Oliver Lennon on the Launch of Sydneo

Image courtesy of www.quotefancy.com

The start of another chapter.

“Aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain”

This is an old Maori saying I encountered when reading James Kerr’s brilliant book Legacy, which examines what makes the legendary All Blacks so successful. It is a great mantra for any facet of life, be it on the sports field or in the business domain.

This week we announced the launch of Syndeo and as I start on another journey I thought of this saying as I pondered what our clouds or lofty mountains would look like and what challenges we might encounter along the way.

Previously in my career I have worked with some brilliant people and great companies such as Kainos PLC, SpeechStorm and Genesys Inc.  At Syndeo I am joined by an equally amazing group of brilliant people and I am proud to be part of something new and exciting which is revolutionising the world of customer service.   We are applying our wealth of experience and utilising artificial intelligence and machine learning to address the major challenges facing organisations as we move into an era of the “on demand generation” – how to engage and communicate with the Millennials who are the new generation of consumers.

I have worked in the communications and contact centre industry for many years and the vast majority of organisations continue to promote customer service over the voice channel, with over 70% of customer service engagements still undertaken over the telephone. However, the new wave of consumers are “digital natives”.  They engage with each other using their mobile device, specifically social media and messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger or simply through iMessage on Apple’s iOS devices. In the UK alone there are some 20 million digital natives and in the US the figure is greater than 100 million.  Will they go searching for a phone number or an email address when they want to communicate with an organisation? I don’t think they will.

Not only is the mechanism by which they wish to engage their service providers changing, but the complexity (being fuelled by the Internet of Things) of the products and services being purchased by these consumers is increasing exponentially. When they encounter an issue with a product or service they have purchased, their first port of call is often their “digital friends” via one or more messaging platforms.

For any organisation, competition from new market entrants is putting an increasing pressure on customer retention and not delivering customer service to a key customer demographic via the delivery mechanism of their choice is eroding brand loyalty. These organisations are constantly striving to reduce the cost to serve, while increasing customer satisfaction. However, the more complex their product and service offering becomes the more difficult this imperative becomes.

It is our mission at Syndeo to re-define customer communications to meet the needs of the new generation of consumer and dramatically improve relationships between consumers and brands.

We have many more chapters to write, but with the support of amazing colleagues and great customers, partners and investors we are in no doubt that each new chapter will bring excitement, challenges, tears and joy.  But most of all, with a common goal we will revolutionise the world of customer service.

At Syndeo you can rest assured that as a team we will aim for the highest cloud, meet our challenges with zest and celebrate success at every opportunity!

Oliver Lennon

CEO, Syndeo