Skybridge Americas
Next Level Call Center Innovation

The communications space is evolving at a faster rate and so are the needs and demands of the customers. The modern customer is aware of their specific needs and expects faster response from service providers. However, most organizations lack adequate resources and skills required to provide consistent support for fluctuating call volumes; they also find it challenging to meet their staffing needs. In this scenario, the question is how do companies reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction in an efficient, quick and secure manner? The answer lies with Skybridge Americas.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Andrew Bosko, CEO at Skybridge Americas discusses how his company’s proven state-of-the-art delivery platform, comprising onshore and near-shore delivery capability, work-at-home and brick-and-mortar solutions, effectively reduce costs and achieve optimal customer satisfaction.

Please provide us an overview of Skybridge Americas.

Skybridge Americas is a business process outsourcing company that provides customer care, sales, technical support, emergency roadside dispatching, back office support, medical diagnostic imaging scheduling across all channels; inbound and outbound voice, email, chat, SMS text, USPS mail and social media.

Our cloud-based, virtual platform delivers a uniform experience for the agents and the consumers in the most stable, secure environment across all contact channels. We provide real, actionable data, thereby facilitating smarter decision making without CapEx Investment or other operational expenses associated with acquiring and maintaining technology.

Our ability to quickly ramp up and down with skilled agents allows our clients to reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction as we deliver the agents they need at the right time. Skybridge’s ‘agents anywhere’ platform allows us to leverage nationwide recruiting pools between Canada and the United States and find the perfect brand agents who match clients’ requirements. As a business process outsourcing company, we promptly solve volume fluctuations, simultaneously managing planned and unplanned peak hours and time consuming operational hours.

What makes Skybridge unique in the industry?

We have been satisfying customers for almost six long decades. The most important factor leading to our success is a thorough understanding that we are in the people business; that everything we do and build around must have our agents as the focal point. The commitment of our highly trained professionals toward instilling ingenuity and security helps mitigate risk and ensures high customer satisfaction rate.

Added to the understanding of the requirements of the clients, we provide support that solves issues during emergencies. We possess sufficient resources to equal the large-scale enterprises yet overreach their expertise.

Skybridge offers revolutionary risk mitigation and agent productivity tool SkyAssist™ Technology, which ensures that valuable information is delivered correctly every time devoid of misquoted rates, statistics, offers or incentives.

Skybridge boasts of a broad clientele in the financial services, healthcare, retail, and travel and hospitality, who require high-end compliance in terms of interactions. We provide PCI level one or HIPAA certification for businesses that interact with customers across flexible mediums. Among our most prestigious clients are Allstate, Publishing Clearing House, Coca-Cola, Ferrari, and AM Retail Group.

Please elaborate on the SkyAssist™ technology.

Imagine a call center agent capable of handling calls accurately without getting exhausted regardless of call volume. Skybridge makes it possible with its state-of-the-art compliance risk mitigation and call center productivity tool, SkyAssist™ technology, The SkyAssist™ platform adheres to the message and agent protocol on every call, with unmatched agent productivity that leads to consistently high customer satisfaction rate. In doing so, it enhances call control and handle-time along with flexibility in staff handling. We have carved out a niche in the industry by working with programs that support SkyAssist™ to avoid penalties on non-compliance.

Could you cite a success story to substantiate your offerings?

Our team recently provided turn-key, emergency roadside assistance on behalf of one of our clients, who catered to automobile manufacturers and rental car companies. The processes involved strenuous durations of rescue calls between stranded motorists and rescue agents, followed by the participation of the towing company and rental car counter across numerous dispatching and CRM platforms. The company had to handle the maximum flow of calls in certain weather fluctuations; calls increased by 500 percent depending on the forecast. Limited resources led to the inefficiency to aid stranded motorists in emergency situations.

Skybridge’s in-house weather desk tracked the weather patterns and forecasts to predict when, where and how many calls were to be expected. Accordingly, we implemented upfront messaging to prioritize calls, thereby directing motorists to alternate resources for immediate assistance as and when required. In addition, we sent GPS information and real-time rescue status to motorists in order to control the stress in the situation. This step was hugely beneficial in reducing callbacks that are likely to block the call queue and prevent other motorists to seek help. We leveraged our trained part-time workforce, remote rescue agents and even our support personnel along with our regular resources to handle the surging call volume.

Our capability to ramp the entire situation fast was a result of our farsighted planning according to the situation. We successfully responded to the issue without degrading the service levels due to the superior rescue agent pool and the extensive training of our staff.

Are there any key strategies followed to stay ahead of the competition?

We focus on clients that have significant brand equity that must be protected and can benefit from our unique technology. Therefore, we do business with clients that have a need to ensure perfect compliance on every call, and or have long handle times and high-quality expectations, and cannot afford to be understaffed when the unexpected occurs. By not deviating from this profile, and taking on programs that need our SkyAssist™ technology to avoid the penalties on non-compliance, we have carved out a unique spot in the industry.