UJET’s customer service platform is cloud native and brings smart-phone features to call center agents.
Image: UJET

Anand Janefalkar, CEO and founder of UJET, wants to take the frustration out of customer service calls by erasing the need for customers to share the same information over and over.

The company used persona-based design to make life easier for customer service agents as well. Janefalkar said that UJET’s technology disappears in the background for call center agents using the platform.

“Our mobile SDK sits inside the company’s app because customers don’t want to download a separate app for support,” he said. “You don’t win customers by asking them to completely change their behavior.”

SEE: Top cloud providers in 2020: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, hybrid, SaaS players (TechRepublic)

UJET’s customer service platform is cloud-native and the company does not support any on-prem installation. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the company moved 35,000 agents and then helped Instacart expand its operations with a single tenant cloud instance with more than 22,000 agents. Call center agents use a browser to connect to UJET’s platform.

Agents have a unified view of all the channels a customer can use to contact the company that sits within their CRM.

“The main theme for the agent persona is to reduce the cognitive distance between the agent and the issue the customer is having,” he said.

Persona-based design is based on detailed descriptions of specific users of a particular product. This profile includes behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and the environment in which a persona operates. The goal is to understand a user’s motivations, concerns, and expectations and use this context in the product design.

The platform uses both visual and audible cues for the agents and presents all the relevant customer information to the agent when the call starts, including the entry point for the call–phone, app, or website.

“It takes away the first minute and a half of frustration and starts the conversation on the right foot,” he said.

One of UJET’s 11 patents covers agent-initiated actions. This means a customer service rep can request a screenshot or a video from the customer or use face recognition or a fingerprint to verify the identity of the person on the phone.

“This is a one-click method of attaining accurate information in an automated manner,” he said.

Janefalkar said some companies making the move to the cloud have discovered that they are using a cloud wrapper for on-prem technology–progress, but not an enhancement, as he describes it.

Addressing security first

Janefalkar sees three new realizations driven by the coronavirus pandemic influencing technology in the customer service industry:

  1. Business continuity planning is no longer just a checkbox
  2. Remote teams are here to stay and on-prem folks have to face that reality
  3. Weak or limited security protocols can limit innovation

Janefalkar used the example of delivering products to customers when going to the retail store is not an option.

“If the system is not secure, you cannot have a prescription delivery service using a particular provider without SOC 2 and GDPR,” he said of the auditing and data requirements.

UJET processes communication in real time and encrypts the data in transit and at rest. The company does not store call recordings for customers. UJET clients take care of that responsibility.

“This gives the chief security officer peace of mind because this approach adheres with all the processes they have already approved,” Janefalkar said. “We try to leverage what the security team has already put in place as much as possible.”

Also, because UJET’s application runs inside a company’s existing application, there is no expansion of the threat landscape.

Janefalkar said that he sees new business opportunities in supporting customer support for IoT devices as well as adding contextual and diagnostic information to tech support providers. UJET has more than 100 employees and just secured $55 million in Series C funding.

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