Blacc Spot Media, Inc.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior marketing technologist at an online publication.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

We needed a new SMS-based web application to send out messages to our subscribers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed the entire application for us so we could send out promotions through text messages. The team worked in Twilio on the backend with an Angular stack.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five people, including a project manager, a business analyst, and two developers.

How did you come to work with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

A sales representative at Twilio recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2020, and our work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

It’s been a great experience working with them. We’re currently in the maintenance phase and they’ve been very helpful. They’re rock stars and always finish on time or early. The team has also been quick to jump on any bugs.

How did Blacc Spot Media, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They used an agile development methodology, with weekly check-ins. They followed up if we didn’t respond in time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve done a great job so far. I’m definitely looking forward to working with them in phase two.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, it was one of the better experiences I’ve had with software development.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of Ad Astra, a leading interpretation and translation service and localization company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

We wanted to get away from AT&T and their RingCentral platform, and onto a new phone system. Blacc Spot Media helped us with the transition to our new platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

From the outset, Blacc Spot Media helped us think through our major problems and identify the right solution for us. We ended up moving to Twilio, and the team supported us throughout the entire migration.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Tahira (COO), our case manager, and Lantre (Founder & CEO). They were both very hands-on.

How did you come to work with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

We were interviewing two or three other vendors before we found Blacc Spot Media, but they weren’t working out. When we did find Blacc Spot Media, we set up a meeting for the next day. The team listened and understood exactly what the issue was right away.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a little more than $2,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April–June of this year. It should’ve taken a few weeks, but the project was held up multiple times by things outside of Blacc Spot Media’s control. We’re looking to work with Blacc Spot Media again in the future.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Blacc Spot Media did what they said they were going to do. They went above and beyond, recommending different features within the Twilio platform to ensure we were getting the best services. 

Even today, Landre keeps an eye on our account and lets us know if there are any issues we didn’t catch. We’re not even working with them anymore, and they’re still keeping an eye out for us. It really incentivizes us to work with the team again as soon as we’re able.

How did Blacc Spot Media, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They managed the project well. We had weekly check-ins, where the team gave a report on their progress. We also had a phone call every week, and Tahira was always concerned with making sure we knew they were there to help. They were a very grounded and responsive team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They had a really nice energy about them. The team was personable and poignant, and they never wasted our time. It was also nice to work with a Black-owned tech business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I can think of. They’re top-notch.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The more information you can provide them, the better, so Blacc Spot can know exactly what you want.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a government transit entity, and our coverage encompasses five counties and approximately 30 cities. We’re basically the main metro for the San Francisco Bay Area. 

I’m an analyst in the organization, and my scope of work includes managing IT projects for Customer Services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

The project serves our Transit Information Center, which is a contact center for any transit-related questions and more.

Due to budgetary cuts, we’ve had to reduce our coverage, and we can no longer provide customer support past 6 p.m or on the weekends. We needed a solution to help our customers when the call center closed, so we engaged Blacc Spot Media to develop an interactive voice (IVR) system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

At the outset of the engagement, Blacc Spot Media assigned a project manager and developers, and started the discovery phase for our functional requirements. From there, they took us all the way to development, UAT, and launch.

The main IVR tool has a text-to-voice functionality for customers, and also transcribes messages to text for our Salesforce CRM platform. It uses Twilio, which works with the Zoho Desk CRM. We input knowledge-base articles into Zoho Desk to be integrated with Twilio. 

Whenever a customer calls in for information, they can select articles by topic from the IVR menu. The articles entered into Zoho Desk will be read out to customers via Twilio. The more detailed transit data like real-time departures, schedules, and service advisories come from our internal API feed, which isn’t available to the public in its entirety.

We’re also using Salesforce to create tickets from customers that had additional questions, which couldn’t be addressed by the available articles in Zoho or the API feed. When a customer leaves a message, a case is created and the voice messages are transcribed. Blacc Spot also set it up so that the voice MPEG files are attached, given that some of the Twilio transcriptions need improvement.

Blacc Spot also developed a highly customized dashboard for us. One of its main purposes is reporting: how many customers are calling over a period of time, what topics they’re selecting from the IVR, and which stations have the most arrivals and departures. In addition, the dashboard allows us to manually add ad hoc messages outside of the API feed, and add users and change their permissions.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Lantre (Founder and CEO), who acted as a co-project-manager, and Tahira (COO) was the officially-designated project manager. We engaged with some of the software testers toward the end, during the UAT. The three main contacts from Blacc Spot were all very good and very accommodating. 

How did you come to work with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

They were recommended by our partner transit agency. Blacc Spot had built their IVR successfully, and we decided to go with them after some initial conversations.

How much have you invested with them?

The original budget we agreed on was in the $60,000 area. There was a hiccup with our IT department around the data needed for the scheduling information after Blacc Spot started the development work. Changing gears on the API feed cost another $11,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the conversation with Blacc Spot and provided them the scope in October 2019. We worked out some budgetary numbers to see if we wanted to continue, and we also had a hiccup right after discovery, at the start of development, which delayed things by 2–3 weeks.

We launched less than one month ago in June. We’re going to be discussing a maintenance service contract with Blacc Spot, in case the data we use in the IVR changes, there are breaks in the system or any of the software packages used to build the system change, and it breaks our system.

Right now, there’s not going to be any continuing development work for the transit information center. I work at the customer service department headquarters, and there’s also the company store, which is another potential customer for IVR. We’re working with Blacc Spot on a maintenance contract right now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We haven’t received any complaints so far, but due to the pandemic, our ridership was down 90% when we launched. It’s increased with some significance, but it’s still around 50% down. However, it’s live, and it seems there aren’t that many bugs with it, as they were all ironed out during UAT.  This automated tool could importantly serve as a back-up if our staffed contact center needed to shut down during the pandemic.

Some things were technically out of scope on the UAT part, but they were willing to make those changes. We were happy about that. Also, they were available to us whenever we needed to make an ad hoc call about internal information or deliverables.

If we ever look to make a second IVR platform, there’s a very high chance we’ll return to Blacc Spot. We probably will need to look at other vendors, since we’re a government agency and need to follow certain protocols, but we’ll definitely consider Blacc Spot.

How did Blacc Spot Media, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn’t share any project management tools between our two groups. The main communication was over a status meeting using Zoom or UberConference. We used email or phone calls whenever we had ad hoc questions.

Tahira gave us weekly status updates and provided any necessary documentation. She provided running status documentation on requirements, timelines, UAT statuses, and risks affecting the launch dates. She also set up weekly status meetings. 

Blacc Spot’s whole team was accommodating and patient. My managers aren’t as technical, and they needed explanations during our weekly discussions. Blacc Spot’s entire team was very patient in understanding their client’s technical aptitude.

We had a 2–3–week increase in development time because of the hiccup with changing gears from the static API feed to the dynamic one, but our launch date only got pushed back by about a week or a week and a half. Blacc Spot was able to minimize the delay on our part, which was appreciated. They worked on some other things while they waited for us to sort that out internally.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their accommodation and patience. They were very easy to work with, which is much appreciated. We’re not necessarily a technology department, so our main stakeholders didn’t have high technical aptitudes. 

This was my first time working on an IVR, so many things were new to me also. I didn’t have a lot of business analysis experience before this, and this project helped me learn a lot.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only area where there was some frustration on our management’s side was the change order. From my perspective, that was understandable. It wasn’t in the original scope, and much of it was attributed to a lack of coordination on our part.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the principal marketing representative for Capitol Corridor, an inner-city passenger rail service operating between San Jose and Sacramento, California. We also have connecting buses that expand our service to cover most of far-northern and the central part of the state.

I manage a lot of our marketing activities and our customer experience program.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

When I came to the organization four years ago, the phone system was basic. Customers were able to call, and we had call center agents Monday through Friday, which helped with basic questions about schedules, trip planning, and real-time status alerts.

Beyond that, escalated calls about complaints or anything outside of the agents’ scope were all forwarded to a voicemail line. We checked that line daily, but there was a lot of delay in responding to people. In addition to that, we didn’t have a dedicated person to handle those escalated calls.

To add a bit more perspective, we’re part of the Amtrak network. They’re our service provider, so a lot of people think they’re riding Amtrak, which makes ticketing confusing. When passengers are purchasing their tickets, they’re buying them through Amtrak’s booking system when it’s our service.

Our challenge was that we didn’t have the infrastructure to provide the needed level of support. By and large, the average age of our passengers is 40–45, and we found that the ones calling in needed a bit more assistance, especially since we have a lot of unstaffed stations along our routes, and they couldn’t just stop by their local station. We needed a system that would allow someone to get as much information as they could over the phone.

We researched a bunch of interactive voice response (IVR) platforms before we got to the point of working with Blacc Spot Media. We knew the technology was there, and it had become more affordable.

There were a lot of SaaS programs, or we could just do something in-house. I looked at options like TOPdesk and finally landed on Twilio around the fall of 2018. I’d built some of our other technology solutions in-house, so I wanted to see if it was something I could do, but we decided just to call in some experts.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had to build out what our needs were, which was having a system that could do everything a call agent could do. The challenge was that we still had call agents, and they were entitled to their work, so we needed a system that had specific business rules. During the day, the system would handle everything the agent couldn’t, and it would do everything on nights and weekends. We’d have 24-hour support.

We also had to look at it with the lens of having a system that could answer questions for which we’d been using a few different systems, like Zoho Desk, where we have our knowledge base. We have train statuses and alerts coming from GovDelivery.

Blacc Spot Media was able to work with all the different APIs and integrate them into Twilio. They built a dashboard through which we could see what was happening with our calls. We let them know what systems we were using for communication and providing information. They did their research to figure out those systems.

We could program Twilio to just read our website, but Blacc Spot Media suggested it would probably be better to add some coding into the API. That would format it exactly how we wanted, and allow us to add rules on how much an alert should be stored or remain retrievable by Twilio.

We looked at each system, and Blacc Spot Media spent time digging into Zoho Desk to see if it provided the experience we were looking for. Articles we already had in Zoho were pretty long, intended for people navigating our website to read them.

The idea was to create some shorter ones that made more sense to listen to. Their team also implemented the option to send those over text message, so people would have the information stored on their mobile devices.

They did a thorough analysis of all the technologies we were using and came up with a solution for how those would talk to each other, the length of time data being stored, and where we would go in order to see data or call interactions.

What is the team composition?

Most of our interactions were with three people from their side: Lantre (Founder & CEO), Tahria (COO), who acted as the project manager, and one of their lead developers.

How did you come to work with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

We spent some time doing research to find out exactly how much it was going to cost for both the software and the support we needed. We reached out to different developers that could help us with this, and we happened to find Blacc Spot Media.

We went down platforms like Clutch, and we kept finding that Blacc Spot Media had a broad and diverse-enough background to handle something like this. They were one of the preferred vendors of Twilio, who did recommend them. As a government agency, we do have to put things out for bid. That way, people can compete for the contracts.

Twilio is almost designed in such a way that a layman or someone with some technical skills can go in and do some simple scripts themselves. We have a dynamic environment, given that we have a relationship with Amtrak, and those calls have to be handled in a certain way.

We needed a system that could give out information as if none of that chaos was going on in the background, and Blacc Spot Media seemed able to handle that kind of project.

How much have you invested with them?

The first contract was for $70,000 to build everything and implement all of the systems. We paid $40,000 for the period of July 2019–June 2020, including maintenance and system enhancements. It’s gone really well, and we feel that we want to do more.

Their annual maintenance fee is around $20,000. They can bill us monthly, but we prefer quarterly. If there are no releases and they don’t have to do anything, then we won’t get charged that full amount.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Blacc Spot Media in March 2019, and we completed it in late-June, early-July, as expected.

With the first contract, we got everything built, and they agreed to stay on with us after that.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve been thoroughly satisfied with Blacc Spot Media as a partner. Our company has about 1.7 million riders a year, and we have about 17 fulltime employees, which includes marketing, engineering, and our budget and finance person. Since we don’t have an in-house tech to support us, we decided to continue with them on a maintenance agreement.

If we ever hit a kink or we have a question, we can email or text them and get a response back that same day. The team is very flexible in their approach, and they’re willing to really learn our business and come up with a solution that fits. I never felt that they were trying to push a solution on me; it was more a matter of letting them understand what we were trying to accomplish and coming up with a solution that made sense.

The process has gone so well that our managing agency decided to build a similar product based on the groundwork we’ve done. Prior to COVID-19, their ridership was 400,000 a day, which is much larger than ours. Their project ran about the same time, and it cost them around the same as our first contract.

Both of our organizations have been pleased. I’ve received feedback that Blacc Spot Media is very professional and organized, and they provide the tools to set up for success and document everything as we go along.

How did Blacc Spot Media, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very organized. Their team essentially set up the framework for the project. All I had to do was set up the scope and tell them what I wanted to accomplish. They put that into their own document and ran their own discovery phase. Then, it was more along the lines of a traditional project management workflow.

We could keep fact-focused on what we were doing, and parking-lot anything that was out of scope. If we felt something wasn’t working, we could make adjustments as we needed. We gave them a lot of feedback all the way through, and they made adjustments as we went along.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We work with a lot of vendors, and I’d rate Blacc Spot Media’s level of professionalism as excellent. We feel that it’s a trusted relationship. Regardless of our background in terms of knowing how all the pieces work, Blacc Spot Media has the ability to translate that information to us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. They’ve just been easy to work with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients shouldn’t be afraid to ask. Blacc Spot Media will try to make it work. If the client’s started down a path and they need to course-correct, they shouldn’t wait until the end.

Blacc Spot Media can work with us and stay within budget. Once we go in for the money and plan to spend an amount, we don’t have the flexibility of just adding another $1,000–$5,000. What we have is what we’ve committed to, and Blacc Spot Media understands that. It’s always transparent as well, which I appreciate.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior product manager for a dental aligners business. Right now, my main product is the delivery of data. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

We have locations that allow customers to get their teeth scanned, so we can create aligners and a plan to correct their teeth. In growing our business, we’ve had to put up shops pretty quickly in co-working spaces. On the day of appointments, customers had trouble finding our locations. We wanted them to be able to text us for quick directions to the shop.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their main goal was to create a GUI for our care representatives to use to interact with our customers quickly. The process started with a series of meetings about requirements. They’d document those requirements for future reference. Then, they started the programming and development of the interface. We later entered a testing stage before going live. Since then, there has been a continued enhancement to that service. 

What is the team composition?

There was a project manager, business analyst, and between 1–3 developers. 

How did you come to work with Blacc Spot Media, Inc.?

They were recommended to us by an account representative. We were in contact with many other organizations, who were also submitting bids for the work. Their team gave us the most reasonable timeline and flexibility. They described how they would overcome relevant challenges. 

How much have you invested with them?

The initial contract was about $200,000. We’ve spent a bit more on enhancements since.  

What is the status of this engagement?

This project lasted from October 2018–February 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

 Their product increased our show rate by over 20% after delivery alone. They came in with the expertise to provide us with a strong UI to enhance our customer service abilities. We also have system administrators who can manage user accounts and locate older communications between customers and their service representatives.   

The product was also easy to use. Our representatives understood how to operate it after a simple, hour-long training. 

How did Blacc Spot Media, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They were responsive to our needs throughout, even after our contract expired. If we had questions, they were always willing to get back to us. At one point, we wanted to speed up the project even more, and they worked with us to assign additional resources to the account. Despite our desire to move more quickly, they didn’t sacrifice quality. In doing so, they put together an accurate project timeline. 

The customer service aspect of our relationship has always been great. At the end of the project, they provided thorough documentation that we’ve been able to reference for other initiatives. We communicated before, during, and after our weekly status meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were never in the dark about their progress. Our company was transitioning from being a startup to a genuine enterprise during this project. They understood our company and were understanding of our desire to move through the project quickly. They took their time to understand the scope of the project to minimize problems and surprises later on. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing jumps out at me because they held true to their promises.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have your more technical staff members involved early in the project. That will help you minimize surprises later on.