk? I think I broke the land-speed record getting back to my desk to find them perched upright in my keyboard – still there. In my view he might as well have left a bunch of fifty pound notes on the keyboard and a couple of spotlights to draw your attention in case you missed them, but no, they were still there. Did nobody know just how valuable these things were? I am of course well aware of how trustworthy and honest my former colleagues were, but all the same I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they had somehow ‘disappeared’!!

Turns out, all he wanted was the face value of the tickets, £50 each – bargain, absolute steal if you ask me. But then to me, these things were like diamond encrusted, gold plated kryptonite, to everyone else just a couple of tickets to the Ballet.

And the reason for this story: Well when it comes to friends and colleagues, some very simple gestures of goodwill on their part can provide such unbelievably important, life changing effects that I will never be able to repay the debt (although in his opinion I paid him the money so there is no debt). His name will probably be mentioned in thanks on my gravestone. However this story has more to do with that American Express Card.

At the time, there was a lot of Amex advertising going on, so much so that when I tell the story most of my friends will re-enact that Pamela Stephenson sketch on Not the Nine O’Clock News. There were things Amex said they could do, and believe me they could. Those two tickets weren’t just tickets to the show. They were centre, front row of the Royal Circle, literally 10 metres from the front of the stage (probably not but it felt it).

This isn’t the first time I’ve ever told this story, and it definitely won’t be the last. Every time I tell it, I seem to embellish just how amazing that American Express company can be, and just what remarkable things that Black Card can do. Which is ironic since I don’t have an Amex Card of my own, I used to have one when I worked at EMC, but to be honest it wasn’t the most useful piece of plastic in my pocket. Despite that, I still consider them to be remarkable. I’m not just a fan, I’ve become a disciple.

In many ways, my team within ONI is trying to create customer disciples of our Data Centre Solutions by building out a uniquely different ‘State of the Art’ Data Centre with Enterprise Class Cloud Services that leverages all of our unique skills and strengths within the Cisco portfolio. Unfortunately, like my story, it not something we can easily do ourselves, it requires us to develop an image uniquely associated with that brand, a universally accepted notion that this is what our Brand does, an image that can even survive association with Pamela Stephenson’s breasts, (you will have to look it up), maybe. And then, perhaps most importantly, it requires a simple unassuming gesture of goodwill from a third party to offer that Brand to someone who truly, absolutely wants it. Because for one particular customer, that product represents the Golden Hind or the Lost Ark, to everyone else it’s just a product. That third party becomes a hero, but in the process when the ONI DC team delivers, then that customer becomes a disciple.

Now, do any of my friends know where I can find a pair of size 5, Belcloud UGG boots?

Marc Benioff (@Benioff), SalesForce.com’s CEO stood in front of more than 6,000 people in London a few weeks ago and opened our eyes to a new, smarter and more efficient way of working. His articulate presentation style coupled with seamlessly brilliant live product demonstrations showed what is possible using his platform. Benioff in my opinion is not so much a visionary as many would believe but someone that can fully understand and grasp what technology is capable of and then apply it tremendously well to fit the enterprise model.

A social enterprise is an internal social network. Imagine a business version of Facebook with all of your colleagues hooked up. being able to Instant Message, collaborate in real-time on documents and projects and ultimately work a lot smarter. It doesn’t just end there though, imagine creating groups for employees AND groups for customers. Now what you have is a truly collaborative environment to service and support your customers and prospects and make better use of employee time. No more waiting for email or hoping someone will pick up the phone. It takes away the geographic boundaries and massively increases business efficiency.

This isn’t a vision of the future though, it’s a solution that is here right now. Having seen a demo this week of Salesforce.com’s Chatter I was blown away by its capability and just how far it has come it a short space of time. When Benioff realised the power of Facebook style collaboration in the business world he immediately pulled half his entire development team off current projects to focus on Chatter, and what a smart move that was. It gives organisations, groups, customers, employees the ability to ‘follow’ any object that sits within SalesForce. This could be a proposal document, a person, a bid, in fact, any object and it will provide users with real time updates when any changes to the object are made.  What makes it even better is that it’s built on HTML5 which means it renders perfectly on a PC, a laptop, any tablet or smartphone, on any operating system, providing a consistent end user experience, no matter where you are or what device you are using (SalesForce Video).

Companies in my opinion must embrace this Facebook generation or live in fear of being left behind. The world has changed dramatically and the social network has never been more important. You are social, your customers are social, but is your business?

By Gareth Case, ONI Head of Marketing

You see, many of their clients, just like ours, are considering the Cisco UCS Server platform as part of a consolidation and/or virtualisation project but all too often the decision takes forever and no virtualisation or consolidation project ever takes place. His advice was to just make a bet, any bet, it actually didn’t matter which bet but you were never going to win if you never placed the bet in the first place. No sense in checking the lottery numbers if you’ve no ticket in your hand. If you can’t decide to use Cisco UCS servers then stick with the HP one’s you’ve got.

Last month, (or was it longer than that), I claimed that I would be aiming to work almost entirely online, accessing my content from whatever device takes my fancy on any particular day. A number of readers contributed to the ‘debate’, although I hardly think of it as a debate since I didn’t respond to any of them (sorry about that – more about that later), mostly telling me that online was a far too scary place to be. What with the abundance of eastern-european hackers, incompetent cloud service providers and that generally nasty internet – I was destined to lose all my data in some form or other. Fortunately, one of my VMware chums suggested I have a look at Project Octopus and yes I have, and yes it’s perfect.

Now I can tell you all about VMware’s Project Octopus, which I will, but the most significant point this whole episode highlighted to me was that if I hadn’t made such a statement in the first place then my friend would probably have never told me about it. Funny thing is, I didn’t lose any of my data, nor did any of my contacts get subjected to an onslaught of spam and find out about great job opportunities with the finance clearing department of the Somalian Oil Company. Only the other day, my iPhone has got in on the story and asked if I wanted to sync all my pictures, contacts and calendar entries with iCloud… given everything I’ve already said, I could hardly say no could I?

So for those of you still wondering, VMware have announced the beta testing of an project called ‘Octopus’ which is best described as Dropbox using your own data centre as the storage repository. So who’s responsible for the availability of my data, who’s responsible for its security and its backup – me! And that’s as trustworthy as I can get (for me anyhow). Of course there’s a good argument that I don’t want any of that responsibility, nor do I have the time to do any of it – perhaps I really would prefer this delivered as a service in which case the SLAs are very important and yes I would agree with one of my readers that you’d want to read them thoroughly before saying goodbye to your data.

At which point, I must apologise for not replying to any of these comments, you see I don’t get to post my own blogs and as such I don’t get instant notifications of anyone commenting, hence I don’t get to respond directly – that’s another thing I will have to resolve. Now that I’ve embraced Facebook (I’m typing a blog right now, what did you think I was doing?…), Twitter (Gadaffi’s dead, welcome to the new lawless regime…), I’m going to have to take control of my own blogs. For so long I’ve been told by my esteemed marketing colleagues, that the new world, the social media networking world, is where everything is at, where we need to market our wares (did I mention ONI’s Cloud Storage Service?), where I need to ‘get online’, so I’m doing it. I’ve placed my bets and some of them are already starting to pay off. I can’t ever be sure I would have found out about Project Octopus otherwise.

Now let me ask you a question, have you read the iCloud User Agreement yet? All 78
pages?

By Andrew Lawrence, ONI Data Centre Business Practice Manager

It’s true that there were some very good niche email handling products, but there was a lack of demand because you and I, as end customers, couldn’t be bothered to use email for C2B communications. We had to be logged on to our non-portable, desktop home computer to use email and it turned out to be a tedious medium for a communication of any reasonable length. Meanwhile, the low inbound email volumes ensured that many organisations soldiered on with a ‘drop-box’ strategy, which in turn ensured that the level of service was atrocious, reinforcing customer perceptions that it was best to call anyway.

It wasn’t until the development of browser-based services, triggered by the availability of powerful portable devices that created mass-market appeal, that multimedia contact came of age and therefore of interest to a Customer Services Manager or a New Business Director. Moreover, it’s only comparatively recently, with the latest generation of integrated Web 2.0 desktop applications, that contact centres could offer the flexibility and productivity enhancements to attract, retain and develop large scale web-based customer relationships.

But as well as technology enablers, there are new business drivers at work with existing
applications and here’s one that I know you’ll identify with – remote working. This has been a hard sell in some verticals, with resistance from business leaders who cannot be convinced otherwise that agents will spend their time watching Jeremy Kyle instead of working, or that security issues over unauthorised access to sensitive personal data have been resolved. So what are the business drivers affecting investment in remote working strategies?

Well, the question now is, do you want anyone at all to be available for work if we have a repeat of last year’s winter weather? Or shall we just close for business until the roads are gritted and the railways de-iced?

And additional opportunities for remote working exist because both local government and  private sector businesses are obliged to have inclusive employment practices. Just because someone may have mobility issues, it doesn’t mean they can’t drive a headset and a softphone client over a broadband link to bolster occupancy during core hours or to provide cover for the extended hours a business finds difficult to staff. And by the way, they don’t care what the weather’s doing outside the front door.

The trick that some contact centre managers may have missed is that the success of remote
working is not so much about the technology, but more about the people you engage to become remote workers. Look a little further than the star performers who, to be honest, you need in your contact centre to drive best practice and the most suitable candidates for remote working may surprise you.

In my next blog I’ll share my thoughts on some of the enabling technologies that, when adopted, will change the face of the way we do business and also explain how my Mum’s washing machine came to be involved in a cutting edge business experience.

By ONI’s Contact Centre Business Practice 

To his surprise I agreed, but then I asked him when his PA last used a typewriter and the penny dropped. His customers want to buy goods and services, receive marketing material and technical support as before, but in a radically different way. If you can’t service your customers’ needs in the way they want you to, you’ll lose them to the competition – rapidly.

Integrating social media with your Business Communications strategy is much more than just a ‘nice-to-have’. It’s a business de facto and the contact centre’s role in your customer experience management strategy cannot be underestimated. Customers believe that a company’s ability to respond to a problem or request has a greater influence on a quality experience than any other factor, which puts the contact centre at the heart of consistently creating a differentiated customer experience and therefore value-add.

So your operation needs to do more than simply meet last year’s service levels, be efficient or attain an industry average. It must create a distinctive, integrated experience that the customer cannot replicate anywhere else – often called brand loyalty.

So why do we continue to see low satisfaction rates with contact centres? Is it because too many managers are comfortable with their typewriters and are unwilling to accept the new customer contact dynamic?

If you cannot monitor customer dialogues across multiple channels – speech, texts, emails, IM, social media etc and react to them, you’re missing out on vital intelligence that you could use to increase revenue, control costs and enhance your brand.

With the arrival of social searching in Google+ and its recent general availability, the opportunity to appear higher in searches based on positive social media posts and drive traffic towards your website (or indeed the complete reverse) just took a quantum leap forward.

So it’s vital to make social media an integral part of your Business Communications strategy, to strengthen customer relations by capturing the details of what customers and competitors are saying about you, acting promptly and increasing ‘social positivity’. You’ll grow revenues by identifying and maximising cross-sell and upsell opportunities and ultimately drive an improved customer experience by building an accurate view of customers’ behaviour and trends.

Readers of my previous blog will remember that my Mum’s washing machine played a part in a cutting edge business experience and may wonder how that could involve another game-changing technology?

The repair man arrived and after taking the washing machine apart, asked my Mum if he could film the back of it. Still unsure as to how this would fix the old girl (the washing machine, not Mother!), she agreed and he duly performed the repair whilst filming
the various stages with a running commentary and wirelessly uploaded the film
clip to an intranet site.

By adding the repair video clip of an elderly washing machine to the on-line engineering knowledge base, he made this data available to other engineers for streaming if ever required. As a result, the company’s engineers do not carry bulky manuals and can drive smaller vans but carry more spares in the space available, which reduces transport costs whilst improving the company’s green credentials. Now that truly is a cutting-edge business experience!

By ONI’s Contact Centre Business Practice 

Technology has a huge part to play in attracting the best talent to the sector and how it can meet communication expectations of the new generation of tenants. Generation Y, also known as ‘Milliennials’, has like every other generation, been shaped by the events, leaders, developments and trends of its time. The rise of instant communication technologies made possible through use of the internet, such as SMS, IM (Instant Messaging), voice & video applications such as SKYPE and new media used through websites like YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook may explain Generation Y’s reputation for being peer oriented and for seeking instant gratification. What is clear however is that they will have high expectations of the workplace and tools
they use as well as a desire to shape their jobs to fit their lives rather than adapt their lives to the workplace.

In the housing sector specifically there are certain trends that are changing the way organisations need to work. The proliferation of mergers for example, has meant housing associations are often more geographically dispersed than before. A combined focus on reducing operational costs and carbon emissions dictates that excessive travel for face to face meetings is not the solution so there is a need to reduce the importance of these geographical boundaries. New collaborative technologies can create virtual meeting spaces
that allow users to communicate and share content within secure web-driven meeting rooms.

In the same way, the new generation of tenants entering the housing market will have similar demands upon the services they receive from their housing providers. Generation Y are used to and expect instant access to on-demand services via the web and other mediums. In this environment, where competition for housing across the UK has increased, how will any service provider offering services driven by traditional technologies from ‘9 to 5’ survive?

Customer services technologies are today offering choice to the consumer, whether they want to access services on the phone, via email or SMS or via live web chat. Utilising social networking sites are also becoming popular ways for young people to access material and it is an open mind to this type of self service, ‘fast-food’ concept that will determine those organisations that will be successful over the coming years.

By Nick Boon, ONI Housing Account Manager

The idea behind me writing this blog is not to focus on technology specifically, but to address how the business challenges facing social housing can by themselves make the case for a Unified Comms approach.

Over the last few years there has been a c-change in the attitude towards ICT, no longer being a necessary evil but more of a core business concern. ICT is now represented at board level but it is not just IT Directors that are interested in what technology can deliver. The entire Management Team now recognises that technology can have a major impact on business transformation and is a route to improved client satisfaction.

The proliferation and ubiquitous nature of the web has seen technology impact our everyday lives today more than ever. The traditional boundaries of work and home life are being blurred, information and entertainment is converging and new social networking and collaboration tools are driving change in the way we work, socialise and access services more than ever before.

Housing Associations as with any other service centric organisation have to gear their
business to meet these new customer expectations. Unified Communications has the power to enable greater efficiency throughout. An integrated approach with access to information and the tools for work without restriction to location can help enable staff to work and communicate more efficiently but there are some often unexplored areas in which such technology can drive service within the sector.

Unified Communications has a fundamental role to play in helping housing organisations
deliver upon business growth targets, maximise tenant satisfaction, improve business efficiency as well as reduce operating costs. With this in mind it is clear that Unified Comms is much more than network consolidation, it should be a core element of every business strategy enabling housing associations to be agile and flexible enough to deal with the changing world around us, don’t you think?

By Nick Boon, ONI Housing Account Manager

London, 8th June, ONI, the leading Unified Communications specialist has been recognised for their innovative services within the Public Sector.

BT who was responsible for compiling the nominations has awarded ONI “Sales Campaign of the Year Award 2010/11”, for delivering a 5 year multi million pound Wide Area Network solution for a large Social Housing organisation, to help them transform the way they deliver services to their tenants.

ONI has been partners with BT for over 10 years, and is 1 of only 20 partners fully authorised to provide BT services. ONI is an integral part of BT’s multi channel customer engagement strategy working together to offer an alternative way of supplying world class network services.

Phil Cotterill, Head of Public Sector at ONI, comments, “we are delighted to have received this award from BT which has recognised the great importance that we place on working with our Public Sector clients, as well as our ability to offer truly transformational services that help our clients reduce cost, improve tenant satisfaction and deliver more innovate service offerings.”

The award was announced by Sean Fitzpatrick (Ex New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Captain) at the BT Tower during BT’s annual partner conference on 26th May 2011.

Danny Longbottom, General Manager, BT Indirect Partner Sales Channel, said “A tremendous performance from ONI working with BT Indirect Partner Sales and a real pleasure to recognise the key contribution they have made to BT.  We have had a solid start in 2011/12, the opportunities are very exciting and I am looking forward to another successful year with ONI.”