SpareFoot Scales for Success with NewVoiceMedia and Twilio
SpareFoot knows how to multitask. This past April, it served a record number of users looking for storage facilities, matching them with the right price and vendor. In the midst of this season, SpareFoot was planning the next iteration of its call center at the same time. With the help of one of our Twilio Solution Partners, NewVoiceMedia, SpareFoot was able to design, prototype and ship its new call center to handle future growth before its current busy season was over.
Founded in 2009, SpareFoot offers users an easy and intuitive way to find the right storage space, in whatever zipcode they need it, online and in the comfort of their home. SpareFoot also provides storage facility owners across the country an online marketing resource to drive business to their own storage locations. Over the past few years, SpareFoot has been able to expand its business drastically, and in doing so needed a call center that could expand with its business gracefully.
SpareFoot didn’t want to get stuck with a rigid call center in its next busy season. Being unable to handle high per-second call volume, or change up agent call flows easily, would be disastrous for the business. To ensure it had the flexibility it need to be successful in the future, SpareFoot switched its call center vendor to NewVoiceMedia.
Keeping things flexible
SpareFoot’s business is elastic, it grows and shrinks with the seasonality of storage rental business. Joshua Lipton, VP of Technology at SpareFoot wanted a call center that mirrored its business: ready for rapid expansion in the busy times, and easy to manage and staff in slower times. Paying a fixed rate for an on-premise solution didn’t make sense for SpareFoot’s business. Josh had ideas for Twilio-powered features he wanted to build on-top of its call center to make serving customers easier for SpareFoot’s agents. But, it wasn’t easy with his previous call center vendor.
Josh was familiar with Twilio and knew the Twilio could provide the features he wanted to add to his call center. But, his previous vendor made it difficult to integrate solutions like call queuing, tracking, and conferencing easily. This didn’t match with the product roadmap Josh built to support SpareFoot’s booming business.
Build or buy
He then had to make the choice: build or buy. Josh wanted the flexibility of a contact center he built himself, but didn’t want to sacrifice the developer hours it would take to maintain it. To get the flexibility he wanted, and guarantee his developers time could be put to good use, Josh called NewVoiceMedia.
NewVoiceMedia flew into Austin, Texas, SpareFoot’s headquarters, for two days of discussion, building and prototyping. Josh expected that they’d have a skeleton of the new call center he wanted drafted by the end of the two days. He needed NewVoiceMedia to do some heavy lifting: replicating call flows, building call logic, integrating Salesforce information, and more. Within hours of arriving at SpareFoot HQ, NewVoiceMedia replicated SpareFoot’s call flow and had test environments up and running. Josh was pleasantly surprised.
“We had fairly complex call flows, and needed some really cool call routing logic, our complexity is deep,” said Josh “We really thought the hard part was going to be ACE (Amazing Customer Experience team, SpareFoots’ primary support team), but a couple hours later, they had done that as fast as well.”
Building with the ACE team in mind was a critical step. NewVoiceMedia needed to ensure that the ACE team agents have access to the right information about the right customer, so they can cut down on call time and give customers more detailed support. Making sure user information is both secure and easily accessible for agents is a tremendous effort that normally requires multiple teams and iterations. NewVoiceMedia had it figured out in an afternoon.
As a deeply technical company, SpareFoot chose NewVoiceMedia for the efficiency and reliability of its code. Josh remembers watching NewVoiceMedia’s demo of communications through Salesforce, a feature he wanted to ship badly. With Salesforce open on one screen, Josh saw that the instant a call came through, an agent screen pop appeared. The two were completely in sync.
Over the next two days NewVoiceMedia worked with Josh and his team to complete and iterate on the call center SpareFoot is currently running today as they prepare for another busy season. This time, they won’t have to worry about changing call centers!
