SpotHero Reserves Efficient Service with UJET: A CRM Service Elite Customer Case Study

Chicago-based SpotHero is a parking reservation service, with a website and mobile app, that lets drivers book parking spots at thousands of garages, parking lots, and valets in major cities across the United States and Canada. The company, which was founded in 2011, caters to a largely mobile user base that contacts support as needed via their smartphones.

THE CHALLENGE

Phone calls are central to its business, but SpotHero found itself in a jam with outdated and piecemeal telephony equipment and an unreliable service provider. For a company so dependent on speedy, efficient service, this was unacceptable. “At Spot Hero, we pride ourselves on our customer service,” noted Nate Peace, support operations manager at SpotHero, to CRM in the March 2018 issue.

So in evaluating solutions, SpotHero had several basic requirements, but chief among them was the need to maintain a high level of service, which Peace defined as “a friendly, effective, and efficient experience.”

Also high on SpotHero’s list of priorities was a solution with intuitive implementation and a simplified cost structure. The majority of providers reviewed by SpotHero had very expensive per-minute voice charges and an implementation process that would take weeks, with a team of engineers needed to make it happen. These options just weren’t realistic.

“We also needed something that was customizable so that when a customer calls, we can take their information and connect him with the right [agent],” Peace told CRM.

And to improve SpotHero’s scheduling and forecasting, a prospective solution also needed to include real-time reporting and historical data.

THE SOLUTION

So in September 2017, SpotHero turned to UJET to provide its customer support telephony infrastructure. The company installed UJET’s IVR product, which includes full on-boarding support, voicemail, direct access points, and overcapacity deflection, along with UJET’s internal data visualization and workforce management (WFM) application programming interfaces, which plugged in seamlessly to SpotHero’s Monet Software WFM system.

SpotHero also added the UJET mobile software development kit to its iOS app, extending the relationship with UJET beyond telephony to a full-service customer experience solution with integrated triggers that allow agents to prompt customers to send photos, screenshots, videos, and text input, as well as verify identity through fingerprint data, all in real time. SpotHero is testing the UJET chat product.

“There are so many companies out there that say they streamline customer support, but none of them do it quite like UJET,” Peace said. “Switching to UJET allows us to maintain world-class service even as we and our customer base of urban drivers scale.”

Peace connected with Anand Janefalkar, founder and CEO of UJET, and talked with the UJET team, and afterward he realized the platform fulfilled all of his criteria. In fact, there were big advantages the company spotted in UJET that it could not find anywhere else. On top of the most favorable pricing structure, the service-level expectations within UJET were incomparable, making the vendor an obvious fit for such a customer-
service-oriented business.

With UJET, SpotHero has seen a 20 percent decrease in telephony training overhead, a 70 percent reduction in per-minute voice charges, a 50 percent reduction in the number of abandoned calls, and a 55 percent reduction in total telephony expenses.

Most of all, Peace is eager to expand the UJET experience for both SpotHero’s agents and customers. “Our [agents] have gained improved morale seeing that our company wants to provide them with the best of what’s out there,” Peace said. “Switching to UJET helps us further deliver on our commitment to make life easier for drivers by helping them find, reserve, and pay for parking.

“Since partnering with UJET, we’ve continued to see and benefit from their product’s increasing strength and reliability,” Peace continued. “We’ve experienced above a 99.95 percent [service-level agreement], along with added administrative customization. UJET has proved to be a great partner and continues to do so.” 

Real Results

• Total telephony expenses have been cut by 55 percent.
• Telephony training overhead has been cut by 20 percent.
• The number of abandoned calls has gone down by 50 percent.
• Per-minute voice charges have been cut by 70 percent.