Choose your path to differentiated customer experiences with Terazo

Choose your path to differentiated customer experiences with Terazo

Migrating from an on-premise contact center solution to a cloud based one such as Twilio Flex comes with significant upsides but a fair number of questions, including:

• Should you rip and replace and start from scratch?
• Will there be any downtime for your customers?
• How can you train your employees on a new platform with minimum interruption?

Sometimes ripping and replacing is just not realistic for businesses with customers who depend on their critical services.

That’s where Terazo and Twilio can help.

Terazo is a Twilio Gold Consulting Partner, meaning Terazo builds upon Twilio’s comprehensive suite of contact center, customer engagement, and communications software to create impactful experiences across industries.

Together, these businesses offer customers tailored support options for migrating from an on-premise solution to a cloud contact center solution at their own pace with a custom roadmap designed to support each customer’s needs and goals.

Here’s how.

Terazo’s incremental migration approach

211 Maryland, a nonprofit organization that provides health and human service referrals to residents in Maryland, is one example of an organization whose journey to the cloud was incremental.

With a 150% increase in calls during the COVID-19 pandemic, 211 Maryland saw a new opportunity to help those in need and launched the Health Check Program, built with Twilio’s SMS technology and Twilio’s Voice API.

Then, in 2021, Terazo built and launched an online resource lookup database and an API for 211 Maryland, which led to even more opportunities.

Finally, the success with SMS and Voice led to a proof of concept that integrates Twilio Flex’s contact center technology and Twilio Segment’s customer data platform capabilities into 211 Maryland’s Outpatient Care Program. This program aims to enable hospitals to create referrals for outpatients in need of resources for substance use disorders, intellectual disorders, developmental disorders, and mental health conditions.

Check out the demo below of what the future of 211 Health Check could look like once Flex and Segment are implemented.

Mike Blakeney is Terazo’s Senior Director of Solution Architecture. He said Terazo’s solutions journey path for customers is based on Gartner’s Five-Layer CPaaS Architecture, which presents different architectural layers for the contact center platform as a service, as seen below. The journey to cutting-edge customer engagement with Twilio is not a destination, but rather an iterative journey, according to Blakeney.

“Building solutions can be complex and requires a clear understanding of your journey,” Blakeney said. “We approach this by building and designing architectures that introduce complexity incrementally rather than just deploying a single complex design.”

Terazo’s solution approach

The other approach Terazo offers is what they call the solution approach, ideal for organizations that want to jump right in with Flex instead of working up to it incrementally.

That’s the case for T Bank, which went with Terazo’s solution approach.

This financial institution, which has more than $17 billion in assets, wanted to build a platform that provided credit cards as a service for its customers. As a large organization with a long history in the banking industry, T Bank knew using Twilio Flex would help them drive more sophisticated outcomes.

“The challenge was the need to use lots of different systems,” Blakeney said. “They decided to go straight into Flex and integrate it with ZenDesk along with their other API platforms to bring everything under a single user interface [UI] for agents.”

After integrating Flex, T Bank saw the following results:

• 50% faster time to market
• Unified white label agent dashboard
• Ready for customer onboarding and production launch in 6 months

“With the Flex platform, we were able to have a single pane of glass for their credit card as a service program and completely reskinned the Flex UI, providing a branded and seamless experience for agents and customers,” Blakeney said.

Helping customers build custom solutions quickly with Twilio and Terzo

“Modernizing without ripping and replacing, along with quickly validating ideas, are real challenges, no matter which journey you take,” Blakeney said. “We recognize the need to reduce this friction of the jump [to Flex] for our customers.”

That’s why Terazo created Kickstarters, tailored bundle solutions that help customers build out the capabilities they need more quickly and efficiently.

With their Kickstarters, Terazo aims to make it easier for businesses to build the Twilio solutions they need to find success in their unique business environments.

“We get you started on Flex with a robust preset bundle of features that allow you to optimize value immediately, creating more customer stickiness and retention and giving you the platform to grow and reach new customers,” said Amee Mungo, Terazo Chief Strategy Officer.

Terazo then helps businesses imagine new opportunities and develop innovative solutions, building on the success of their Kickstarter experience.

“Today's digitally enabled customers demand and expect personalized content via omnichannel communications,” Mungo said. “This requires a new level of agility and sophistication for today's businesses to not only meet and communicate with customers where they are, but predict their most important needs and/or their propensity to learn, spend and share.”