A Business Leader’s Perspective on Digital Transformation: In Conversation with Alex Lu, CEO of NTT Ltd. China

Cloud has become an increasingly hot topic as more and more organisations are abandoning traditional internet data centres (or IDCs) in favour of the cloud. Modern work arrangements have also becoming increasingly distributed with international offices and remote workers, further fuelling the need for organisations to move processes online. These trends are driving the demand for digital transformation solutions that can deliver outstanding, integrated, seamless and positive customer and employee experiences.

Alex Lu, CEO of NTT Ltd. China, shares how NTT’s partnership with Verint has helped them deliver holistic, high-quality integrated services that meet the technological and experience needs of their global clients.

Q:  Tell us more about your partnership with Verint.

A:  NTT worked with Verint on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and compliance recording in contact centres. Because of the pandemic, many companies have shifted their communications to cloud services like Microsoft Teams.

NTT has many clients in the financial industry that require compliance recordings due to government regulations. Verint’s solution is very popular with our clients for its price-performance ratio and functionality, while also meeting the compliance requirements of government regulatory agencies.

Q: What solutions do you provide for clients in terms of customer service operations?

A: NTT Group is a global digital transformation company, with most of our clients in the manufacturing industry, followed by financial services, retail, and internet enterprises. We often collaborate with clients to provide customised digital infrastructure solutions such as network and data centre services. We also offer a large number of customer engagement solutions, including software.

Q: What are the most common challenges you see with regard to market development and customer service?

A: From our experience working with foreign enterprises in China, we notice two major challenges. The first is how to use the right technologies to migrate their engagement applications smoothly and cost-effectively onto the cloud.

The second is compliance. Foreign enterprises want to enter the Chinese market, and local companies want to expand abroad, but crossing borders comes with unique data privacy challenges. Compliance and security are top priorities for customers, so companies need to have the right partners in each country that are able to ensure requirements for data protection laws and regulations are met.

As an integrated service provider, NTT has the expertise and experience to help our clients overcome these challenges.

Q:  What are your clients’ top business priorities, and how do you help with achieving them?

A:  Their top priority is to eliminate any geographical barriers that prevent them from ensuring projects are delivered smoothly, regardless of country or region. Their second priority is to reduce costs for maximised profits.

NTT has offices and technical resources all over the world, and clients are reassured by the fact that our teams are highly experienced with delivering multinational projects. Our security experts also assist our clients with solving complex security and compliance issues. In addition, we have a great deal of experience in initial project planning and preparation, which means we can provide comprehensive evaluation to advise on the best cost control measures to help our clients ensure no deviations from project delivery timelines.

Q:  What strategies will you adopt in the coming year to achieve your business goals?

A:  We have a three-pronged strategy – first, we intend to help more of our clients with digitalisation so that they can better deliver multinational projects with distributed teams, and migrate all their existing data onto the cloud.

Second, because of the pandemic last year, many companies required their customer service personnel to work from home. We plan to assist our clients with establishing Microsoft Teams as their core communication tool, augmented by value-added functions and applications such as recording and monitoring tools. These include IoT smart terminal solutions with Microsoft Teams as the core.

Third, as of 1 April 2021, we have concentrated our technical resources for project delivery and cooperation at NTT’s major sites, such as in Dalian, India and Thailand. This will help save project delivery costs and improve on our service quality, with different sites cooperating to provide 24-hour service to our clients.

Q:  Prior to this partnership, which other Verint solutions have you or your clients used?

A:  We have clients – an online education platform and a well-known German car manufacturer – that use Verint Speech Analytics, and we have worked closely with many clients on adopting Verint’s AI and Quality Management tools in their operations.

Q:  How does your partnership with Verint bring value to you, your clients, and the market?

A:  NTT and Verint share an extremely valuable partnership of the highest level. There is comprehensive cooperation in domestic sales and solutions, technology and project delivery, and professional services. By leveraging our respective strengths, we have successfully delivered top-notch services to internationally renowned internet enterprises and automobile manufacturers.

As digital transformation gains momentum, more clients have been moving their products and solutions to the cloud. Through our partnership with Verint, we hope to help more clients develop better cross-border cloud strategies that can meet the trends and needs of their local market.

Q:  Why did you choose Verint as a partner?

A:  Having been in the market for over 150 years, innovation has been – and continues to be – the inexhaustible force driving the NTT Group forward. Verint shares our innovative spirit, constantly coming up with new and creative solutions, which is why many of our Fortune 500 clients choose to use Verint’s solutions.

Q:  What digital solutions do your clients currently need?

A:  Most clients are generally looking to adopt AI solutions for their contact centres. Verint’s AI, speech analytics, and voiceprint recognition solutions are best-in-market and meet the strict regulatory and compliance requirements of both governmental agencies and the financial industry.

In addition to traditional licensed solutions, our clients also expect greater flexibility, functionality, and scalability. NTT was top-ranked in Gartner’s “2021 Critical Capabilities Report for Network Services, Global” for our capabilities in ICTI (information and communication technology infrastructure) and cloud communication, making us the perfect candidate for supplying truly modern contact centre as a service (CCaaS) options.

Q:  How do you currently use Verint’s solutions to help your clients improve on service quality? Do these solutions help uncover or solve any business problems?

A:  The manufacturing industry uses Verint Quality Management in their contact centres to help agents upskill. Through customer satisfaction surveys, contact centre calls can be better managed for improved service levels.

Even if agents are working from home, Verint’s solution can still analyse call quality to ensure that customer engagement and satisfaction remain high. Verint Quality Management has helped reduce customer complaints and made service processes smoother for our clients.

Q:  What other customer experience (CX) advantages does Verint’s solution provide?

A:  Using speech analytics, contact centres can convert voice into text for better analysis to uncover the most effective sales or communications tactics based on how their most successful agents or salespeople interact with customers. This insight can be used as examples of great service to inspire new recruits, train other agents, boost team morale, and reduce employee turnover.

Q:  Verint recently launched its Engagement Data Management (EDM) solution. This is a unique Open Cloud Platform solution that integrates all engagement data sources for the entire enterprise. What is your opinion on the potential of this solution and what added value can it bring to your clients?

A:  Engagement data is highly valuable. With Verint EDM, our clients can analyse the content of their omnichannel customer communications, feedback, and exchanges according to an internal CX framework to better understand their customers’ behaviour.

Which customers are most likely to convert? Which are more likely to complain? What information do customers pay attention to on the corporate website before making a purchase? What are the most frequently asked questions on the chatbot?

Through meaningful analysis of engagement data, our clients can better understand their customers, improve the quality of their customer service, better handle disputes, and grow their sales.