5 Star Support: An Interview With Yay.com’s Five Star Support Team

At Yay.com we take customer satisfaction and support seriously. When you’re a customer of ours, we want you to know that we’re here for you no matter your query or the time of day. Our reputation is important to us and we take great pride in the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received on sites like reviews.io and Trustpilot from our customers. To lend a personal touch and break the barrier between you and us, please welcome Jez and Konnor from our customer support team, here to talk about what Yay.com means to them and their approaches to serving our customers.

Here are Jez and Konnor.

Introductions

Q: Hi guys! Tell us a bit about your roles at Yay.com.

Jez: I look after the Customer Support for the business, as well as developing our sales and customer acquisition branches too. This basically means if there is anything that involves customer-contact, it’s my job to make sure we do it right.

Konnor: And I’m a customer support analyst! I’ve been working at Yay.com for the past 2 and a half years.

Q: For each of you, what’s your favourite thing about working here? Konnor, you first.

Konnor: Hard to choose really - I love the unexpected nature of the calls that come my way, from troubleshooting detailed customer network setups to the initial sales enquiries. There’s always something different and always something new to learn!

Jez: Personally I love the ethos that comes with working at Yay.com. Everybody here has the same motivation to grow the business and provide the best possible service to our customers, from customer support agents and development roles all the way up to CEO level. The customer and industry requirements get a heck of a lot of air time here, and we always make sure that everything we do is helping to either develop our product or our customer reputation.

What makes Yay.com special?

Q: What do you think makes the Yay.com team special, or sets you apart from teams at other companies? Jez?

Jez: Everybody at Yay.com is techy in some way - we all have techy backgrounds or a passion for tech and software, which helps to bring an understanding of what we do and what we are trying to achieve that is unparalleled in other companies.

Our Customer Support agents are all technically capable of resolving issues within the same call and are given all the tools and training needed to know as much as possible about the product to help our customers with any queries they have. There are no scripts here!

Konnor: Yeah, in a similar vein I’d say that when you call other companies you quite often get referred to different departments to deal with different issues, but when you call the Yay.com support team anyone can answer any question you have. All our staff are trained on the tech behind what we offer, so it’s a nice feeling to be able to deal with a customer’s issue end-to-end in a single call. Whether it’s about your network or wanting to get signed up, anyone can help.

Why should I switch to Yay.com?

Q: Let’s play devil’s advocate for a second. Let’s say I’m with a household name in telecoms. My phone system works, so why should I switch to Yay.com?

Jez: Yay.com has a few advantages that make us stand out from the crowd, and with us gaining customers from other large providers of business phone systems on a daily basis we know that what we have to offer is what the average business needs. We are one of very few providers with our own platform built entirely in-house. It may actually sound surprising to the general public that this isn’t a common attribute and it gives us a huge advantage over the competition: namely, being able to constantly develop our product in accordance with what our customers want and what the industry lacks.

I’d say as well that our proprietary tech that powers our Mobile and Desktop apps is a major deciding factor, as they often solve common network and firewall issues experienced with other providers without doing anything more than downloading and making a call. It’s a breath of fresh air for our customers to move to a solution that has a Mobile App that actually works 24/7.

Konnor: Yeah, you’re not only getting a higher level of customer service from our team, but you’re also getting a flexible voice platform that is truly unique, which makes it difficult for others to compete. With new features and services constantly being developed and updated, we try to keep innovating as a company and grow along with our customers.

The Yay.com Team's Ethos

Q: Jez, as manager of the customer support team, what would you say the team’s ethos is when it comes to customer service? How do you select and manage new members for the team to ensure they embody this?

Jez: A very important quality that I look for in new Support agents has to be a willingness to go the extra mile. We look for applicants who can demonstrate a passion and drive to provide an unparalleled customer experience and really care about what type of service we are providing.

This is evident in our independent customer reviews on sites like Reviews.co.uk and Trustpilot - I promise that these are all written by genuine customers that have simply been looked after in the way all customers should be - like a VIP.

Q: How about you Konnor? Anything to add?

Konnor: When it comes to our ethos, I’d say it’s that we promote ourselves through our knowledge; the more we can educate and help the customers to understand the system, the better for both parties! Support staff are trained to a level where they can answer any question thrown at them, whether it’s about our hosted voice, domains or even network assistance.

Q: What do you think a customer can expect when they call through to Yay.com with an enquiry? Konnor?

Konnor: The first thing they should notice is a short ring time - we try to get to the phone as soon as a call comes in, which other providers seem to dismiss. The next should be a warm welcome to our service, with a knowledgeable and polite support member answering any and every question about our service.

Jez: Absolutely, they’ll always get through to a friendly and knowledgeable agent, who genuinely cares about solving their issue. This seems like a given, but to come into contact with a Support Team that actually does all three is a rarity in our industry. As I said earlier, there are no scripts here, and every agent is given the tools and training to solve problems themselves, which makes us as dynamic as we can possibly be. In the unlikely event that we can’t immediately fix an issue, resources are diverted internally to make sure the customer is looked after ASAP.

Q: Sounds like you think highly of the level of support you and the team are able to provide. Is there any evidence from customers to reflect this?

Jez: I know this all may sound a bit faked, but I genuinely am the biggest fan of our own service. I’m not the only one though, as we have tonnes of customers reviewing us daily on their experiences they’ve had. Simply check out Reviews.co.uk or TrustPilot to get an idea of what we are doing here, straight from the mouths (or keyboards!) of our own customers. We’ve also got some customer case study videos which help to give an idea of the kinds of applications that can be seen by our customers in different industries.

Our Approach to Tackling Customer Issues

Q: Obviously, issues can and do happen. When you answer the phone to a customer and realise there’s a sensitive or urgent issue, how do you deal with this?

Jez: As much as I’d like to say we offer a flawless service without any issues whatsoever, that wouldn’t be true - there is always room to improve and develop our product and we are constantly doing that behind the scenes. In the short term, our Support Team is trained to quickly identify any urgent issues and escalate them appropriately to the right people to get it solved on our side. There is no needless process or red tape here, which means that our agents are able to quickly report the issues directly to the teams responsible for putting things right, rather than a generic second-level team that may or may not even know the answer themselves. This makes us extremely efficient in how we address concerns raised by our customers.

Konnor: Right, with every call we pick up we aim to resolve any problems swiftly and efficiently - if it’s a problem beyond our support team, it’s quickly delegated to a relevant member of the Yay.com Escalations team to pinpoint and fix. We have the advantage of running our own proprietary platform, so all concerns are addressed in-house with the urgency they deserve.

How We Go The Extra Mile

Q: Have you gone the extra mile for a customer recently that you can remember? What did you do? How did they respond?

Jez: I recently worked with a larger (500+ seat) client based in London, and for their peace of mind arranged to have our onboarding team take over the entire process of upgrading their business phone system - we pre-configured user names and extensions, call routes and numbers days before their phone number migration took place so that their IT folks didn’t have to lift a finger aside from sending over a CSV of names and caller IDs to use. Because the number transfers are all handled by Yay.com, we just sent them the odd email to keep them updated along the way, until the day of the move where everything just worked!

We’ve kept in close contact since then and will be working together on future projects for branches around Europe, so it definitely pays to be as helpful as we are!

Konnor: Recently we had a customer who was having numerous call quality issues with their previous provider - we got them set up on a free trial account, registered the same handset they were using with the other provider and, after a few local network tweaks, we had the HD quality calls we expect on our platform! After we demonstrated that VoIP Providers aren’t all bad, they have since upgraded to a full account with us.

Closing Points

Q: Ok, I’m almost convinced. What bonuses or extras can you or your platform offer me that I still might not be aware of?

Jez: I’ll always enjoy answering this question while working at Yay.com, because the beauty of offering an in-house built product means that my answer is always different as new things are released! At the moment, I’ve been very excited to talk about our upcoming Chat facility, which gives businesses an intuitive and professional, encrypted internal messaging service. We’ve taken inspiration from other household names in business chat solutions and added our own Yay.com twist; a professional but comprehensive chat function that gives businesses the administrative control that is lacking in the industry at the moment.

Konnor: I was actually going to say the same thing! Our platform is as diverse as the wants and needs of our customers, so it’s a very individual thing. Lots of customers love our advanced features or the fact that they improve staff productivity, for example. Our VoIP apps are another common favourite. The tech behind them means that they’re incredibly efficient and reliable, where most VoIP apps from other providers sound like a great idea on paper but just don’t manage to perform to the level that ours does.

Q: Great! Finally, if there’s one lasting message you’d like to leave any prospective customers reading this with, what would it be?

Jez: The one thing I’d say is that you will not find a provider that makes the process easier than we do. With a 30-day rolling contract, a responsive and fully customisable online Dashboard, and a friendly and technical support team that will go to the ends of the earth to make you happy. You’ve really got nothing to lose by giving us a go. Every step of the migration process is made a breeze by our team since each member has done it time and time again, and we’re always looking for new ways to revolutionise our customer experience.

Konnor: Definitely don’t hesitate to give us a call or sign up for a free 14-day trial if you’re even considering VoIP. The 30-day rolling contract makes us a risk-free choice, so even if you decide you don’t want to continue with the service, you can just let us know and cancel your plan - no questions asked. We don’t entrap you into 24month contracts like some do - we want you to stay with us because you love the service! Not because we’ve given you no choice.

This is great - thanks for your time guys. I’m sure this will be really helpful to anyone wondering about the service.

If you’re interested in VoIP or would like to know more about what Yay.com offers, you can sign up for a 14 day free VoIP trial or contact us today.