About Otonomee
Otonomee is a bespoke business process outsourcing (BPO) company that supports scaling businesses across digital and voice channels. A key focus for the company is Employee Experience, leveraging innovative ways to support a fully remote, “geographically friendly” workforce. The Irish headquartered company has more than 100 employees and is scaling across Europe.
The Challenge
Ensuring IT works for a growing, fully remote workforce
For founder and CEO Aidan O’Shea, his vision for the company is to provide a different offering in the BPO space – flexible, bespoke outsourcing for scaling companies using a fully remote workforce and cloud-based platform. He states:
“By focusing on the employee experience, we can deliver a better offering for our customers. Ensuring we deliver a positive IT experience for our staff is a critical part of the puzzle, and we wanted to understand how our employees were really feeling about the technology they use day to day.”
Rafał Rzakowski, CTO notes how traditional IT metrics such as availability, uptime, and incident data were not telling the full story about how IT was performing for end-users:
“We did not have visibility of the actual day-to-day experience of employees who had joined the company at different times. We had embraced remote working for all our employees and we were looking for a way to measure how people were adapting to the new environment and tools made available to them.”
The Solution
User-friendly survey tool to gain rich insights into IT user experience
Otonomee had recently been rebranded, and the company was going through business transformation and significant growth. Management used several employee engagement tools to understand employee sentiment. However, they had no means of measuring and tracking the IT user experience.
“We needed a quick way to gather detailed feedback on IT services and Voxxify was a perfect fit. A big plus was the ease of use — the platform is very intuitive. After an initial half hour meeting we configured the survey and it was ready to go out . It was really quick and easy for us to implement,” said Rzakowski.
Another decisive factor was Voxxify’s design from a UX perspective. The intuitive interface and concise survey design drives strong uptake, resulting in a response rate of 62%.
The Results
IT Experience data provides “Missing Metric” to change focus and prioritize investment
Prior to using Voxxify, Otonomee used traditional IT metrics based on availability and uptime, as well as financial metrics such as the Total Cost of Ownership for services. Rzakowski shares:
“Those metrics were green but we were missing user satisfaction. Our priority was always addressing the services with high incident rates, however based on the survey our attention was drawn to other services that were impacting user satisfaction and this changed our focus.”
For example, the team learned there were different levels of satisfaction between employees onboarded before, during, and after the outbreak of Covid. This was quickly resolved through a targeted training program. Rzakowski describes the lightbulb moment for the team:
“It was interesting to learn that many issues are down to training or communication — it’s not that the technology is bad, and problems can be fixed very, very quickly.”
The insights have also helped improve the hiring plan for the IT team. Rzakowski notes:
“Before the Voxxify engagement, I thought we may need another engineer on the team, but now I know we need Tier 1 support – someone who can hold the user’s hand, particularly in the early days of onboarding.”
Savings of 5-8% of IT end-user spend from single project
The survey highlighted issues with a core Business Application. It had been developed in-house and 75% of employees use this application every day. Rzakowski notes:
“That was one of those elephants in the room that everybody knew there was a problem, but nobody was talking about it. But when we saw the results it was clear it was having a significant business impact and needed to be prioritized.”
Before this, the application was not flagged as a major issue. It presented no direct annual license cost and users opened only a few tickets as they had learned how to navigate the application. However, based on the survey results, the IT team was able to to identify a number of tasks and processes that were very inefficient and time consuming.
The data helped to build out a business case for replacing the tool, reflecting both the positive impact on IT Experience and financial savings based on the Total Cost of Ownership. This resulted in a saving of 5-8% of overall IT end-user spend, achieving an immediate ROI of 8X from one single project.
Transformed how Otonomee thinks about technology
The knowledge and insights gained through using Voxxify are defining the future technology strategy for the company.
“We have greater awareness about how technology is no longer isolated to one business unit or user role — it touches everyone. We’re only going to grow, and there will be more tools, so decisions we make about bringing technology into the business now will compound for the future,” said Rzakowski.
Hugely enthusiastic, positive response from employees
Employees really appreciated being asked for their feedback on the technology they have been provided with. The transparent approach to sharing the results and action plan with staff has been another success, helping build trust between IT and the rest of the company.
“Before, we found it difficult to accurately capture user experience — now we have the main platform to capture this feedback, so we can address any issues and build that relationship with end-users,” shared Rzakowski.
The Takeaway
Immediate financial ROI and new way to put end-users at center of IT Planning
Otonomee was going through a period of transformation and rapid growth, and the team needed a way to understand how IT was performing for the “geographically friendly’’ remote workforce. Voxxify helped the CTO to quickly understand what needed to be prioritized, and provided insights that would fundamentally improve the technology strategy for the company.
The business has benefited in multiple ways including targeted resource prioritization, insights for training and resource planning, and enhanced trust between IT and end-users. Compellingly, one single project arising from Voxxify insights has generated a ROI of 8X: Rzakowski concluded:
“With just one survey, we have made significant savings generating an impressive ROI, while also improving user satisfaction. Using Voxxify has been a major win for us.”
Case Study
