Interstate Batteries Powers Up Internal and External Communications with Vonage

Interstate Batteries is powered by a distributor network of 300 wholesale warehouses and backed up by more than 200,000 dealers around the world as well as 200 All Battery Center franchise stores. Every member of the Interstate Batteries team is guided by a set of common values and committed to delivering top-quality products, business innovations and consistently reliable service.

To meet this lofty goal, Interstate Batteries relies on Vonage Business Communications (VBC) for a flexible, unified communications experience for their employees, and on Vonage Contact Center (VCC), seamlessly integrated with ServiceNow, for increased productivity and personalized, intelligent customer connections. With Vonage, Interstate Batteries was able to strategically build internal and external communications workflows that met its needs and integrated with existing applications, gathering all the relevant customer history and information into one single view - all in service of creating exceptional experiences for both customers and employees.

Remote Work, Fully Charged

Prior to making the shift to Vonage Business Communications and the cloud, Interstate Batteries leveraged a legacy on premise solution for their unified communications - a solution that did not provide the kind of innovation and agility that it needed to support employees, both now and in the future. 

“As we were thinking about moving to the cloud, we reached out to the Vonage team for a proof of concept,” remembers Mike Day, System Engineer/Telecom Specialist, Interstate Batteries . “The Vonage team was wonderful and responsive, really taking the time to show us all of the benefits of VBC. We made the switch because we loved the flexibility and cost effectiveness of a solution without hardware, and because we knew that using VBC would allow us to continuously innovate and improve our communications moving forward.”  

With implementation support from Vonage’s partner Flair Data Systems, VBC deployment at Interstate Batteries finished in early March 2020 - just as the company was making the decision to shut down its in-person offices for the health and safety of the team. Because VBC is fully programmable and purpose-built from the Vonage Communications Platform (VPC), it enables companies like Interstate Batteries to transform how they communicate and operate from the office or anywhere, providing enormous flexibility and ensuring business continuity. 

“Our team was able to pivot right in the middle of a world pandemic, changing where they are, what they do, and Vonage was a part of that,” said Day. “If we had stayed with our legacy provider, we would have had a big problem and likely several weeks of lost productivity. Because we had moved to the cloud and to VBC, we were able to quickly and painlessly make the shift to remote work, and where other companies were having a difficult time, we were able to keep moving forward without missing a beat, and with all 600+ of our employees safe and secure.” 

With the ability to answer work calls from any device, and to collaborate with colleagues anywhere using video collaboration solution Vonage Meetings, VBC has given Interstate Batteries the opportunity to power its employees so they don’t have to waste time focusing on the little things and how technology interacts. Instead they can focus on what matters - doing their best work and providing memorable, meaningful customer experiences.

Seamless Integrations Lead to Long-Lasting Customer Satisfaction

A few months into its relationship with Vonage, Interstate Batteries realized that its customer care center solution was lacking. The 15-person customer care team needed a product that was more robust, one that could provide more control over how and when they connected with customers, as well as intelligent features like skills routing. Additionally, the company wanted a solution that would integrate seamlessly with their existing ServiceNow CRM to create a simple, automated workflow for the agents. VCC was the answer. 

“Since we had such a positive experience moving to VBC, we reached out to Vonage to learn more about what Vonage Contact Center could do for us,” stated Day. “Our agents loved the enhanced capabilities, the integration with ServiceNow, and all the information that was now at their fingertips. Making the change is usually a 6-8 week process, but our team worked with Vonage engineers to get everything ready for our agents in just three weeks.”

Vonage Contact Center for ServiceNow enables organizations like Interstate Batteries to drive external and internal customer satisfaction, helps agents keep vital customer data at their fingertips without needing to open another app, and offers an easy-to-use interface with powerful key performance metrics, personalization, and productivity features. When a customer calls in, the agent gets all of the information they need, right at their fingertips with the screenpop feature, and the customer history is streamlined and available at a moment’s notice. Performance metrics and reporting capabilities offer managers the ability to monitor agent performance, train new team members, and ensure that every customer is getting top-tier Interstate Batteries service.

“We are absolutely seeing benefits already, from enhanced connections to our customers thanks to personalization, to the increased productivity and time-saving aspects of integrating VCC with ServiceNow,” declared Day.  “Leveraging Vonage for both unified communications and contact center allows us to provide the personal and dependable level of service that our customers expect, while also giving our employees the tools for a seamlessly integrated, contextual workflow - no matter where they are located.” 

Discover how Vonage unified communications and contact center solutions together can transform how your business communicates and operates from the office or anywhere, providing enormous flexibility and ensuring business continuity.