How Aircall Helps Lightspeed Create a Seamless Customer Experience

Traditional cash registers are becoming increasingly obsolete as businesses look for point of sale (POS) solutions that better support a seamless customer experience. Today, retailers and hospitality companies turn to Lightspeed as their all-in-one commerce platform to simplify, scale, and deliver outstanding customer experiences. Lightspeed enables merchants to efficiently manage everything from point of sale, to e-commerce, payments, inventory, and loyalty.

Lightspeed was founded in Montreal, but has grown significantly in Australia, where small and medium-sized businesses in retail and hospitality use its advanced commerce platforms.

When they need help with their Lightspeed solutions, however, companies in those sectors may not have time to write a detailed email. They need to be able to pick up the phone. And according to Angelo Livanos, Lightspeed's Director of Support and Operations, APAC, they want to speak to a real person on the other end.

"When it comes to human connection, delivering amazing experiences and getting fantastic feedback, nothing beats our inbound and outbound phone solution," Livanos said. "It allows you to deliver a level of service you can't always achieve elsewhere, and the hospitality industry especially values that."

Keeping It Human

More often than not, the challenges Lightspeed's customers face involve what Livanos calls "the trilogy" — the interplay between hardware, software, and people.

Building on the excellent customer experience Lightspeed provides has had its challenges, though. Lightspeed recognised that customers might also want to get in touch through other channels, such as SMS, chat, or web forms. Regardless of how they choose to communicate, customers expect the same speed and responsiveness.

Within the company, meanwhile, Lightspeed has always been equally committed to offering choice and flexibility to its team. That means every department is equipped with the best tools for their role.

Regarding Lightspeed’s APAC hospitality division: "Salesforce is our primary CRM [customer relationship management platform] and integrates well with our other tools," Livanos said. "We layered this with HubSpot as a marketing platform, which has enabled sales and marketing to work more closely together. With a two-way sync back to Salesforce, we have a really robust system of record. Additionally, with Zendesk, we need an integrated phone system that automatically logs incoming calls by creating a ticket, and captures any notes and recordings at the same time."

The Dangers of the Domino Effect

In APAC, Lightspeed had been trying to piece all this together with its phone system using technology from Talkdesk. Unfortunately, this resulted in a lot of configuration and maintenance work to integrate it with all its other key business applications.

Things became complicated — so complicated that if someone who wasn't an expert tried to change anything, they risked causing issues across multiple systems and departments.

Then there was the cost factor. As Lightspeed expanded in APAC, the per-user cost increased rapidly. "The costs rose to a level that just wasn't scalable," Livanos said.

When Livanos discovered that Aircall would only cost a quarter of what the APAC team were paying for their previous solution, he almost thought it was too good to be true. However, after many demos and tests, he realised that lower costs were just one of the benefits.

Integrations That Bring Ease and Agility Everywhere

Aircall was able to integrate seamlessly with Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce, and HubSpot with just a few clicks. Then, even if Lightspeed's needs changed — for example, if calls needed to be logged as a new ticket instead of being added to an existing one — the team could easily customise how Aircall was used without causing issues in other applications. The fact that Aircall was the No. 1 recommended phone system by HubSpot only increased the team's confidence as Livanos and his team made the switch.

On a daily basis, Livanos said the difference with using Aircall was both immediate and transformative. Lightspeed could now provide new users and numbers to its team in just two clicks, and the integration of their telephony with their other business tools was now more stable and reliable than ever.

When they saw how Aircall's mobile app worked, Livanos also said the Lightspeed sales team went "ballistic" — in a good way. At last, they could easily switch between different numbers when calling prospects and continue using the phone without being tied to a browser or specific CRM.

Solving for Scalability and Growth

Today, scalability is no longer a concern. With Aircall, the team can now create numbers and deploy an interactive voice response (IVR) in less than two or three minutes, instead of the complicated number purchasing process of their previous solution.

Livanos said he values that Aircall also stands out from the competition with its local Asia-Pacific presence, which means he can speak to someone in the same time zone if he has any questions.

“In a way, though, the best thing about using Aircall might be that it offers the same outstanding experience that Lightspeed provides to its own customers,” Livanos said. “When you're running a retail or hospitality business, you don't want to spend a lot of time thinking (or worrying) about your POS system. You just want to deliver a great customer experience and have the tools to make this easy.”

Livanos said he and his team now enjoy the same ease and reliability with Aircall. The technology can run in the background with minimal adjustments. That means the workforce is happier, more productive, and focused on continuing to grow within the small and medium-sized business sector.

Discover more ways companies are using Aircall's solutions to humanise the customer experience.