Why Converged Technical Account Managers Matter: A Cautionary Tale

Recently, one of our enterprise clients approached us about a problem with their implementation of a cloud contact center project. More specifically, this client had operations on multiple continents and was forced to deal with separate vendor implementation teams for each of the projects. While their US rollout was completed within the initial timelines, the UK rollout faced several complexities and had fallen behind. 

However, that wasn’t the real problem. 

The reason the project had fallen behind was the corporate structure of the vendor. The client was being told to work directly with their US-based account manager due to its growing scale, while the project was handled by a completely different team in another country. To complicate problems even further, a few critical details in the statement of work (SOW) were overlooked by the Gartner CCaaS vendor’s UK team, leading to a conversation about whether these details would be out of scope for the initial agreement. 

As communication lagged and frustration grew with the client often waited weeks to get an answer. There was no viable path to finding a solution that worked for everyone involved.  

At Converged Technology Professionals, the technical account management team is designated to assist with each of our cloud projects for this exact reason; they can solve these types of challenges quickly by escalating the problem to senior leadership within each of the vendors we work with.   

In this instance, Stephen Doerr, our TAM Manager, was able to intervene on behalf of the client by effectively articulating the pains to the vendor and executing what our client was promised. Within one business day, we were able to get an additional statement of work issued by the cloud contact center vendor, without any extra costs involved for the client.   

It is important to keep in mind that the client in question had rapidly scaled during the COVID pandemic with a cloud contact center as a large element of that success. The prior delays equated to millions in potential lost revenue and without intervention, this issue could have dragged on for months without a resolution. That is why our team stayed engaged with both the client and the vendor’s senior leadership to ensure accountability.   

As we approached the new deadline, Stephen Doerr’s team members had daily check-ins with the vendor to ensure further escalations were not necessary. The contact center project was completed on the new timeline, and we now have a satisfied customer that is continuing to bring about explosive growth across multiple continents. 

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