Cloud Communications Enable Market Expansion for Learning People

Learning People provides advice about careers in the technology sector and online career-ready education, specializing in cyber security, coding, IT, project management, UX and digital marketing. Its consultants, based across the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, are specialists at assessing career requirements and curating online training to provide individually tailored packages for students who are supported through their training by a student-care team based in Dublin, Ireland and Christchurch, New Zealand. Learning People has enrolled over 35,000 students globally, many of whom have secured careers within the technology sector as a result of its education and career support.

Operational Agility Required

Learning People generates approximately 14,000 new global enquiries per month with most new training enquiries received via its website or social media. Traditionally, consultants would respond by phone using hard-phone handsets located on a desk in one of the company’s physical office locations. Prior to spring 2020, Learning People had no remote working capability, which meant that when stay-at-home guidelines came into play, it was not operationally set up for successful business continuity.

Andy Winstanley, Head of Operations at Learning People, explains: “Our legacy phone system worked fine as far as it went but it wasn’t agile. Forwarding a call to a mobile phone was as clever as it got. We were considering hybrid options comprising IP with some desk-phones when we rapidly had to find a remote working solution due to the pandemic."

Seeking a Solution for Growth

Like so many other businesses under pressure to quickly find a ‘good enough’ remote working solution, Learning People settled on Zoom to do video conferencing and phone calls. The good news was that its consultants were able to continue working, which was important at a time when so many people were losing their jobs and turned to online training. However, Learning People discovered that experiences matter and to provide the best employee and customer experience possible beyond the pandemic, it needed a more flexible and feature-rich unified communications solution to support the new way of working and its plans for future growth.

The services economy has evolved into an experience economy where what matters to people is how you make them feel. The reality is that traditional customer service, with its emphasis on communication channels, is no longer enough. To successfully compete in this economy, businesses must deliver always-on experiences and be prepared for the unplanned.

Keeping On Top of KPIs

Learning People found that having become familiar with using soft-phones for the duration of the work-from-home period, its earlier hesitancy over losing desk-phones had dissipated and it was ready to research a cloud solution. It chose Avaya Cloud Office on the Avaya OneCloud UCaaS platform to support  the next phase in its evolution and ensure it would always be operationally capable in the face of unexpected events.

“We chose Avaya Cloud Office with some Avaya IP handsets to enable us to easily pause recording a call if privacy is required,” says Andy Winstanley. “In our opinion, at the time, Zoom had too many restrictions in terms of its backend functionality. Avaya OneCloud UCaaS has the analytics, dashboards, live visibility, and reporting capacity to help move us from pure work-from-anywhere capability to the next step. We have some aggressive expansion plans and are now set-up and supported to be able to pursue them.”

Lighting the Future

To date, Learning People has rolled-out the Avaya OneCloud UCaaS solution to one hundred users – 85 in the UK and 15 at its head office in Dublin, Ireland, as well as to some remote workers. It has enabled the company to break the traditional 9-to-5 mold for working hours, empowering employees to work at hours that suit them or suit the students requesting assistance. If employees have an internet connection, they can work remotely but still fulfil the needs of students.

Learning People has also been able to integrate Avaya Cloud Office with its Zoho CRM system. This means that in addition to one app enabling calls, messaging, meetings, and collaboration between its consultants and student care teams and existing and potential students, the company has been empowered to customize its own cloud unified communications experience for its employees and customers.

Avaya Cloud Office provides analytics and reporting to enable measurement of number of outbound calls and talk time, which helps consultants hit their KPIs for student enrollment, which is a critical business indicator. The student care team in Dublin experiences a faster resolution of student issues if they can be dealt with over the phone, so this is also a useful metric to keep an eye on. Andy runs reports twice a day, to keep aware of what is happening.

“When we were using Zoom, everything was dark. Now I have visibility and can see the data I need to find the answers. I’m able to see where the peaks come and do capacity planning to ensure staff levels are appropriate,” says Andy Winstanley. “Everything’s in one place and Avaya technical support has been fast to respond and first class, which has not always been my experience with other companies.”

Expansion Ahead

Having Avaya Cloud Office has already enabled Learning People to expand into new markets. In June 2021, the company opened a small office in France and is finding having an internal messaging and group chat capability very helpful with remote employees.

“From an operational point of view, everything was set up very quickly and the new office was ready in days. Onboarding new consultants with Avaya Cloud Office was very simple and took minutes,” says Andy Winstanley. “We are able to use multiple phone numbers, which are our own, and at local rate, which the finance department likes for cost efficiency, and consultants like as it makes a huge difference to pick-up rates. People are much more likely to answer a call if they can see it’s a local number.”.

Phase two of its current expansion project will see Learning People set up Avaya Cloud Office in its New Zealand and Australia operations, extending the benefits of Avaya OneCloud UCaaS to all its operations worldwide. “Knowing how easy it is to set-up, we are confident that Avaya can support our aggressive expansion plans,” says Andy Winstanley.