EMA Consulting was established in 1997 and provides contemporary ER, IR and HR services for employers across Australia, including advice, representation, strategy, investigations and training. Much of the work that they do is reactionary, taking calls from clients – businesses ranging from sole traders up to household names and government bodies – needing urgent advice, representation, strategy, investigations and training. For example, the Job keeper announcement, made by the Australian Federal Government in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, meant that EMA Consulting clients looked to the organisation for advice on how the legislation affected them.
In addition to the above services EMA Consulting partners with Buzz-ER PTY LTD to provide employee relations expertise for the cloud-based products and services delivered under The Accountable Leader brand, with over 6,000 managers and business leaders across Australia leveraging the service daily to access guidance on best practices.
Challenge: The emergence of COVID-19 became a driving force for organisations around the globe to prioritise reliable, trustworthy collaboration solutions in the shift to 100% remote work. EMA Consulting faced a similar challenge when they recognised that their existing VoIP provider could no longer adequately support their needs. Their call quality was unacceptable, the system was cumbersome to use, and, to make matters worse, it only sporadically worked as expected. Moreover, with staff working from home, the EMA Consulting receptionists were unable to transfer calls directly to consultants. Instead, they would receive the calls on their mobiles and need to relay the message for the consultant to call the client back, making for a disjointed and unprofessional process and subpar customer experience.
Additionally, whenever EMA Consulting needed to make changes, they needed to pay the provider and wait for the work to be completed, losing valuable time and money. Elaine Smith, General Manager at EMA Consulting, shared her frustrations with the situation, “Most of our work comes through the phone, so it is important that the call quality is good. Our provider would tell us to check our packets and there was never a resolution. There was a period where we couldn’t take calls and the whole system went down. That’s how we get business and talk to clients.” With their very business at stake, they began the search for an alternative provider.
Solution: EMA Consulting soon discovered a solution that piqued their interest, GoToConnect by LogMeIn. While prior experience had taught them to be skeptical of new solutions, their hesitations and fears were put to rest with GoToConnect’s accommodative onboarding process. “I was surprised at how good the onboarding was. I get nervous rolling out new systems because often what’s promised doesn’t happen. It was a big surprise that it happened so seamlessly which was great,” stated Elaine. Between the helpful hardware set-up service to working with the friendly LogMeIn team, Elaine added, “The fact that you can provide that service in times like these is fantastic.”
Switching from their previous provider to GoToConnect was a seamless transition. Customers didn’t know that EMA Consulting staff were still at home and couldn’t tell the difference other than recognising the improved call quality, a major win for the team.
“People have the ability to have calls while on a walk down to the café. With the GoToConnect app, clients are getting the person they’re after, whether they’re in the office or not. It’s a seamless experience and unified business front.
It doesn’t matter if our people are spread out in different suburbs, it’s like everyone is sitting in the office,” said Ashleigh Smith, Director at EMA Consulting. This aided in creating a professional façade and stellar customer experience, two desirable outcomes the team was thankful to have.
As the pandemic hit, a shift occurred in the industrial relations landscape, leaving EMA’s customers with a lot of uncertainty regarding how to move forward. Thankfully, the EMA team was able to leverage their existing access to GoToTraining as a platform to host weekly webinars to address common questions and provide critical advice to help customers through this turbulent period. This enabled EMA Consulting to stretch their limited time and resources to help more customers in a shorter amount of time – a win-win for all involved. “It was so critical to help employers to survive during this period. The ability to use GoToTraining in that instance was really important. People were in shock, but they could get information without paying $500 an hour to get advice,” said Ashleigh.
Results: As initial goals and intentions for their GoToConnect and GoToTraining investment evolved due to COVID-19, EMA Consulting witnessed unexpected (yet welcomed) results they could have never predicted. With the flexibility that GoToConnect gave the team to be able to work from anywhere and the drastic reduction in reported call quality and connectivity issues, EMA Consulting called their forced work-from-home experience a success. In fact, it was such a success that the company permanently altered their work from home policy:
“The business was so confident of the continuity of communications that we were able to say to staff, ‘Do you want to continue work from home?’ If we didn’t roll out GoToConnect, we wouldn’t have rolled that out to our staff,” said Elaine. Results of a staff survey on the new GoToConnect phone system compared to the previous system showed that all staff noticed some improvements in productivity, with the entire administration team noticing a major improvement in productivity. All respondents noted that usability and quality of calls had significantly improved.
