Segra has the honour of being the first customer to utilise the whole Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) Platform. George Nazi, Google’s Vice President of, Global Telecom Industry, Google Cloud, declares that the company is dedicated to assisting telecommunications firms in accelerating their development, competitiveness, and digital journeys in addition to helping them change. Using the Contact Center AI Platform from Google Cloud, we are very much excited to work with Segra, a visionary pioneer in fibre infrastructure, to rethink their customer experience. In this likefigures interview, Segra CEO Kevin T. Hart will enlighten us about the cloud implementation and explain how it functions at Segra.
Please describe yourself in detail.
I am One of the major independent fibre infrastructure bandwidth providers in the Eastern United States is Segra, whose CEO is Kevin T. Hart. I have over thirty years of experience in the telecommunications sector, and I previously held the position of CTO at Cox Communications, where I was responsible for a number of departments, including Enterprise IT Development & Operations, Product Development, and Management along with the Security, and Network Operations. Under my supervision, Cox successfully introduced a portfolio of additional market-leading commercial goods as well as cutting-edge new products and services. Also, I served as the worldwide practise leader and vice president of Capgemini Consulting, the old Ernst & Young, as well as the CIO of Clearwire, the first 4G cellular carrier in the country, Level 3, a significant supplier of internet protocol communications, and Clearwire.
My current goal at Segra is to boost sales by implementing innovative ideas and making wise investments. 2022 was a great year for us. Throughout the course of the year, we filled our whole executive team with over 200 new team members with fresh skills. Throughout this eventful year, we grew our personnel, added new products to our inventory, and enhanced our customer service. The Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) Platform was fully used by Segra as the first business, which improved customer experiences.
What precisely is Segra, and what sets you apart from the competition?
Nine data centres and more than 10,000 sites are connected by a state-of-the-art fibre optic network owned and operated by Segra throughout nine Mid-Atlantic and Southern states. Segra comes with the solutions like Ethernet, dark fibre, MPLS, IP and managed services, voice and cloud solutions, sophisticated data centre services, and other services. These services are supported by Segra’s industry-leading customer support and reliability. Segra offers a wide range of enterprise services to its clients, which include carriers, companies, governments, and healthcare institutions. These services include cloud solutions, connectivity, cybersecurity, collaboration, and more.
Customers have access to a vast and dense service region thanks to Segra’s superior fibre infrastructure network, which covers 30,000 route miles throughout the mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States. Its fibre network is the fastest and most reliable in the business. Compared to many other sources of broadband internet, Segra’s high-performance fibre connection offers access and services that are typically crowded, unreliable, or inconsistent. In these networks, users share bandwidth with other users. The outcome is inconsistent service, which may cause a firm to run more slowly. A connectivity solution from Segra called SD-WAN protects application expansion and smartly directs traffic for constant performance across a variety of connection types, including broadband, MPLS, and LTE. Segra’s DIA offers a dedicated, stable, and secure connection to the Internet with guaranteed bandwidth, and Segra’s Long-Term Evolution services keep distant offices and personnel safely linked to clients’ networks.
Cloud-based services offered by Segra enables organisations to use complete portfolio of services and solutions instead of expensive hardware expenditures, acting as a single source for all of your virtual infrastructure needs. Segra controls its carrier-grade connection network, in contrast to the bulk of cloud service providers. As a consequence, it may offer its clients a variety of advantages and benefits, such as the ability to tailor and package services while also increasing effectiveness and reducing costs.
With the help of Segra’s IaaS technology, customer-managed server environments may operate without a data centre. It links consumers to highly accessible, manned data centres that are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week over a private fibre network. All of the processing and storage resources required to execute the most crucial applications are used by these data centres. The whole BaaS solution from Segra is dependable and safe. It offers a configurable protection plan that enables our customers to choose a plan that meets the commercial value of their data and supports both physical and virtual servers.
Businesses are shielded against hacker assaults and unanticipated network disruptions by Segra’s wide managed services, which also include Hosted Firewall, SOCaaS, and DDoS protection. These services also preserve organisations’ connection and safety. With a vast array of data and cybersecurity solutions, as well as completely compliance services, they provide you piece of mind and set the foundation for long-term success.
Without needing a financial investment, Segra analyses security alarms produced by software and network hardware instantly for enterprises. The service is housed in a safe and legal cloud since it enables remote management and monitoring of a company’s vital systems. The security team at Segra, which is made up of threat hunters, advanced security engineers, tier 1 analysts, and threat intelligence managers, is in charge of continuously monitoring and assessing an organization’s cybersecurity.
Businesses require communication solutions that are rapid, flexible, reasonably priced, and easy to use in order to fulfil today’s needs. The private network of Segra guarantees that even when accessible by distant personnel, phone and data traffic will remain safe and secure. As their companies develop and technology advances, customers are free to do so. By fusing uncomplicated packages with cutting-edge voice solutions, we provide you with the flexibility and support you need to maintain your competitive edge in the market.
With Segra’s converged voice service, voice and data are combined into a single infrastructure, giving IP networks a platform for integrating with analogue phones, PBXs, and fax machines. With the aid of an Analog Telephone Adapter offered by Segra, customers may transfer their fax machines from analogue phone lines to IP fax machines with ease.
As a result, there is no need for pricey fax board gear, specific fax servers, or specific analogue phone connections. By bringing the perks of VoIP to the customer’s current phone system, Segra’s SIP Flex solution operates on cable, DSL, Internet access, and wireless transports and maintains all of the functionality of the customer’s PBX/IP BX phone system.
Segra is for whom? Can you please describe the Segra ecosystem and how it is changing cloud computing?
Since they want to focus on their core activities, our customers are searching for a technology supplier like Segra to handle all of their technological requirements. Examples of these include best-in-class fibre optic connection, cloud and data centre functionality, collaboration tools, and cybersecurity. Segra links a couple different settings that were previously run independently and puts them together in some fairly intriguing ways. We are modernising the cloud usage experience through the focusing on the benefits of a select few specific technologies and addressing challenges using cutting-edge operational methodologies.
Our goal is to just try something new at this scale. Segra’s expertise as a top connection provider enables us to link geographically separated client LANs through diverse-path private WANs. Each LAN consumer may have a separate internet connection. The Hosted or Premise Firewall and SD-WAN solutions, we provide a highly robust connection package with total end-to-end control and visibility. Consider the several Tier 3 data centres that Segra has scattered across that territory.
Each of them use the same network. When a client co-locates with us or purchases one of our hosted cloud services, their new location is more similar to a “new branch” than merely a web-based service. We acknowledge the value of leveraging public cloud resources when prices can be managed to achieve the expected Return, which is why we provide the same private, diverse-path WAN solutions for cross-connecting into their networks. Segra should be chosen by everyone who stands to gain from that specific position.
Describe the cloud market, the amount of demand for cloud solutions, and the trends that are transforming the sector. What threats need should we avoid?
The cloud industry has been going in a few different ways since work-from-home (WFH) demand skyrocketed in March 2020, which has caused a lot of consumer fatigue. Remember that many firms were unsatisfied with their early attempts to lift and shift or restructure old programmes. They anticipated far more intricacy in that task, which is sometimes just partly completed. Organizations that prior to the Coronavirus had no significant areas of strength for having management in control have ended up going much more cautiously towards 2023. At the same time, a sizeable number of technical staff members have also moved on to work for other companies.
Many of the old business processes won’t be completely tackled until the Internet of Things and edge computing models mature. Industrial controls will initially be in charge of this, but it will take some time before most firms start to profit from it. Infrastructure, containerization, and traditional virtualization all all have sizable markets, and they will for the foreseeable future.
Similar to how many jokingly said that “there’s an app for that” when smartphones first appeared, the bulk of the cloud business responded to WFH by providing SaaS for everything. In the next years, SaaS functionality will be further consolidated as the level of competition rises. SaaS companies will concentrate on their competitors rather than those “harder to answer” business demands. In order to avoid acquisition, several SaaS-Partnerships or mergers “in name only” will be established. Expect SaaS vendor aggregator websites or interface overhaul as a consequence. As edge computing and the Internet of Things catch up, SaaS will gain traction and start to replace more established corporate processes that are still based on traditional OS code. Would the SaaS systems still have the same code-bloat problems in the road if that doesn’t happen quickly enough?
Could you provide us more information on the problems that telecom firms have had that Google Cloud has promised to resolve?
Connecting with clients via their chosen channels is not a differentiator for a great customer experience; rather, it is expected. The connection’s intimacy has the ability to make it stand out. Conversational AI offers the essential kind of contact that consumers need in order to develop more intimate connections with companies. Quality is important since consumers routinely switch companies as a result of bad customer service, according to study. If you have the product that you can rapidly incorporate is the main factor in maximising the benefit of AI and digital transformations. The amount of time it takes to deploy these features is greatly decreased by using Google’s Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI).
What is the overall operation of the Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) Platform?
In order to help organisations efficiently manage omnichannel queuing, routing, and reporting of customer contacts across agent resource pools, Google created the Contact Center AI Platform. This contact centre as a service uses conversational intelligence that is more forgiving and compassionate.
Our approach employs AI-powered intelligence to facilitate contact diversion, predictive routing, and enhance agent productivity. Our CRM, back-end system APIs, and agent analytics enable us to provide real-time intelligent call routing with no unnecessary delay or inaccurate caching.
Could you explain how Segra is transforming their customer satisfaction by utilizing the Contact Center AI Platform from Google Cloud, and what impact this is having?
The CCAI platform is supporting us in widening the channels via which individuals may connect with us and driving us towards more predictive flows for our shared experiences. We can also quickly improve our workflows and processes by learning from our interactions and data. Our other agents are working more efficiently as a result of the addition of virtual agent skills that will enable clients to get rapid responses to simple inquiries. Our customers may now more easily and thoroughly get the information they need thanks to these capabilities. Thanks to the relatively simple adoption of the platform, we have been able to swiftly introduce additional features without overloading or confounding our agents.
Tell us more about the various industries you operate in and the infrastructural and technology solutions you provide to the communities as one of the biggest independent fibre network firms.
Segra has a wide range of customers. For instance, due to our infrastructure, cloud services, and top-notch network, the Raleigh-Durham area scores well in terms of high technology. We also in thhave footprints in different fields like education, technological innovation, health along with the medicine. By tying together underprivileged regions and expanding our reach to distant students, we aid in bridging the local digital divide.
For connecting to a network with high dependability, low latency, high security, and high bandwidth, we wish to build fibre optics across the area for the ease of customers. As part of our ongoing efforts to link rural towns to the same fantastic Internet resource as urban communities, we are also highly active in collecting funds from the federal government and the states. Entertainment along with the sports are also significant. We link the PNC Arena and other athletic venues of Segra, along with being the Carolina Hurricanes’ Business Communications Partner. The only way to assist them in achieving their goals is to go to the communities and link them.
What are the current projects on which you are working now, and what are your future goals? Are there any joint ventures or investment possibilities at Segra?
Talking about the next 3 years, we are planning to invest in cloud enablement, cybersecurity, collaboration, and connectivity. Our target is to be the trusted service provider for CTOs, CIOs and leaders in technology.
Visit our website at https://www.segra.com/ for additional information.
