As the world adapts to the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations of all sizes are struggling to manage increased demand while working to keep employees safe. To help navigate these challenges, Genesys® (www.Genesys.com), the global leader in cloud customer experience and contact centre solutions, has launched a new Rapid Response offer to give any organisation free access to Genesys Cloud so they can provide mission-critical support and enable remote teams fast, with deployment in just 48 hours.

In response to COVID-19, more than 700 organisations from all over the world, including Arise-Europe, City of Helsinki, eFinancial, FMI Call Centre, Gleaners Food Bank, Home Credit, JPIMedia, Ly.com, Lenovo, Ping-An Insurance and Tokyo Individualised Educational Institute, Inc., have requested assistance from Genesys to support remote capabilities, shift their geographic operations or manage unexpected surges in customer inquiries. In fact, the Genesys Rapid Response offer has already allowed more than 500,000 contact centre employees to continue serving consumers from the safety of their homes since February. Examples include:

A major financial services company transitioned nearly 10,000 in-office contact centre agents to remote work within days. The company plans to enable another 5,000 to work from home. In addition, the company doubled its record for customer transactions, jumping to 3 million during this period.

A Fortune 50 software company shut down its contact centres in a COVID-19 outbreak area and shifted all calls to other countries. The company updated its IVR and rebalanced its routing to accommodate this change while transitioning thousands of agents around the world to virtual work within days.

A large state government entity was able to convert 3,000 agents to remote work in a single day. It also onboarded 400 new agents in just three days.

Genesys Rapid Response

The company's Rapid Response offer allows organisations to launch a secure cloud contact centre with the fundamental capabilities needed to engage effectively with customers and colleagues from anywhere. This includes support for automation and self-service, voice and email routing, interaction recording and employee collaboration tools. To make the transition easier for employees and supervisors, on-demand training and education is also included. In addition, Genesys is assisting organisations in controlling costs by waiving overage premiums resulting from unexpected spikes in customer inquiries.

"At Genesys, we have a responsibility to help however we can during this difficult time," said Tony Bates, chief executive officer of Genesys. "No matter what challenges organisations face, Genesys is committed to partnering with them to protect their employees, serve consumers and help contain the COVID-19 outbreak. Every action we take to stop the spread matters, but we can't do it alone. Across every function and with support from our partners, the Genesys community is coming together to help organisations through this unprecedented situation."

Broader support for COVID-19 response

The Genesys ecosystem is instrumental in this effort with many providing services and guidance to facilitate business continuity during the COVID-19 crisis. The company is also exploring solutions with Google Cloud and others, as well as implementation partners, including Avtex, ConvergeOne and NTT, Ltd., which are critical in helping expedite deployments of Genesys Cloud. In addition, several Genesys AppFoundry® partners are also extending their free trial period to align with Genesys Rapid Response.

"Genesys is doing more than giving away technology," said Ken Landoline, principal analyst, Customer Engagement, Omdia. "The company is delivering a holistic solution and providing access to a community that delivers services, support, training, guidance and best practices so organisations are truly equipped to help employees and customers through this difficult time. I believe this is right on target and is the best course of action given the complexity of what businesses are up against."

Customer comments on Genesys Rapid Response:

The City of Helsinki partnered with the local Evangelical Lutheran parishes, and many charities, to contact proactively more than 80,000 elderly residents to ensure their well-being amid the COVID-19 crisis. Genesys Cloud serves as the technology foundation for this service and enables 500 volunteers to support these citizens. "The cooperation with Genesys to launch the Helsinki Helpline has already been amazing. In just a couple of days, we launched a fully functioning contact centre and trained our team, including citizen volunteers with many different backgrounds," commented Tiina Hörkkö, director of the Helsinki Helpline, City of Helsinki.

eFinancial, the second largest direct-to-consumer life insurance brokerage in the nation, deployed Genesys Cloud for use by its eSales department three weeks earlier than planned due to COVID-19. "Employees from all three of our call centres are working remotely now and we are maintaining production levels," said Paul Bourdeux, vice president of Information Technology for eFinancial. "Without Genesys Cloud this could have been disastrous. The added investment for the solution has already paid off."

Since mid-March, Gleaners Food Bank has tripled the number of households it is feeding per day. Part of the spike was from individuals requesting food delivery services, which the organisation did not provide previously. Gleaners Food Bank President and Chief Executive Officer John Elliott commented, "Within seven days, we went from not being able to handle the surge of calls to being able to manage them effectively via Genesys Cloud. We now have an automated qualification process so we can identify eligible households and deliver food to those in need."

JPIMedia is one of the largest national, regional and local multimedia organisations in the UK. "We successfully transitioned 450 users to a temporary remote working model within 5 days following government advice. This allows our commercial teams to stay connected with our customers," said Rebekah Avill, head of Commercial Systems at JPIMedia.

Ly.com, China's leading high-tech travel provider of transportation and hotel reservations serving more than 300 million people, has leveraged support from Genesys to ensure its customer service operations during the COVID-19 outbreak holiday period. Yuchi Xiao, CEO of Customers Service Centre of Ly.com, said, "With the help of Genesys, thousands of remote agent services were successfully deployed in only two days. As always, the Genesys China team was standing together with us to overcome challenges and deliver excellent customer experience."

Learn more about Genesys Rapid Response, which is available for any organisation, including existing Genesys customers as well as other businesses, government agencies and non-profits. Local restrictions may apply, and organisations must sign up by April 30, 2020.