SalesTech Interview With Eric Dos Santos, Regional Manager MEA and Co-Founder at Dimelo, a RingCentral Company

Sales Tech Journey

Tell us about your journey into Sales. How did you arrive at Dimelo, a RingCentral Company?

I’ve always been passionate about customer service. This led me to co-found Dimelo, alongside Stéphane Lee back in 2006. We aimed to provide companies with the most efficient tools possible to improve their customer relations and better connect with their clients. When we created the platform, it was at the beginning of the so-called “Web 2.0” where there were just forums and blogs, and when smartphones, chats or messaging channels didn’t exist.

We immediately realized that everything was going to evolve very quickly and that the customer relations market was about to completely reinvent itself, which was exactly where we wanted to take Dimelo. We understood that companies had to adapt themselves to ‘evolving technology’ in order to meet their customers’ latest expectation.

This, in turn, led us to the beginning of our journey and brought me to where I am now, leading Dimelo’s international sales activities. Our recent acquisition by RingCentral, the well-known provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions, will give our clients the best global solution to meet their customers’ new communications preferences.

What is RingCentral Engage for a customer care team and how do you differentiate it from other customer care platforms?

RingCentral Engage is a customer engagement platform based on the SaaS model. The platform centralizes management of all digital channel interactions including messaging and in-app messaging, email, social media, live chat, community forums, and distributes them automatically to agents based on availability, skills, language, customer profile and more. At Dimelo, we’ve always been committed to helping companies smoothly facilitate their interactions with clients by allowing them to manage all their digital customer care channels within a single platform.

I’d say one of our main differentiators from other customer care platforms is our open-platform approach. Thanks to the interconnection of the different communication tools, customers can get in touch with companies at any time, without depending on customer service opening hours. On the other side, agents can have a less stressful job while providing a more efficient service.

Also, thanks to our AI software, Dimelo platform can accurately categorize all the incoming messages and forward them to the right agent based on urgency and competency. Another key differentiator is that integrating new channels, such as Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Business Solution, into our solution help us future-proofing our business, maintaining our value over time, innovating and keep up with customers’ expectations.

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Sales Vision

What is the sales culture that you represent? Why is it important to build a sales-focused culture for any business?

Having a solid sales culture is key to long-term sustainability and business growth. At Dimelo we’ve created a dynamic sales culture based on nurturing our relationships with both clients and prospects. This is mainly based on understanding their needs and providing them with a personalized solution that matches with their industry’s specific challenges.

To build success, today’s brands have to adapt their customer relations strategies to their ever-changing customers’ needs, therefore, adopting new digital channels to interact with them. Our mission is to support our clients who are going through this digital transformation process and help them to quickly implement the best solution.

Tell us about your Product Strategy and your vision to build high-performance, data-driven teams.

The strength of our product is providing companies with an extremely flexible solution that could match them with market evolution. By offering businesses an easy and hassle-free way to manage all their digital interactions with customers, RingCentral Engage aims to facilitate companies’ innovation, while remaining competitive and improving their brand image. Nowadays, customers expect to connect with businesses in the same way they chat with friends and family, using messaging services. That’s why we recently integrated

Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Business Solution in our platform offer a powerful, engaging new way for businesses to connect with their customers where they are, and when they want.

Customer Success

What are your predictions on the customer care landscape for the next years?

The growth of messaging in customer care will be one of the major customer care trends for the coming years. It offers a very simple and immediate way to contact companies and it will definitely become the main customer care channel in the next few years. To be successful, companies will have to offer a smoother, more seamless customer experience and to do so will require, or will have already acquired, a digital-first business strategy. Last but not least, AI. Artificial Intelligence-powered solutions are set to transform the customer care industry in the next few years, where I believe 50% of customer care will be machine-to-machine.

What are the core strategies you focus on for global business development?

The core strategies for our global business development focuses on all the B2C industries that have large volumes of interactions across different channels — live chat, email, messaging, messaging in-app and social media. They are mainly telcos, banks, insurance companies, utilities and transports. Besides that, Dimelo has a strong presence in numerous emerging markets too, which is reflected in the expansion of our global teams, having recently opened up new offices in Singapore and Nairobi. The Asian market is also an important territory for us, as Asian customers are already very ‘digitally savvy’ and tend to use messaging apps a lot to interact with companies.

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My Sales Magnifier

Which events and webinars do you mostly attend and why?

As a customer care professional, I try and attend as many global events as possible within this industry across Europe, Asia and Africa. I’m also very keen on being updated on the latest from our core industries, such as banks, insurance companies and telcos to better understand their challenges and expectations in the customer care department and work on how to solve them accordingly. Events are also a great way to showcase our expertise and share valuable knowledge of the industry with companies face to face, which helps them combat any challenges or pain points they may come across.

Your advice to other CMOs and sales professionals in the AdTech industry.

When presenting your product, make sure you’ve first introduced yourself and your company, highlighting knowledge of the market and of the clients’ challenges. The second step is truly listening to your customers and prospects. Start a conversation with them, listen to their concerns, their needs, their expectations.

During this dialogue, always communicate as simply as possible; use concrete examples and a clear language, always refer to what customers do, explain your product or your solutions in a clear way and always help them to understand the process. Last but not least, when trying to be innovative, try and learn, live from your own experiences and implement the changes accordingly to improve on your learnings.

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Tag a person whose answers to these questions would like to read from the industry.

Julien Rio, Head of Marketing at Dimelo, a RingCentral Company

Thank You, Eric, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again, soon.