Interview with Salesforce, Cisco, and Bucher + Suter. This interview was originally published in German on TeleTalk.
How large companies are using established standards to make their customer communications future-proof, efficient, and coordinated—while upgrading their customer satisfaction and planning reliability.
Service upgrade and IT consolidation
Over the years, customers have become increasingly demanding in their search for immediate answers and solutions – either in person on the phone, but also across multiple channels. Unsurprisingly, they expect fast and competent service immediately. At the same time, there is growing pressure to consolidate, reduce costs, and increase the value of customer communications. More for less! We discuss whether and how this can be achieved with experts Tom Hirschbach-Taddey from Cisco, Matthias Buba from Salesforce, and Bruno Grünig from Bucher + Suter. Together, these partners support many corporations and their brands, as well as regulated companies, in making their customer service future-proof, efficient, and well-orchestrated.
Tom Hirschbach-Taddey is responsible for the collaboration business in Germany for enterprise customers and global accounts at Cisco Systems GmbH. Tom has held leading positions at Cisco for 10 years and has been active in telecommunications for 25 years. Together with his team, he advises large German companies on Cisco’s collaboration hardware and software portfolio for workplace, calling, and customer experience services.
Bruno Grünig has been driving project success at contact center partner Bucher + Suter for 10 years in various roles, most recently as Strategic Sales Lead for the DACH region. Bruno listens to customers and translates their needs into reliable solutions. Bucher + Suter has been enhancing the service success of companies for over 25 years and is one of the preferred partners of Cisco and Salesforce.
Matthias Buba has been a Senior Strategic Account Manager at Salesforce for eight years, helping DAX 40 companies achieve success with Salesforce cloud solutions, particularly Service Cloud. He works closely with business leaders and is highly valued by customers as a consultant thanks to his more than 25 years of industry experience.
Seamless enterprise communications infrastructure from the Salesforce Platform and Cisco, powered by Bucher + Suter.
Salesforce drives business: The platform is the AI-powered 360° business application for all customer communications. It connects data and teams from service, sales, and marketing. For telephony and contact center capabilities that are missing in the Salesforce ecosystem, contact centers can rely on the powerful solutions from Cisco. Cisco has been the leading provider of security, networking, collaboration, contact center, and telephony solutions for decades. Bucher + Suter creates a seamless connection between Cisco and Salesforce and, as an experienced contact center partner, offers consulting and solution expertise.
Advantages in action…
Many employees who work with customers use Salesforce, the central system for all customer communication. Cisco’s industry-leading routing technology identifies callers and, depending on the settings, forwards them to an AI agent/AI self-service or the appropriate agent, or offers a callback service. Cisco also filters out distracting background noise on both sides – announcements at train stations or airports and barking dogs are a thing of the past. Agents receive a 360° view of the customer with the call and direct solution support via Agent Assist. There is no need to switch between applications or search for information. Calls are automatically transcribed by Cisco in real time, summarized, and documented in Salesforce with the correct contact and case. This ensures that all customer communications are correctly assigned and quickly available in Salesforce. Salesforce becomes the single source of truth for all customer data and interactions across all channels. Contact centers optimize wait times, abandonment rates, call durations, first resolution rates, and customer and agent satisfaction. This enables efficient workflows and highly personalized interactions with every contact. The contact center can provide more sales-oriented advice and transform from a cost center to an estimated value and profit center.
Enterprise customers receive a tried-and-tested solution for all their customer communications – with two globally established vendors as the basis and Bucher + Suter with its solutions and services as the bridge.
TeleTalk: You have insights into the service projects of large companies in Germany and Switzerland. What is your impression? Where do the problems lie? Are they facing similar challenges?
Matthias Buba: Customer communication is becoming more seamless, intuitive, and efficient. The goal is to do “more with less.” That means fewer systems and less integration effort, and more standardization. At the same time, business value needs to increase at low cost, fueled by AI automation. The pressure to transform is enormous, especially for automotive manufacturers. Some energy companies and utilities, on the other hand, are already very well positioned and are managing to combine data and communication in a connected, efficient customer experience. In the premium B2C segment and in the B2B sector as a whole, it is not just a question of pure cost considerations, but also of outstanding service quality – and consolidation is needed here too. This is exactly where we come in, together with Cisco and Bucher + Suter. Two established technologies and vendors and a proven connection. This allows companies to rely on standards that remove complexity and create the basis for scalability. This leads to greater transparency, creates global synergies, accelerates responsiveness, and reduces costs.
Tom Hirschbach-Taddey: Salesforce and Cisco have been established partners for numerous enterprise customers for many years. 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies use our collaboration platform and endpoints or our network infrastructure, security, or data center solutions for secure communication and data exchange. So it makes sense to leverage the synergies with Salesforce in the area of customer communication and to connect Cisco as a high-quality, secure telephone channel. This also applies to future viability. After all, the increasingly networked and automated AI business world can only function if optimal connectivity and transcribable conversations are guaranteed – free from background noise and interference. We guarantee this at Cisco. In addition, data and knowledge must be available in a uniform manner and used intelligently in real time – this is achieved through integration with Salesforce.
TeleTalk: And Bucher + Suter brings these worlds together?
Bruno Grünig: Correct, we bring together the strengths of Cisco and the Salesforce platform – and connect them to suit the rest of the infrastructure, requirements, and goals of our customers. With 120 contact center experts in Germany and Switzerland alone, we offer in-depth expertise in Cisco and Salesforce, AI and voice automation, and the specific requirements of large and regulated companies. Our focus is on improving service quality and automation with AI, especially in the area of voice. Voice is the most expensive channel, but also the most important. Together with our partners, we also meet the most stringent national and international security and compliance requirements.
Tom Hirschbach-Taddey: Our cloud communications platform is the only one worldwide with EU Code of Conduct Cloud Level 3 certification. And our cloud services recently received the comprehensive C5 certification in accordance with the 121 criteria of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). You can’t get more certified security than that. And that doesn’t come at the expense of usability: our Cloud Contact Center has received an impressive 4.7 out of 5 stars in over 300 customer reviews on Gartner Peer Insights.
TeleTalk: Gartner recently predicted that more than 40 percent of current projects in the field of agentic AI will be discontinued by the end of 2027. Market researchers cite rising costs, unclear business benefits, and insufficient security as reasons for this. What recommendations do you have for the use of AI?
Bruno Grünig: In its report, Gartner recommends that organizations focus more on productivity across the entire company. There has been a lot of experimentation with AI in specialist departments. Large companies often have dozens of AI solutions for specific channels, countries, and departments, which hinders a seamless customer experience and makes it complicated and difficult to scale. With Salesforce Data Cloud and Cisco, we now offer companies bundled AI power in all relevant areas. Without media discontinuity, effortlessly connected with the data lake and integrated into the heart of Salesforce. AI for end-to-end customer communication covered by just two major vendors. This creates security, scalability, and a predictable return on investment. However, you can also use and integrate specialized AI solutions or other solutions that are, for example, “politically mandated.” We offer a wide range of options and integration possibilities.
Setting the right strategic course for AI use is worthwhile: Gartner predicts that by 2028, at least 15 percent of everyday work decisions will be made autonomously by agent-based AI – that’s a huge leap in efficiency.
Matthias Buba: A consolidated approach also provides a much better basis for planning. Most people don’t think about that when it comes to AI in service and customer communication. Our comprehensive solution provides data from thousands of touchpoints across the entire customer journey. With our AI platform Agentforce and our DataCloud, companies can better identify trends and make more accurate forecasts. They can then derive actions that are integrated into their digital guidelines. More realistic forecasts can save large companies, their suppliers, and partners millions in planning, procurement, logistics, and production. AI is also much better at identifying and reporting internal issues when problems are reported frequently in the service department. It can also quickly and specifically inform customers about solutions, for example in the event of product recalls. As you can see, a currated, consolidated, AI-supported approach to customer communication is becoming increasingly important for businesses – it’s not just about reducing workloads or saving costs.
Bruno Grünig: And companies become more responsive and resilient in the face of mass rushes. For our insurance customers, for example, disasters such as storms with flooding, hail damage, and the like are a huge issue. People expect quick information and help in these situations. Thousands of concerned customers contact us at the same time in a very short period. What can we do? With Cisco’s routing power, Salesforce’s data and AI excellence, and our AI and contact center expertise, we can resolve such peak cases so that no customer has to wait and everyone is helped quickly. What’s more, agents can directly offer the right insurance for natural hazards if callers are not adequately insured. Customers enjoy great service without waiting, the insurer gains upsell potential, the call center can operate with fewer specialists, and service managers have fewer gray hairs from peak-time stress.
TeleTalk: So is service the sales channel of the future?
Tom Hirschbach-Taddey: In some industries, after-sales services are already the most important cash cow for companies. And in the premium B2C segment, as well as in the B2B sector as a whole, service is a very critical and relevant USP. Customer service is considered solution-oriented and has a more positive support image than a traditional salesperson. For premium omnichannel customer service, agents need the best working conditions and a dynamic, flexible work environment. Employees must be able to work just as well in the company, in the call center, on the road, at home, or on site at the customer’s location. We make this possible: quickly, securely, and with any device, whether it’s distributed teams, remote or hybrid working. This makes workforce organization much easier.
And in a world of collaboration, constant change, outsourcing and insourcing, and heterogeneous partner landscapes, we help implement visions of a highly personalized, data-driven customer experience while complying with strict data protection and integration standards. We are already in the process of transforming customer experience into customer excitement, which correlates directly with higher customer loyalty and growth.
TeleTalk: Last question: How quickly can you get started with your solutions? With large tech providers such as Cisco and Salesforce, one tends to think of strategic, large-scale, long-term IT projects.
Bruno Grünig: Our common goal is faster, more scalable business value. Manageable, measurable, actionable projects. Smooth, fast migration to digital transformation based on clear business cases.
Interested parties can get to know the solution directly in a demo sandbox. We then work with the customer to implement the most important use cases in a customer-specific sandbox with Salesforce and Cisco. Such pilots can then go live after just a few weeks. Scaling then takes place step by step in line with external requirements or internal demand.
Technologically and in terms of our expertise, everything fits together very well. Together, we want to make a real difference in customer communication for large companies. Our customers also see and appreciate this synergy and our drive.
Get in touch
Bruno Grünig, Strategic Sales Lead,
Bucher + Suter AG
Stubenwald-Allee 19
64625 Bensheim
Tel: +49 6251 8622 500
Email: Bruno.Gruenig@bucher-suter.com
Book an appointment directly
Cisco is a trademark of Cisco, Inc.
Salesforce, AppExchange, and Service Cloud are trademarks of Salesforce, Inc.
