STAY CONNECTED
Global Brands Trust Konecta to Deliver Innovation without Disruption
CX is central to both Konecta’s operations and those of their clients.
Konecta, a global leader in customer management and business process outsourcing (BPO), was founded in 1999. The company has grown to employ over 130,000 individuals across 26 countries, offering customer management solutions in more than 30 languages.
Headquartered in Madrid, Konecta generates global revenues of approximately €2 billion, an increase of almost 700% in the last 10 years, serving major clients in telecommunications, energy, banking, and retail sectors.
CX is central to both Konecta’s operations and those of their clients. Konecta’s website highlights their focus on talent: “We put our people at the heart of the business and recognize them as ambassadors of our clients’ brands.”
Jose Mejia, CIO for the Americas at Konecta, explains, “When clients trust us with representing their brand, delivering great experiences for their customers, we are always looking for ways to improve, not just availability, cloud innovation, regulatory compliant solutions and Customer Experience, but also reduce costs for our customers, and improve revenue.”
Employees
Languages
Sites in 26 countries
Challenge
- Enhancing its CX infrastructure to support new technologies
- Need for automation, high availability, and advanced customer interaction capabilities across diverse regions
- Bringing clients new technologies and retain some on-premise solutions for security and regulation mandates.
- Make transformational changes without business disruption
Value Created
- Ability to integrate private cloud and on-premises solutions with the flexibility of a public cloud platform.
- Through self-service and automation, on average, clients have between 10% to 20% of their operation in non-voice delivery (IVR, RPA, or chatbot)
- Uptime was around 99.5%, with approximately 3.5 hours of downtime per month. Now, availability averages 99.97%, a huge improvement across a vast geographic footprint.
- Enabling test-bed for AI research and development to deliver innovations for clients when it makes sense.
The Challenge – Delivering Innovation Without Disruption
Konecta prides itself on building flexible partnerships, adapting to each client's needs. As demand for efficient and scalable customer service solutions intensifies, Konecta faces the challenge of enhancing its CX infrastructure to support new technologies, automation, high availability, and advanced customer interaction capabilities across diverse regions. This must be achieved without disrupting client operations.
“Some of our customers are in regulated industries and cannot move all of their environment into a public cloud deployment but still want to consume innovative new technologies,” explains Jose Mejia. “Other customers are subject to specific data security, treatment, or protection rules, and many need to maintain an Avaya platform because so many of their existing processes and integrations are built around it.”
Solutions and Innovations
Under Jose Mejia's leadership, Konecta has advanced its IT strategy and infrastructure, bridging technology operations across countries with a focus on availability and integration of customer service solutions.
“We wanted to give our customers the option to combine secure environments with cutting-edge cloud-based technology,” Mejia says. Konecta has partnered with Avaya to leverage a platform that spans on-premises, private cloud, and public cloud options. “Avaya’s strategy really resonates with us because they do not force a full migration to cloud solutions. Instead, they offer the flexibility to move at the pace of each customer, which is crucial for meeting our specific business needs and those of our clients.”
Avaya Experience Platform addresses today’s CX and EX challenges, bridging capability gaps, enabling innovation without disruption, and reinforcing existing strengths. It integrates private cloud or on-premises solutions with the flexibility of a public cloud platform, empowering employees and enabling AI automation while avoiding disruptions to complex workflows. “At Konecta, we are always listening to our customers. Avaya’s cloud allows us to easily implement new services for them in a cost-effective manner while securing their core traffic. It enables us to add more services on top; that's why we chose Avaya”, says Mejia.
"Avaya’s strategy really resonates with us because they do not force a full migration to cloud solutions. Instead, they offer the flexibility to move at the pace of each customer, which is crucial for meeting our specific business needs and those of our clients."
— Jose Mejia CIO for Americas at Konecta
AI innovation
Konecta has initiated over 30 transformational AI-led projects. Mariano Castanos Zemborain, CEO for the Americas, explains, “We are strongly embracing artificial intelligence, analytics capabilities, and everything that involves the ‘robotization’ of our processes. We find in technology and AI a very powerful tool for automating and making our processes and operations more efficient.” The AI initiatives aim to:
- Improve internal processes for efficiency and service quality.
- Enhance agent capabilities in daily management.
- Help clients transform business processes for greater efficiency.
“We want to make sure we are ready to implement AI, automation, and new innovations when our clients need it. We proactively approach them to suggest testing new technologies,” says Mejia. “We are testing Generative AI already in a research group to make sure that when the customers ask for it, we are ready to implement it.”
Automated self-service
While voice still represents the majority of interactions, almost all clients are now using some element of self-service. “Most of our clients have some sort of automation, whether it's IVR, RPA, or chatbots,” says Mejia. “On average, our clients have between 10% to 20% of the operation in non-voice delivery.”
Impact and Future Directions
Konecta’s cloud strategy has significantly improved platform availability, meeting stringent data security rules set by clients. When Mejia joined, system availability was around 99.5%, with approximately 3.5 hours of downtime per month. Now, availability averages 99.97%, a huge improvement across a vast geographic footprint.
The collaboration with Avaya has enabled Konecta to maintain a highly available platform, enhancing the overall customer and employee experience and contributing to rapid business growth. CEO Castanos Zemborain summarizes, “Artificial intelligence will accelerate the automation and simplification of many transactions in customer management. But I can guarantee that many other complexities will appear that will need human talent. The typical high-volume transactions of calling to ask for the account balance or asking about bills – all are being delivered in an automated way. Now there is much more concentration on those valuable interactions, with this enhanced agent having access to many more resources to better meet the customer's needs and create a better experience, to be more efficient for the company, and to have a job of much more value.”
Partnership is the future
Konecta thrives by continuously adapting its technology landscape to meet and exceed client expectations. The strategic partnership with Avaya and the forward-thinking leadership of Jose Mejia underscore Konecta’s commitment to excellence and innovation in customer management solutions. “We have worked with Avaya for over 13 years. They still are our main partner,” Mejia concludes. “We don’t look for providers; we look for long-term relationships. That’s what Avaya has provided. We are not just a business transaction; we are partners, and we work together for our clients and our employees.”
Organizations trust Konecta to be their CX agent – and Konecta trusts Avaya – partnering to deliver outstanding experiences in a fast-paced and ever-changing digital world.
"We are strongly embracing artificial intelligence, analytics capabilities, and everything that involves the ‘robotization’ of our processes. We find in technology and AI a very powerful tool for automating and making our processes and operations more efficient."
— Mariano Castanos Zemborain CEO for the Americas
About Konecta
Konecta is a leading innovative global service provider in customer management business process outsourcing, with 130,000 passionate employees working in 30 languages across 4 continents and 26 countries. Focusing on the unique needs and opportunities of each industry, Konecta offers a full range of end-to-end customer management solutions – including acquisition, retention, customer service, technical support, and collection – all based on a sustainable business model. These services are built on a portfolio of world-class expertise covering customer experience and process management, digital solutions and cutting-edge technologies. Headquartered in Madrid, Konecta delivers global revenues of approximately €2 billion with more than 500 clients, covering some of the biggest names in telecoms, energy, banking, mobility, retail, and e-commerce.
Resources
Services & Support
© 2024 Avaya LLC
