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Welcome to Inside the Win. We’ll break down real world wins, showing you exactly how strategic partnership with our experts empowers you to tackle your most ambitious opportunities with confidence. Let’s jump in.
What is up, everyone? I am Sam Nelson, VP of CX and AI here at Telarus, and we are back with the CX edition of Inside the Win. Coming back to us is Meagan Thai, our CX and AI solution architect on the west.
Meagan, let’s go ahead and just dive right into a win.
Hi, Sam. Yes. So what was top of mind was a win that happened in December, so last quarter. But what stood out for me here is when I’m looking back on all the notes that I’ve taken, because I love taking notes, This took almost two years to close.
We didn’t anticipate that when we first started speaking with this customer. So this came to me from a a TA in the Pacific Northwest I’ve worked with for many years, and this is a bank. It’s a regional bank. So not a credit union, but a small regional bank here in the Pacific Northwest.
They had almost six hundred employees, of which almost two hundred were part of the call center. Everyone was on ShoreTel. Right? Some of the biggest pain points other than it being a legacy PBX Was that customers were on hold forever.
And we hear this all the time. Why are my customers on hold forever? We need more visibility into their journey.
Where is this happening? Are they really on hold? Are they getting transferred? Are they being disconnected?
So that was a big pain point, and they need a robust reporting. Now, originally, they told us, we want one vendor. We want a vendor that can do it all. And by the way, we need integration to Teams.
Do you have anything like a call center, contact center that can live within Teams? So that was a challenge, natively in Teams. Plus, we need some integrations to our Fiserv DNA, which is not the easiest thing to integrate with. So having that direction of let’s find one vendor that can do all of this, we want a specific route, brought in a few different vendors.
And then in months and maybe a year into the opportunity, the client says, actually, we changed our mind. We want two different vendors now. We wanna break it up. So we had a pivot.
Like, well, that changes everything. And so but but, again, it it we had to focus really on on what the requirements are, the needs. And so we brought in another specific vendor that catered really to the finance industry, which was a an amazing fit. And if we had known it was separate from the get go, we would have brought them in, right, from the get get go.
So we had many, many months of demos, and then they wanted to do POC. So we then had to help them figure out what are the test criteria. You can’t just do a POC and said, does it sound good? You have to have specific items that you can either judge as a pass or fail in order to call that POC either a success or failure, correct, to move forward. So they did end up with doing some POCs last summer, and then lo and behold, by mid December thankfully, not on the very last day as per usual, but by mid December, they were able to sign with two different vendors.
And the total MRC, which is kinda funny, but each vendor represented about seven thousand and seventy five hundred in MRR. So we’re looking at a total of fifteen k MRR for the entire solution across two different vendors. Now that may not sound like a lot, but I can tell you it’s one of the bigger ones that I’ve helped this specific TA with. So I think it was a great win for him and the fact that we did so much, so much pivoting, so much hand holding throughout this whole process. It was a really, really big win for everyone.
So I was really happy to hear that that happened, and and they’re going through deployment now, and everything’s going great.
But I think it’s just a testament to RTA really having the patience to be in there the entire way, being able to pivot as needed.
And I think you’re bringing me in when needed to say, hey. Let’s talk about best practices. Let’s level set with this customer. Let’s educate them further so that we can help guide them down that path.
Because the other challenge we had was we’re going up another going up against with another TA that we were were not aware of who they were, and that TA was representing two other, solutions. So we knew we couldn’t we couldn’t represent those solutions, but we had to position our recommendations as the better options, right, to get that way. So there was a lot of, you know, dancing around, but I think at the end of the day, it all came down to being there for the customer. And that’s what our TA did, was was there for the customer, helping through the entire process.
And and ultimately, you know, guided them to the to to the correct options, I think, you know, for our win. Yeah. So that that’s one that really stuck out in my mind.
That’s awesome. This is a fantastic win. And I love wins like this because even though it took some time, we ended up doing what was ultimately right for the customer. It sounds like we actually pivoted to bring in the best of breed to address the customer’s situation, and it just makes the TA look even better.
Right? It’s, hey, we we, you know, we fought it out for a couple years, but we ended up getting you in the right solution. I’m gonna end on this, because I think there’s a lot of confusion out there around what’s the difference between, like, a bank versus a credit union. If had to kind of summarize that for our technology advisers, what would you say are some key differences there?
Yeah. I think what what I hear is in the credit union space, and I used to be a member for a short time at one point, but they’re very much we’re member owned. It’s almost like a very small family owned community, and they refer to their customers as members. I think in that environment, it’s a little bit more simple.
I mean, there’s still those integrations that you have to consider, but it’s different than a bank. And the regional bank that we work with is also different than those big banks that you hear about. Right? Like the BMAs and Wells Fargo’s and whatnot.
But I think in the bank environment, they can they call them customers. There’s some authentication that needs to happen, but there’s a lot more moving pieces and parts that you need to integrate into.
I think, bigger security concerns. Although, you know, in the credit union, you still have the security concerns, but there’s just so much more in a bank environment versus a credit union that by the way, if you ever talk to a credit union and call them a bank or vice versa, they they’re not happy about that. So just be really careful. You know, really understand what they are because there are some differences in how they function, in their client base and whatnot. Yeah.
Great tips. Great tips, Meagan. Well, thank you for the time.
Folks, you heard it directly from Meagan. Right? Engage us early. Engage us often. Leverage our expertise to help you do the right thing for the customer, and we will see you on our next episode of Inside the Win.
Thanks, Sam.