Today, TOA and DISH are announcing the successful completion of TOA’s ETAdirect deployment at DISH Network. DISH is the 3rd largest nationwide Pay TV provider in the US and one of the largest companies of its kind on the planet.

This is a milestone in an exciting and fulfilling phase in our partnership with a great company. This partnership has yielded a landmark deployment of ETAdirect that has many firsts and many records that I am extremely proud of, including:

The largest deployment of a natively Cloud-based Mobile Workforce Management SaaS solution in the world!  TOA’s solution was deployed to well over 16,000 users across the US, from Maine to San Diego; from Alaska and Hawaii to Puerto Rico. No other company in our space has ever managed to pull off such an amazing feat or can even get close to handling that kind of scale of a Cloud deployment. DISH bet on the Cloud, on SaaS, and has not bought any licensed software since 2008 and has not looked back. That’s vision! But their bet on TOA has brought about the largest deployment of SaaS that they (or almost anyone) has done yet in an extremely complex and multifaceted environment and a fast-paced business. We changed the engines while the plane was in flight, so to speak, we kept it all afloat while the passenger had their drinks on the deck and didn’t feel a thing…and we did this together without skipping a beat… what a great joint achievement it is!!

The largest deployment of a robust HTML5-based Mobility App  - and the largest single Android-based tablet deployment to a mission critical mobile workforce. With the support and encouragement of our great DISH partners, TOA’s Technology Group headed by our CTO, Irad Carmi, has been pushing the envelope on HTML5 to the absolute limit (and beyond). The things that our HTML5  development team has managed to get the old browser to do are just plain amazing and rank as true world-class innovation…a special feat is the complete and robust offline functionality that lets the ETAdirect Mobility App sustain full functionality and all the related data while it’s offline and not connected to the Internet…including if the device crashes or runs out of battery – it comes back fully loaded with functionality and data – when it’s out of coverage. A true miracle!

A lightning-fast deployment – So fast, it smokes anything our competition (or many an enterprise software vendor) has ever achieved at this scale –  a record 11 months and 24 days from kick-off to completion of deployment. This included a complex integration with many DISH back-end systems.

Real-time appointment booking - In an industry first, DISH customer service agents using DISH CRM systems have extended visibility into the field when they book appointments with customers. Booking is now done in direct relation to real capacity and technician availability which is based on real historical usage and performance patterns and our patented predictive analytics, rather than estimations and guess work. This means that when time commitments are made to a customer at booking – the promise will be kept 100 percent of the time.

One view of the customer operations - DISH now has something no nationwide provider of service has – One View of their customer operations no matter who is delivering the service and where they are, with a focus on quality of service and the best customer experience in the U.S. DISH’s goal was to find a way to bring all the many different stakeholders, service delivery partners and the various parts of the Dish Network Services together to guarantee a unified operation and a consistent customer experience. An operation the size of DISH can only do that with automation and an intelligent web-based communications hub and that’s the role that ETAdirect is playing. Dish Network Services is leveraging ETAdirect Manage and ETAdirect Mobility to its fullest.

Keeping customers in the loop - DISH’s stated aim is to be the best provider of customer service in America. A central pillar of that goal is to provide customers with total transparency and choice with on-going, relevant and continuously available information about the status of their appointment from the moment an appointment is booked up to the moment service is delivered to their home.  DISH and TOA’s joint philosophy –  that an informed customer will always be a more satisfied customer –  is supported by a visionary approach to using state-of-the-art technology which employs ETAdirect’s predictive software and proactive customer communications (PCC) and every available means of communication and information to bring customers into the loop of the appointment event throughout.

Partnership - It’s been (and is) a pleasure and great privilege to work with a world-class customer like DISH and call them, and be called, a partner. An organization that works together at the highest levels and stays focused on what’s important, DISH Network is a intense place of achievement, innovation and reach. It has great people at all levels pushing the envelope without fear in a smart and strategic way.  That is the great kind of customer/partner one needs to have to make a big leap forward.  TOA’s solution and people, coupled with the vision and panache of the DISH Team, has been an unbeatable combination.

DISH’s amazing team is headed by Erik Carlson, EVP Ops and Mike McClaskey, CIO, two of the most visionary, brilliant and ambitious leaders that I (and TOA) have ever had the honor of working with. They have led their team with a call to work with TOA as true partners and everyone followed in their wake. Leadership is not just a word here, and I saw how that kind of leadership can set the tone for incredible large-scale business transformation. In Mike and Erik, DISH has two great leaders who lead with their mind and a sharp eye and are the kind of people who just make things happen. To have true partners who have a clear vision of what they want, a vision you share, partners who are willing to go the distance, to take the kind of risks that it takes to move the world ahead – that’s a business essential. Leadership needs to be totally and outspokenly committed, and with DISH, we had it all.

To the people who have worked with us on the TOA side at every level and on the DISH side at every level – thanks for all the great and hard work!

Because at the end of the day this is all about people: the people we serve, the people we work for and work with, the people we partner with. And in this case, partnership was, and continues to be, the key to success.

That’s my biggest takeaway from this adventure – that an undertaking of this scale, scope and ambition cannot truly succeed without real synchronicity, and the dedication and commitment of everyone involved to foster hard work and a frank and open exchange of ideas. This is how great things, great business is done and we had that here aplenty – at all levels.

When Irad and I founded this company we had a dream of  partnering with big companies in a broad range of industries to really innovate and transform their mobile business and their customer experience – but even more than that, to transform the relationship and the reputation that enterprise software vendors had with enterprise customers. Having found a customer like DISH here and built the kind of partnership that we have and seen the results, the fruits of that partnership ripen  - I feel that one significant part of our dream has come true.

It seems as if proactive, positive, great customer service is on everyone’s mind…

Why is that?

Because people just expect it in this world of hyper-connectivity and total instantaneity.

After all…we are all SO connected every minute of every day…we can check our Facebook on a plane…we can track our pizza being delivered…we get alerts when our flight is delayed…UPS tells us when our package is delivered.

People just don’t feel like there is any room for slacking off on customer service…

And if companies DO slack off…then there is only one reason: The company you bought a good or service from…just doesn’t care…doesn’t want to invest in the people, the processes, the tools and the technology to provide the very best in customer service. That’s the perception, and not only is perception reality – but also probably true.

Because if Amazon and Apple and others have taught us anything, it’s that it IS possible to provide a phenomenal customer experience without compromise and win. It’s just a question of will, of prioritization: Making a great customer experience the most important thing there is.  The top priority!

Just yesterday I was at an Apple store in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue. There were a million people in the store – I am not exaggerating. I used my Apple Store app to scan my product and read reviews on my iPhone and then to purchase it using my Apple account – all without having to talk to a salesperson or to go to a check out counter.

I could have just put that product in my bag and walked out.  And no one would have even KNOWN whether I paid for it or not. It was an amazing experience.

But I did stop and talk to one of those blue T-shirted salespeople and I asked her…what is the philosophy behind letting people scan their own products on the iPhone and pay for them via an Apple account and just walk out of the store without any supervision. Wasn’t Apple worried about stealing? And what did she tell me…? She said:

Apple believes that the benefits of providing the majority of honest people with a transformative customer experience far outweigh the cost of a few people shoplifting. That the company “believes in the power of the virtue” (direct quote) of most people. That those whose intent it was/is to shoplift…will shoplift anyway…so why deny a great customer experience for the rest of us?

Clearly this is the vision of great service. Apple believes that the fruits of investing in a ‘transformative customer experience’ are bountiful:  More loyalty. More sales. And more efficiency: no need for all those checkout people – they are roaming the store helping people actually BUY.  Using the App, of course!!!

The BBC reported today that British Gas has been fined £2.5m by the regulator Ofgem for the way in which it deals with customer complaints. This is a milestone fine in terms of it’s size – but represents a unequivocal position of zero tolerance by the British regulator for companies that it perceives as providing poor service. Is this the beginning of a trend?

One of the best articles written about the operational and customer care revolution that TOA is advocating for and leading was written in the Sunday Times last week. You can read it here.

It’s direct, it’s concise and it gets it. Because for Irad and me, this company and its software solutions have been all about personalization – whether creating personalized work days for each mobile employee – not just a default or generic workday across thousands of employees;  whether it’s been treating each customer waiting at home for an installation, service or deliver in a personalized way – respecting their time and providing them information according to their preference not treating customers as if they were an anonymous mass but rather as individual with a life and other priorities. And this is for us the true meaning of ‘social’ in the enterprise…putting back caring into customer care where customers really want it and need it.