SafetyCulture

Contact Center Business Phone All-In-One High Tech

SafetyCulture is a global technology company which supports businesses to do their best work every day. Used by over 28,000 organizations, its flagship products, iAuditor and EdApp enable teams to perform checks, train staff, report issues, capture data and communicate fluidly. SafetyCulture has more than 450 employees in four countries and powers over 600 million safety checks per year, approximately 50,000 lessons per day and millions of corrective actions.

"As a company, we have a cloud-first philosophy and so 8x8 fitted well within this. When you have staff distributed around the world as we do, taking advantage of a cloud-based telecommunications service makes complete sense."

Michael Viney, IT Manager, Safety Culture

"As a company, we have a cloud-first philosophy and so 8x8 fitted well within this. When you have staff distributed around the world as we do, taking advantage of a cloud-based telecommunications service makes complete sense."

Michael Viney, IT Manager, Safety Culture

"As a company, we have a cloud-first philosophy and so 8x8 fitted well within this. When you have staff distributed around the world as we do, taking advantage of a cloud-based telecommunications service makes complete sense."

Michael Viney, IT Manager, Safety Culture

"As a company, we have a cloud-first philosophy and so 8x8 fitted well within this. When you have staff distributed around the world as we do, taking advantage of a cloud-based telecommunications service makes complete sense."

Michael Viney, IT Manager, Safety Culture

The Challenge

The key telecommunications challenges faced by SafetyCulture began some years ago before coming to a head in mid-2019.

SafetyCulture IT Manager, Michael Viney, says there was a need to replace the company’s existing cloud phone system which was no longer providing the level of performance and support required by staff and clients.

“The system had become a source of friction within the business,” he says. “Customers could not reliably get in contact with us, and many staff were being forced to use their own personal mobile phones to contact clients and potential clients which is far from an ideal situation.”

“It reached the point where more than 30 percent of our staff IT support requests related to telecommunications and that was when we realised that things had to change.”

The Solution

After carefully evaluating a range of products and services on the market, the SafetyCulture IT team took the decision to deploy 8x8.

“As a company, we have a cloud-first philosophy and so 8x8 fitted well within this,” says Viney. “When you have staff distributed around the world as we do, taking advantage of a cloud-based telecommunications service makes complete sense.”

Viney says 8x8 also clearly met the company’s list of identified requirements. These included performance, flexibility, and service reliability.

“We were also impressed by the fact that 8x8 undertook a complete review of the networking infrastructure we had in place at each of our office locations,” he says. “This led to recommendations on what upgrades we should consider to ensure their platform would run as reliably as possible.”

The Benefits

The biggest 8x8 benefit is one that was not anticipated after the initial six week rollout took place in late 2019. Just three months later, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and SafetyCulture was forced to adopt a work-from-home policy for all staff.

Viney says this rapid shift was only possible because 8x8’s unified communications and contact centre services are cloud based. Staff make and receive calls using softphones on their computers or mobile devices and have access to all the features they had when in the office.

"With 8x8, we no longer require any on-premise infrastructure or handsets for staff at all,” he says. “This means they can work from any location where they have a reliable internet connection and a laptop computer. As a company, this has allowed us to maintain operations and customer service levels even during an unforeseen incident like COVID-19.”

As well as incoming and outgoing voice calls, SafetyCulture staff are using the 8x8 platform for group discussions and chats. Staff members can also use the video conferencing capabilities to stay in touch with colleagues and other team members.

Viney continues, “Thanks to 8x8, it continued to be business-asusual for SafetyCulture throughout 2020 and will be so throughout 2021.”

SafetyCulture is now looking at transitioning some staff back into office-working mode, however this will be a gradual process as COVID-19 conditions evolve during the year.

“Because staff can work in exactly the same way at home as they do in the office, it means that even if we never return to everyone working from the office, there will be no negative impact on our ability to serve our customers,” he says.

Viney says he values the great cultural fit that has become evident between 8x8 and SafetyCulture. “They didn’t just come to us with a standard service or product and expect us to change to suit it. Instead, they took time to understand our particular requirements and built a solution to match—that’s very valuable.