“People tend to reach out for help through channels that are familiar to them. It's important to offer a variety of options and let the customer choose the one they feel most comfortable with.” — Christopher Kaisoum, Director of Global Operations, OCUS

Not everyone communicates via email.

This was the hurdle OCUS, an AI powerhouse developing global end-to-end visual performance solutions, set out to overcome with Bird.

OCUS provides the world’s largest companies with all-in-one imagery solutions including professional photography services delivered by a network of 35,000 photographers, AI automated content moderation, and image enhancement. The company provides high-quality photography services globally and is laser focused on making the process of booking a shoot and visual performance as simple and seamless as possible. 

After receiving 24M in funding in April 2021, Paris-based OCUS set its sights on expanding its reach and engaging with customers across EMEA, APAC, and NORAM. In these regions, email isn’t used as regularly as other communication channels, presenting a big challenge for OCUS — a company where 90% of communication was sent via email.

To improve the quality and frequency of interactions with photographers, OCUS sought out a modern omnichannel solution. Here’s how Bird gave them a centralized way to reach customers on a variety of channels.

The search for a centralized communication channel

As a two-sided marketplace working with partners and vendors, communication at OCUS is complex and multi-faceted. It requires communication channels between partners, merchants, and photographers — operating in different countries and each with different communication preferences.

In their early stages, OCUS communicated primarily through email, which worked for a time. But as they grew, so did the increasing demands from clients for fast delivery. For example, initially, a one week turnaround time was accepted as the norm. Now, however, the expectation is to deliver within a day — particularly in major urban areas. With deadlines and service-level agreements (SLAs) becoming increasingly stringent it was clear that something had to change.

As OCUS looked to expand their services and speed up their workflows, they found that they were held back by fragmented communication — both internally and externally with photographers. They were using fifteen different localized solutions, which lead to gaps in information and inconsistent communication across channels.

The company needed a centralized, multichannel platform that would take their communications from fragmented to seamless and scalable — and it needed to be low-code or no-code so they didn’t have to rely on engineers from other teams for every change.

“We were looking for a solution that would give us the time and energy to focus on new problems and not have to revisit old ones repeatedly,” Christopher Kaisoum, Director of Global Operations at OCUS, said.

Faster, multichannel communication with Bird

OCUS’s changing relationship with its partners meant it needed a more data-driven solution — one that battled issues of visibility and redundancy. Key characteristics they were looking for were:

• A low-code/no-code solution

• Support for different channels

• One centralized platform across regions

After going through a demo with Bird and a series of follow-up calls, it was clear that all of the above criteria were met. Yet what made Bird stand out from competition was the experience of the team and helpfulness of the sales process. Apart from the product, OCUS was also looking for:

• A company that showed it was constantly innovating, on the cutting edge

• Located in the EMEA region 

• Experience working with companies similar to OCUS (double-sided marketplace working with partners and vendors)

By walking the OCUS team through case studies of how Bird is used for sales and marketing (including for similar marketplace organizations), organizing a 30-min best-practice session hosted by a Technical Account Manager (TAM), and answering specific questions about integrations — OCUS chose Bird to be their partner in providing omnichannel communication for their business.

When it comes to tightening up communications and scaling faster, here’s how OCUS is planning to use Bird moving forward:

1) Faster onboarding for new photographers

By introducing a chatbot application, OCUS aims to streamline the onboarding process for new photographers by automating the screening of devices and background checks. This is projected to reduce their two-week manual process to just one day.

2) Number masking in WhatsApp

Before number masking, photographers and businesses could see each other’s phone numbers once a conversation had started. This meant that transactions could be taken off of the platform and conducted in private, causing OCUS to lose visibility or revenue.

With WhatsApp number masking, photographers and businesses will be able to communicate with each other securely and without revealing personal information. This will provide both parties with privacy and safety, in addition to placing the control back into the hands of OCUS’s operations team.

3) Conversational customer support 

Besides a low code/no-code solution, OCUS was looking for omnichannel support to meet their partners where they are and achieve faster response times. The company is in the process of upgrading its email and voice solution to pair with WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, and Line. 

“People tend to reach out for help through channels that are familiar to them,” Kaisoum said. “Some prefer to call a help center and talk to a person, while others may prefer alternative forms of communication. It's important to offer a variety of options and let the customer choose the one they feel most comfortable with.”

4) Automated photoshoot assignment

Matching photographers with clients to assign photoshoots was also a manual process before Bird came on board, requiring 2,025 manual hours a year to achieve. Now, most photoshoots are assigned automatically, with no manual intervention required, although agents are still available to assign photoshoots directly in Inbox for photographers who prefer to speak to a human.

"As a freelancer, I operate my business through my cell phone, particularly using WhatsApp. Having work opportunities come to me straight into my WhatsApp inbox is extremely convenient for me and allows me to choose assignments that work best for me in just a couple of seconds." — OCUS Photographer.

5) Scheduling, rescheduling and confirmations 

To improve communication and scheduling between photographers and their customers, OCUS implemented a solution for transactional messaging, sending reminders, notifications and alerts for upcoming shoots. This integrates with their current tech stack of Hubspot and Zendesk. Plus, the solution includes a Quality Assurance setup to quickly address potential breaches of SLA, letting the team focus on problem-solving rather than spending time on phone calls. 

Sending such a high volume of notifications manually would have taken eight dedicated FTEs to achieve, with zero holiday time. 

Moving forward with Bird 

One of the greatest values of adopting a low-code/no-code solution, is putting the power to create solutions into the hands of the operations managers. With Bird, they are able to quickly build and implement their own tools without having to rely on software engineers to code them — building solutions that are tailored to their unique needs, increasing efficiency, and saving time and money for the business.

“When the people who deal with the issue every day are actively building that solution, they are by nature going to build a better solution,” Kaisoum said.

Watching customers like OCUS create their unique solutions with Bird’s tools, and seeing the before-and-after of moving from 15 different communication channels to one centralized platform, is exactly why Bird was created.

“Our hope is that every Bird customer will be able to create their own unique set of tools using our low-code/no-code capabilities,” Asha Thurthi, Chief Product Officer at Bird, said. “Seeing OCUS streamline their communications and lay a solid foundation for scaling and expanding their reach is a wonderful success story, one that we’re proud to be a part of.”

In the future, OCUS wants to explore the use of conversational intelligence to gain insight into client questions and concerns, and improve their offerings and customer experience.

In the meantime, they’re looking to cut down on the amount of manual intervention in customer service, with a goal of reducing it by 50 percent in the next six months. With Bird as their centralized platform for multichannel communication, Kaisoum and the team are confident they’re set up for scalability and success.