News & Media

The Future of Customer Service: contact centre agents training - Digital Island

Digital Island — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 20:05:36 GMT

Customers have always expected swift, efficient, and personalised support. However — the ongoing arms race of artificial intelligence (AI) means providing exceptional customer experience (CX) is now crucial to meet the higher and higher expectations of customers.

Media Release: Digital Island, now Independent from Spark, entering a new growth era - Digital Island

Iulius Toma — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 20:44:12 GMT

MEDIA RELEASE
FOR RELEASE 31 AUGUST 2026

Microsoft Teams is a phone client. That is not the same as a phone system.

Iulius Toma — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 03:36:46 GMT

There are two ways to add calling to Microsoft Teams. They give you very different businesses. Five questions decide which one you need.

Almost every business we walk into is already living inside Microsoft Teams. Meetings happen there. Messages land there. Files, contacts, projects, the daily back-and-forth — it is where the day actually gets done.

So adding phone calls to Teams looks like an easy decision. And in fairness, it usually is an easy decision to make. It is a harder decision to get right, because “we put calling into Teams” can describe two completely different outcomes, and the difference does not show up in the demo. It shows up about six weeks later, at the front desk.

The Real Cost of Running Three Vendors for One Phone System

Digital Island — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 03:24:51 GMT

Most New Zealand businesses didn’t choose to run three separate communications vendors. It happened one decision at a time: broadband from one provider because it had fibre first, mobile from another because someone got a good deal, and a phone system from whoever installed it when the office moved. Nobody sat down and designed it this way. But that’s exactly how most SME communications setups end up — assembled, not built.

The direct cost of this is usually visible: three invoices, three contract renewal dates, three account managers who don’t know the others exist. What’s less visible, and usually more expensive, is what happens when something breaks.

Take a common scenario: the office internet drops mid-morning. Is it the broadband connection, the router, the phone system, or the mobile failover? Nobody in the building can say for certain, so someone has to ring the broadband provider first, get told it’s not their end, then ring the phone system vendor, get told it’s not their end either, and eventually land on the actual cause an hour or two later. Every one of those calls is time an office manager isn’t spending on their actual job, and every hour of downtime is lost calls, missed enquiries, and a team standing around waiting.

This is the hidden cost of vendor fragmentation: not the invoices, but the coordination tax. Somebody in the business — usually whoever’s least equipped to diagnose a telecommunications fault — becomes the unpaid integrator between three companies who each have an interest in the fault being someone else’s problem.

There’s a second cost that’s harder to quantify but just as real: inconsistent service levels. A broadband provider’s idea of “priority support” and a PBX vendor’s idea of the same phrase can be wildly different, and when an SME is a small account for each of them individually, none of the three has much incentive to move quickly. Scale matters in vendor relationships, and splitting spend three ways means being a small fish in three ponds instead of a meaningful account in one.

The alternative isn’t complicated, even if the switching process can feel daunting: one provider responsible for connectivity, calling, and mobile, with a single support number and a single point of accountability. When something breaks, there’s no ambiguity about who picks up the phone, and no incentive for anyone to point elsewhere. The provider who sold the connection is the same provider who built the phone system on top of it, so they have every reason to make sure the whole stack works together — because when it doesn’t, there’s nowhere for them to hide.

This is the model Digital Island has built its business around. As an NZ-owned business communications and connectivity specialist — not a generic telco reselling someone else’s platform — Digital Island brings broadband, mobile, and business calling under one roof, backed by support that’s NZ-based and available around the clock. The point isn’t that a single vendor is always cheaper line item for line item; sometimes it isn’t. The point is that a single vendor removes the coordination tax altogether: no more triangulating between three support desks to find out whose fault an outage is, and no more discovering mid-crisis that “priority support” means something different to everyone involved.

There’s a version of this that shows up every March or June, too, when end-of-year reconciliation means someone has to match spend against budget across three completely separate billing systems, three different invoice formats, and three different customer portals with three different logins. None of that work adds value to the business — it’s pure overhead created by the vendor structure itself, not by anything the business actually needs. A single consolidated invoice from a single provider doesn’t just save an afternoon of admin twice a year; it means whoever holds the budget can actually see, at a glance, what the whole communications spend is costing the business, rather than reconstructing it from three statements that were never designed to sit next to each other.

For a growing SME, the practical test is simple: next time something goes wrong with your business communications, count how many phone calls it takes before someone actually starts fixing the problem, rather than ruling themselves out of it. If the answer is more than one, that’s not a technology problem, it’s a vendor structure problem — and one that gets more expensive, not less, as the business grows and the stakes of downtime rise.

Digital Island, now Independent from Spark, entering a new growth era

Digital Island — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:41:40 GMT

Auckland, New Zealand – 1 March 2025 – Digital Island, one of New Zealand’s leading specialists in cloud communications and contact centre solutions, announces its divestment from Spark New Zealand. It will transition to a private ownership structure, led by existing CEO, Leon Sheehan, who will co-invest alongside prominent business entrepreneur, James Reeves.

Digital Island Exclusive Pt 3: The Raw Truth About Contact Centre CX and Engagement - Digital Island

Digital Island — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:48:52 GMT

Welcome back to part three of our series covering the exclusive scoops given to us by world leader in customer experience (CX) and contact centre management, Brad Cleveland. If you’re new to this series, we were thrilled to have Brad join our exclusive Business Executive Luncheon via live stream from California.

5 Key Reasons to Transform Your Contact Centre with Immersive CX | Digital Island - Digital Island

Digital Island — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:39:12 GMT

Think about it — your customers are bouncing from Netflix to YouTube, scrolling through Instagram, and getting lost in TikTok. They're used to experiences that grab their attention and don't let go. In this world of high-engagement apps, if your contact centre is just about answering calls and ticking boxes, you're missing a beat.

It’s not you, it’s me — why your contact centre agents are leaving - Digital Island

Digital Island — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:15:29 GMT

“We are experiencing higher than expected call volumes at this time” might just be one of the most frustrating parts of the customer experience (CX) when dealing with contact centres. Little does the customer know, it’s not that you haven’t hired enough people, it’s just that they are leaving in such high numbers that it’s affecting the CX and affecting your bottom line.

Customer Experience Accelerator Lab - Digital Island

Digital Island — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:23:36 GMT

Amidst low business confidence and ongoing operational challenges, Digital Island, a leading Contact Centre solutions company, is encouraging organisations to evaluate their Contact Centres to optimise customer satisfaction, retention, and new customer acquisition.

Why Digital Humans Are About to Make Things Very Interesting - Digital Island

Digital Island — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:00:34 GMT

This isn’t your Nana’s chatbot — digital humans are very much set to disrupt the customer service industry, and will have wide-reaching effects in contact centres around the world. Let’s take a look at what these digital humans are, what they can do, and how they’re likely to upend traditional customer service models.