Jabra builds global voice support with Zendesk and Amazon Connect

As one of the global market leaders for audio, video, gaming, and hearing solutions, the GN Group offers exceptional solutions to make both life and work sound better. The company’s broad product portfolio spans across three different technologies: medical-grade hearing technology, professional collaboration solutions, and gaming peripherals.

One of the brands within the GN Group, Jabra, has the core strategy of driving innovation and enhancing the customer experience. The recent successful implementation of a new CX voice platform exemplifies this commitment.

Mark Pritchard played a big role in ensuring a proper implementation of the voice platform within Jabra with focus on offering the best possible customer experience. With more than 15 years at GN Group and Jabra, Pritchard has worked across the business in IT, the support organization, and now holds the title of Senior Platforms and Automation Consultant.

Most recently, the team drove an initiative to optimize Jabra’s voice channel. Some top requirements included:

— Customize the solution in-house
— Offer a call-back option
— Call-back functionality covering multiple languages
— Integration with Zendesk

None of these optimizations were possible on the company’s previous platform. Truly optimizing Jabra’s voice channel meant that the team needed a solution that was much more customizable and integrated with Zendesk.

Outsourcing vs. in-house voice development

Looking back at the previous voice solution, Pritchard and team learned a key lesson about CCaaS: if you do not have the capabilities to program it in-house, not only will you have to consistently outsource the work to a third-party, but you’ll also become dependent on that entity for the contact center’s success at scale.

The former voice platform was written in XML and any changes or customizations had to be hired out. Additionally, the solution was on-prem, meaning the company was also incurring costs of having physical servers to run and store its data.

In close collaboration with the IT department, a project was initiated to select a new voice platform. In this process, multiple vendors were thoroughly assessed across a vast list of requirements. Amazon Connect was eventually selected as being considered the best in class based on the company’s needs. Plus, Amazon Connect would simplify and speed up deployment of the company’s voice strategy for CX.

An Amazon Connect and Zendesk mutual partner assisted with the initial integration, building several of the standard workflows that are considered “out of the box” or foundational for Amazon Connect + Zendesk customers.

After establishing the foundational elements, Pritchard leveraged his deep technical expertise to independently master the customization of the Amazon Connect platform. Over the course of three years, he has developed an in-depth understanding of the platform, including its seamless integration with Zendesk – far more sophisticated than previous XML-based systems.

Pritchard is now fully equipped to design, build, and deploy solutions on Amazon Connect, eliminating the need for outsourced development and positioning himself as a key driver of voice innovation within Jabra.

Moving to Amazon Connect has given Jabra a much more robust voice platform and offered a stronger backend than the previous solution.

A call-back solution with natural language support

Throughout Pritchard’s time overseeing Jabra’s voice platform, one key feature had persistently been a priority: implementing a call-back solution. However, it remained technically impossible to implement – until now.

Deploying a call-back solution allows brands to improve customer experience through reduced wait times, mitigate volume spikes during high traffic times, and lower abandonment rates for support calls.

So, when the team became comfortable with Amazon Connect, the next step was to design, build, and launch a global call-back feature. The team customized its voice platform to implement natural language detection and voice match to personalize the customer experience even further.

Now, when a customer calls in and speaks in Italian, the voice bot detects Italian and answers back in Italian.

Today, Jabra’s call-back functionality supports 68 voice prompts for French, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish, Portuguese, and of course, English.

“The call-back feature implementation has been Jabra’s biggest improvement in quite a while, when looking at the customer journey offered over the voice channel,” explains Pritchard.

Delivering personalized voice support

Because integrations work collaboratively, each tool enhances Jabra’s capabilities beyond just voice or text functionalities. Zendesk and Amazon Connect now function as a powerful, reciprocal system, where each platform enriches the other to deliver personalized customer experiences.

The most-used feature of the Amazon Connect Zendesk integration is what Pritchard calls the “screen pop” – when the customer record appears on an incoming call (assuming there is an existing profile stored). “We use this all the time, on almost every single call,” he shares.

And customers have noticed the improved service. In fact, NPS analysis shows that Jabra has experienced a 16.7 percent-point increase in positive sentiment from its CX voice channel since rolling out Amazon Connect. Additionally, the average CSAT score stands at an impressive 93.9 percent.

As voice support continues the AI and automation trajectory, the Jabra team looks forward to designing, building, and launching highly efficient voice solutions that further enhance personalized support for its global customers.

To learn more about the functionality of the Amazon Connect integration with Zendesk, details can be found on the Zendesk Marketplace.