ZIM redefines experience, productivity and IT agility with a unified contact center

Keeping global supply chains moving

ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd., a global leader in the shipping industry, operates in over 90 countries, serving more than 32,000 customers and 300 ports worldwide. Staying ahead in this fiercely competitive marketplace means enhancing a wide range of freight services, cargo handling and digital supply chain solutions with highly responsive, personalized customer experience (CX).

Sustainability is another priority for the organization. ZIM was one of the first carriers to cut its carbon footprint and harmful fuel emissions by switching to ships powered by liquefied natural gas.

To address these priorities, ZIM created a transformation plan to boost CX while also improving its environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. This bold global program required a migration from self-hosted Cisco HCS and SAP solutions across multiple locations to one integrated CX platform.

“Our old technology could only take us so far,” said Meir Gershon, Head of Global Service and Communication at ZIM. “We wanted to improve service levels, business continuity and productivity, including for customer service representatives working from home or remote— while reducing IT costs, effort and data center footprint. And that meant moving to a more integrated communications and data setup.”

Unifying contact center, CRM and collaboration tech stacks

After evaluating solutions from leading Contact Center as a Service providers, ZIM settled on the Genesys Cloud platform to help meet its experience goals and support its ESG efforts.

“Genesys performed very well during tests in terms of quality, latency, security and so on,” said Gershon. “We were also impressed by their responsiveness and, thinking ahead, how easily voice services could be customized to our specific needs.”

Open APIs and prebuilt smart connectors were other key factors in choosing Genesys Cloud. “As well as saving a lot of time and effort on integration work, we were able to run both our outgoing SAP CRM and incoming Microsoft Dynamics and Teams systems in parallel,” said Gershon. “Thereby ensuring smooth transition, data accuracy and no business disruption.”

Guided by Genesys Professional Services and leveraging a blueprint-based approach aligned with its business goals, ZIM has successfully completed a phased rollout across more than 30 locations, achieving an average deployment time of three to four weeks per site.

“The Genesys Professional Services team are very talented and service-oriented,” said Gershon. “They were there for us throughout if we needed help or advice. For example, assisting with adoption readiness and finding the best architecture to comply with different local country regulations.”

Unlocking CX, EX and IT advantages

ZIM has seen benefits linked to its sustainability, experience and IT goals since implementing Genesys Cloud.

Retiring on-premises hosted systems has reduced its carbon footprint, while also improving business continuity through a resilient, geographically distributed Genesys Cloud architecture and robust security measures.

With the integration of Genesys Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics, ZIM customer service representatives now handle customer inquiries from within one workspace rather than constantly having to switch between screens and applications. In addition, with its Microsoft Teams integration, ZIM customer service representatives can easily see the availability of back-office colleagues and logistics and finance experts to accept a phone or video call.

The IT team has also seen notable productivity gains, having developed Genesys Cloud skills throughout the rollout by shadowing Genesys Professional Services and actively participating in deployment activities.

Updates are completed in a fraction of the time that it took previously. And the IT team spends less time fielding user issues and maintaining voice services, leaving more time for innovation — time that’s already being put to good use, for example, to deeply investigate and implement sophisticated Genesys Cloud AI solutions.

“Using the skills and knowledge we have gained  along the way helped us creating our first AI-powered Genesys virtual agents, totally in-house,” said Gershon. Other future projects under consideration include Genesys Speech and Text Analytics, Agent Copilot, and AI-driven quality assurance capabilities like scoring and evaluation tools.

ZIM is able to stretch its IT budget further now, as well. “Genesys enabled us to roll two projects into one, removing the risks of re-platforming our voice and CRM systems at the same time,” concluded Gershon. “Also, the flexible concurrent licensing model means our customer service representatives in the US can reuse licenses as their colleagues finish shift in the Far East, as part of our more cost-effective follow-the-sun contact center approach.”

To learn more about the solutions featured in this case study, visit www.genesys.com.