Why Altice switched messaging platforms: addressing flexibility, access, and support
Delivering a seamless digital customer experience is no small task—especially when existing platforms fall short. From limited automation capabilities to challenges with accessibility and support, organizations often encounter roadblocks that hinder both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. When these gaps become too significant, making a platform transition becomes necessary.
In this first installment of our two-part series based on a discussion between Melissa Price, VP of Customer Experience for Digital Self-Serve at Altice and Justin Mulhearn, Head of Solutions Engineering at ASAPP, we explore the realities of switching messaging platforms. They share firsthand insights into the key pain points that led Altice to make a change, the biggest hurdles organizations face in these transitions, and how to approach the decision-making process strategically.
Read Part 2: Lessons learned from Altice’s successful digital messaging platform switch
* Minor edits have been made to the transcript for clarity and readability.
Switching digital messaging platforms: Altice’s experience
Nick (moderator): Melisa, you made the switch a little over a year ago. You were using another platform, and I understand Altice had some issues with it. I'd love to hear about some of the recurring frustrations you faced—or were there a handful of last straws that made you say, ‘Okay, we’ve known this was a problem, but now we have to make a change’?
Melissa: Yeah. Happy to share that. There are three areas specifically that I'll highlight.
One was around just the limited flexibility. Limited flexibility in terms of some of the insights that we were able to gather, and being able to go deeply enough to uncover the root of some of these opportunities, and how we would continue to grow in the chat space and deliver better experiences. And then how we present that to our customers and where we surface chat.
The other one was really around the access. Limited access in terms of being able to generate more flexibility for my team to then be able to make quick, continuous improvement efforts through the chat flows. And just making sure that we had the ability to really test and learn, and really make these real-time changes.
And then that last one, I would say, is just the engagement model.
If we were gonna start fresh with a new partner, we wanted to make sure that we had a better engagement model at the onset of it, and somebody who’s really looking at this as a partnership.
Nick: Justin, I know you've helped a bunch of customers make platform switches to ASAPP. Does this resonate? What else is common, or what are some of the other things you see in other platforms that hold them back from success?
Justin: Yeah, this definitely resonates. There are many inefficiencies and problems that we see as we’re working with these legacy platforms and programs. But to Melissa's point, oftentimes it's just about the account support. Sometimes it’s not even the technology.
But if your customer success team isn't there with you every single week, bringing you new features or really working with you on a continual basis, odds are the program’s not gonna reach its potential.
In terms of the programs themselves, this is both operational and technological.
I’ve seen a lot of programs out there that were never really optimized for digital and are still coming in with a voice mindset - If you have a program where you're taking chats, and it's a one-to-one concurrency like you had with voice, you’re basically getting no value out of the program.
But in a lot of programs, they tend to top out at a 1.2 to 1.3 level concurrency, and never really get beyond that. I think a lot of that does have to do with the underlying technology of the platforms themselves. From a basic perspective, you can have multiple concurrent conversations going on, but mental task switching between different subjects can be pretty difficult. So you really need the tooling and other support to help you shift rapidly back and forth between conversations as an agent.
The importance of context in customer experience
Justin: And I’ll also say that, from the end customer's perspective, when I see these legacy programs where there’s no context being passed from a bot to a live agent, that always drives me nuts. That drives me nuts as a customer as well.
And then, oftentimes, I find that even when it gets to the live agent, the agents aren’t empowered to do the same things that they could do on the phone, which is just the most disappointing. “Hey, I just spent ten minutes getting to this point in the conversation only to find out that the agent can't actually help me.”
I think, Melissa, you were talking a little bit about that earlier this week. How have you dealt with that agent empowerment piece?
Melissa: I think context is so important.
As you look at every handoff part of the process, making sure that you're delivering it through the lens of where the customer came from, and having a common understanding of what may have been attempted before. That's an area we're continuing to work on, but not something that would be solved overnight. But, the context is so important, and then how that ties in not just to the chat platform, but also the tools that our agents would use, whether it be on the chat side or whether it be on the voice side.
Keys to success in digital customer experience
Nick: Melissa, you’ve touched on some key aspects of what makes digital success possible. On the flip side, when you were considering making a switch to a new platform, what were the main things you were looking for in terms of both the engagement model and other key details to ensure success?
Melissa: We have a team that really is data focused, data led, and customer focused.
But I think when we’re looking at another partner for a chat solution, it was really important that the ideas and insights didn’t just come from my team, but also from whoever we’d be partnering with.
It was important to ensure that there were other insights brought forth proactively to help further understand different ways of thinking about the problems to solve. How do we uncover the root of some of these issues? What drivers may be behind containment, low containment, or poor experiences, as surfaced through NPS or other feedback from customers?
So, we were really trying to look at different angles to uncover opportunities and make sure we’re addressing the root causes. And then, partnering closely on finding a more optimized solution, based on key learnings from other clients or customers, with the potential to carry those insights into our work as well.
Nick: I know we talked earlier in the week about not just optimizing for digital, but even within digital, which I think really gets into how you best personalize and make the experience right for the customer in that specific moment and situation.
Melissa: Yeah, and if I could just share one specific example, it may seem small, but it can have an impact. When the customer is first interacting and engaging with us, initiating a chat, the intent is key. So, being able to uncover the right intent. We give customers the option to either select a list of canned intents based on our understanding of the context and entry point they may be coming from, or they have the free text option. But, it's about finding the right balance between how much we lean on the free text versus how much we’re continually updating and refining the canned intent list.
Those are things that we continue to cycle through to make sure we're delivering the best experience upfront, recognizing that when the customer’s trying to interact with us, we want to get them to the right place as soon as possible.
Watch the rest of the webinar.