An industry leader delivering contact center solutions for aspiring and iconic brands: Skybridge Americas

In recent times, customers are expecting more out of the companies they receive products or services from. Can we really blame them for building up expectations? We have all received customer experiences ranging from outstanding to infuriating. Companies are under immense pressure now to deliver the right experience, and they are looking out for different ways to strike a balance between the experience they are planning to offer and limited resources along with other important things. This balance is quite difficult to achieve even for the well-versed customer-centric companies. Customer experience is an important factor as it deals with all the interactions a customer has with an enterprise throughout the life of the relationship with that brand or company.

Globally there are various companies that help brands deliver excellent customer experiences, but Skybridge Americas Inc. stands out from the rest. Skybridge Americas is a company focused on creating wow customer experiences between brands and their consumers. Your customers move seamlessly between devices and channels. They expect the same from you. At Skybridge Americas, they help you meet your customers where they are. And the company delivers a consistently superior experience across all touchpoints at every phase of the customer lifecycle. Skybridge Americas was founded in 1953 and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In conversation with Andrew Bosko, CEO of Skybridge Americas

Q. What are the challenges you solve for your clients?

As we all learned – and as countless studies show – COVID has completely shaken up the relationships between American consumers and the brands they patronized prior to 2020. Consumers experienced a whole range of deep disappointments last year. They waited on hold for shockingly long periods. They received inaccurate, often apathetic responses. Why? Because most consumer brands and their customer care partners were completely caught off guard by the stay-home orders. And just when their customers needed them the most, these brand’s customer care centers were in total chaos. They were setting up patchworked, understaffed, and unprepared skeleton crews in remote pop-up locations. That was not the experience for our clients or their customers. We had already largely left our brick-and-mortar locations and established a very robust at-home agent workforce. We know who our clients are. They are many of America’s most iconic and loved brands – the brands that are committed to providing truly superior CX. That is what we deliver. We embrace their brand values, mission, and promise – and we deliver on them. Our partners trust us because we have proven that we can deliver on that under virtually all circumstances. 

Q. How do you create a Purposeful and Consistently Executed sales process?

As with just about everything else we do, we see our sales process as led by human connections and extraordinary people skills – but supported by the latest lead management technology and a rigorous marketing process. But the truth is, you could just set all of that aside and look at it this way: the biggest key to our success and growth has been our own mindset. We don’t cling to old ways of doing things just because they worked well in the past. We know that consumer needs and loyalties change. That means our clients’ needs are ever-evolving. We are very immersed in our marketplace, staying closely engaged with our clients as well as the brands we’d like to have as future clients. There is nothing transactional about this business for us. It is extremely relationship-driven, and we aim to be the best partner that our clients could ever hope for. Our entire executive team gets involved in the sales process and begins to develop relationships with our future clients early in the process. We are always very transparent and candid with our prospects and clients. We’re constantly asking, What does our client need from us in order for them to grow?

Q. One of the major benefits of BPO that is often overlooked is the flexibility. Do you agree with this?

That is absolutely true. Before 2020, consumer brands were already discovering that to be the case. But with COVID, it quickly became clear that most in-house contact centers simply did not have the technology, process, infrastructure – or agent skills – necessary to keep up with wild swings in call volumes or customer needs. But to be honest, COVID also highlighted some pretty dramatic distinctions between BPO’s. Skybridge Americas was one of just a handful of North American contact centers that had already developed total remote capability and scalability. When companies everywhere were scrambling to figure out how to shut down their contact centers and handle customer calls, we maintained uninterrupted service levels. Our workforce was already at-home, fully supported by our cloud-based platform and conversational A.I. technology. It was seamless.

Q. What do you feel are the reasons behind your company’s growth?

I believe there are many reasons, but I’d highlight two of the greatest contributors to our growth. First, our very deep relationship orientation has allowed us to forge true partnerships. Our customers depend on us to represent them by showing care and providing stellar service to every customer. That doesn’t just drive our relationships with our clients. It really drives the way our agents see their interactions with every customer. They know they’re in charge of nurturing the relationships between our clients and their customers. Second, I think that the way we rose to the enormous challenges last year – not just as a consistent partner to our own clients, but also in the ways we offered to be a resource to non-client organizations which were struggling – put a spotlight on us. Our reputation for nimbleness and innovation, and expertise was certainly reinforced last year, and I see that contributing to the increased growth we are seeing now.

Q. What does the future hold for Skybridge Americas and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Absolutely! We expect to achieve aggressive plans for organic growth, new client acquisition, and an expansion of our strategic partnerships. That, of course, will demand that we maintain our technology investments, especially as it pertains to our use of SkyAI. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what A.I. can do in terms of supporting our teams and delivering even higher levels of service.

Meet the leader behind the success of Skybridge Americas

Since joining Skybridge America’s in 2016, CEO Andrew Bosko has been leading the company through a dramatic brand transformation. With 25 years of executive leadership experience in the industry, Andy has a clear sense of how customer care contact centers need to evolve in order to stay relevant and in demand. He has successfully overseen major technology and systems upgrades, redesigns of process and infrastructure, and the transition to

at-home customer care agents. Before earning his MBA from Northwestern University, Mr. Bosko attended Loyola University Chicago, on an athletic scholarship for swimming and water polo, helping his team advance to the NCAA tournament three times.

“We’re a team of 1,000 highly skilled, customer-focused problem solvers, providing world class Omni Channel Customer Contact Services.”