Optimove transforms communication and customer experience with cloud technology

Have you ever moved out of an old apartment and into a new space? Uplifting your life and everything you own is rarely easy—and in fact, it often causes people a lot of stress. Just ask Laila Ali, office manager and co-owner of Optimove.

"Moving is one of the most stressful things you can go through in your life, and I don't think you need to make it any more stressful,” she explained. “A lot of people think they can do it if they have a truck and some friends, but that's where people suffer really bad experiences.”

Optimove isn’t your ordinary furniture removal business. As one of Australia’s foremost red carpet removal companies, Laila and her husband—not to mention a team of dedicated employees—aim to go the extra mile. How? Through white-glove service and an exceptional customer experience.

"We try to provide a positive, stress-free professional service,” she said. “Everyone's had a bad moving experience and we want to provide a service that's consistently of the highest quality."

Of course, that’s not always easy. Going above and beyond requires constant communication, seamless collaboration, and a whole lot of training. Luckily, that’s why Laila chose the Webex and Nexgen: to help her staff make good on their promise to offer superior service at incredible value.

Let’s explore how this partnership started and how Optimove is leveraging Webex to increase productivity and streamline customer experience.

It’s hard to overstate just how chaotic a move can be, even for a removal company like Optimove. Migrating from one office to another is a difficult task and can be especially disruptive for a business that relies so heavily on reliable phone service.

“We were located in the west end of Brisbane, where you could only get service through another provider on copper cabling,” Laila explained. “We had moved offices and upgraded a couple of times over the last few years, and every time was an absolute nightmare. We lost so much business because there were times when our phone lines were literally down for a month.”

Hoping to maintain continuity during the outage, she routed all business traffic onto mobile phones. However, this meant they could only receive one call at a time. As Laila put it, “When you’re getting a few hundred calls a day, mobile just doesn’t cut it.”

So, she began looking for a new telephony solution. “I was quite skeptical at first,” Laila admitted. “I remember looking at many different VoIP services many years ago. I just didn't want people not getting the quality connection. It's a bad look when a call drops out or can't get through while you're explaining the terms and conditions."

Aside from quality and reliability, Optimove also valued the ability to record calls and analyze their transcripts. According to Laila, call recordings are a big priority for two reasons:

1. Quality assurance: They can ensure that employees explain services to customers clearly and effectively.
2. Training: Recordings allow Optimove to train and retrain staff by understanding their performance and where they can improve.

Unfortunately, Optimove’s previous phone system was difficult to navigate. It also wasn’t hybrid-work friendly, making it challenging to operate outside of the office.

Laila considered all her options, hoping to find a worthy replacement. She partnered with Nexgen—one of Australia's leading telecommunications carriers—to ensure she made the right decision.

"We're constantly upskilling our staff,” she added, “whether it be on the trucks, in the house, or on the phones."

Partnering with Nexgen made all the difference, she explained. Juliana Bassous, Installation Project Manager at Nexgen, was very helpful throughout the whole process. With her support, Laila could evaluate each vendor and understand whether or not they met Optimove's needs.

“Honestly, Nexgen saved the business in so many different ways,” she said.

When Optimove first partnered with Nexgen, the two worked together to install an on-premise solution.

"As a mother, Laila has more priorities than just coming to work," Juliana added. "However, she had to go into the office.”

Two years later, Laila contacted Juliana and said Optimove would soon move into a new office with a better internet connection. Eager to help, Nexgen suggested she move to Webex Calling, a cloud-based telephony platform.

"Now, she can access everything," Juliana said. "Any information she needs is in the palm of her hand; she can see it anytime she wants."

Nexgen set Laila up with a free trial. This allowed her to take Webex for a test drive and see what it could really do.

"Other products are quite complex and you don't get half the features because you don't know how they work,” she claimed. “But I found Webex to be really user-friendly and easy to set up and install."

Since the initial implementation, Optimove has embraced the Webex Suite and never looked back. In fact, here’s what Laila had to say about the experience so far:

“It's been phenomenal," she said. "I will recommend it to everybody. Nexgen made it so seamless. We had zero downtime, which I've never experienced, and I'm connected to everybody. I'm receiving every call that comes through the office as we speak."

Laila especially loves the fact that users can log in to Webex on so many different devices. “We’re not tied to our desks,” she explained. "It's allowing us free movement. For example, if someone had to step out of the office, they could easily transfer between devices. Anywhere they go, their phones are still with them, and we can still communicate."

Another key benefit for Optimove has been the ability to access call analytics through Webex Control Hub . According to Laila, Control Hub empowers her to objectively look at metrics and help employees understand how they can improve performance—and in turn, the customer experience.

"It's really good to have that data accessible,” she said. “Employees can log in and see for themselves whether or not they're on track. They can go back and look at conversations where they didn't do the best and see what can be changed or done better."

Optimove has always embraced hybrid work, but now they're taking it to a new level with Webex. "In terms of being able to see what's actually happening in the office while working from home, it saves us a wealth of time," Laila explained. "It makes things so much easier and we can connect to our staff in a much more streamlined way."

Now, whether she’s traveling internationally or has the day off, Laila can simply look at her phone and see key analytics in the Webex App or Webex Control Hub.

"I can see how many calls there's been, I can listen to recordings, and I can see what's going on," she said. "We didn't have that much information at our fingertips before. Being able to do that from anywhere you are in the world is huge."

As for the customer's experience, Webex Calling has also made a positive impact by enabling Optimove to receive calls at all hours of the day. Previously, Laila may have missed issues arising late at night or outside normal business hours.

"Being freely accessible to people is a massive boost for the business. Although we don’t advertise it, we have 24-hour access to our customers,” she said. “If I get a call at 1 a.m., I know there's something seriously wrong. So, being able to get on top of those situations and problem solve right at the get-go as soon as it happens is huge for customers, too."

Of course, availability is the best ability when it comes to telephony. Companies like Optimove need reliable, 24/7 service in case of an emergency, or at the very least, to maintain business as usual. Here’s the good news:

“We've had zero downtime since going with Webex," Laila said. "And I mean literally zero."

Optimove worked with Nexgen to create a workflow and failback options to ensure its phone service would always remain operational. Even if primary internet connections go down, the phone lines stay up because they’re able to use the Webex App as if they were using a standard desk phone.

"Having that backup system in place has been phenomenal,” she added. “We've had absolute nightmares in the past when we lost significant amounts of business if downtime occurred. We probably saved about 40 or 50 bookings, and when you convert that to dollars, it becomes quite significant."

And the best part? There was virtually no learning curve. According to Laila, she’s been able to leverage Webex to her advantage without skipping a beat.

"I honestly didn't expect it to be so easy," she admitted. "It's so natural for me to just use my phone, dial from the Webex App, and contact customers without worrying about my personal number ringing off the hook or if the call will go through."

Laila and Optimove are looking forward to the future. With hopes of expanding operations, she says they will probably open a second location in Sydney.

“Webex and Nexgen are going to be so integral to that, because we obviously can only be in one place at a time,” Laila said. “However, with the use of Webex, I feel like I'm able to split myself multiple times. We can be wherever we want to be, so we definitely will continue using it as we grow across multiple locations."

Get in touch with our team today to learn more about how Webex can improve collaboration and customer experience at your organization.