How The MLC Provides Omnichannel Royalty Collection Support for Music Creators with Twilio Flex, Built by VPS
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is a non-profit founded on the principle that people in the music industry deserve fair compensation for their work.
This membership-based non-profit launched in 2021 to ensure music professionals receive mechanical royalties from the streaming and downloading platforms currently dominating the industry.
The MLC sought to offer better service by responding to chats and calls quicker and by eliminating the need to provide information more than once to their members. That is why they partnered with Vision Point Systems to develop a way to improve their member support systems.
With Twilio Flex, Vision Point Systems has improved the flow, speed and performance of The Mechanical Licensing Collective’s contact center, enabling songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers to communicate seamlessly with the organization.
The MLC’s primary method of communication with members was falling short of expectations.
The contact center, which members use to connect with The MLC team, was not providing the user or employee experience the organization was hoping for. It was time for a change.
They set out to revamp the contact center, making it a more seamless experience for their own staff and the many artists they serve all around the United States.
The MLC needed to build a support center that was agile, easy on staff, and efficient.
That is when they came across Vision Point Systems through a recommendation from the team at Twilio.
Meeting the varying needs of members is critical to The MLC’s success. The MLC wants to protect and reward music creators and ensure they receive fair compensation for their work. They collaborate with a large group of members, each with different preferences and expectations. Clear and effective communication with their base is critical.
The MLC administers blanket licenses to streaming and downloading services, collects the royalties from those licenses, and pays them out to the songwriters, composers, publishers, and music creators that make up their membership.
They need a highly functional and simple contact center, that enables all their communication channels - phone calls, online chats, and email - to be connected and integrated and operate smoothly at all levels, so that their members can sign up, register their music, and receive royalties.
With a significant user-base of music professionals that rely on The MLC to ensure they get fair payment for their work, clear and open communication is a must.
However, The MLC found that its contact center infrastructure was inhibiting its ability to offer the high level of customer service its members deserved, that is when they reached out to Vision Point Systems.
Building a Harmonious Customer Service Experience
The MLC had a contact center that offered several different support channels, including voice, chat, and email, to accommodate many customer preferences. The contact center was initially run using Freshworks to facilitate their Member support. However, they quickly encountered a problem with this platform.
With Freshworks, each channel, voice, chat, and email was its own product.
That meant there needed to be a tab open for each one. This was a difficult experience for the associates, and the team struggled to consistently meet their Service Legal Agreement (SLAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Because the channels were treated as separate products, reporting, analytics, and user settings were also segregated. This led to divided and ambiguous data and a less uniform user experience.
It dawned on the team at The MLC that it was time for a change. The team settled on a new platform to base their contact center on and set out to find the right team to implement it.
“We wanted a true omni-channel support solution so we chose Twilio Flex as the tool and needed to contract a vendor to own the development work," said Lindsey Major, Head of Customer Experience at The MLC.
Using Twilio Flex was a natural solution.
The platform enables a seamless, integrated user experience, and would ease the burden on both workers and the music creators of The MLC services.
They hired a first vendor to guide them along the process of implementing Twilio Flex, but it wasn’t a natural fit.
“The original vendor simply ignored our requirements and often made decisions for us that were not aligned with the documentation provided,” said Major.
The team parted ways with the old vendor and asked Twilio for help to find a new vendor to finish this implementation.
Twilio recommended Vision Point Systems.
Meaningful Connections, Enabled through Omnichannel Touchpoints
When VPS took over the project, The MLC’s timeline had already fallen significantly behind what they intended. But VPS stepped in, and things began to pick back up.
“Our timeline was incredibly delayed, and it didn’t seem like we were making progress until VPS stepped in,” said Major.
VPS set to work learning exactly what The MLC was looking for and the different complexities behind the project. Because the timeline was behind, The MLC needed things to move quickly. The solution The MLC was looking for had several factors. It needed to have a complex integration with HubSpot and tie together the multiple channels that The MLC relied on for its customer support.
VPS provided The MLC with a set budget and timeline and managed to create a new Twilio Flex-based customer service system on time and within the agreed budget. There were several critical changes to this new environment.
“The Customer Service system allows tickets/cases to be created by phone, webchat, and web form. The system integrates with HubSpot so tickets are created automatically as Flex tasks are delivered to agents. Agents can also lookup existing HubSpot tickets in the Flex interface itself so that they don’t have to have more than one window open,”
said Jim Schweitzer, Senior Vice President of Vision Point Systems.
The new system is a great showcase of how Flex can transform a support center when implemented correctly.
Integrating Twilio Flex Improved First Response Time for The MLC by 86%
With the previous system it took them about 90 seconds to respond, with Twilio Flex it now takes The MLC only 13 seconds. Moreover, Twilio Flex reduced the abandonment rate of calls by 64%.
Before, the abandonment rate was around 11%, whereas now it is only 4%. Twilio Flex is enabling The MLC to handle a larger number of member inquiries at a faster pace.
“The MLC’s implementation of Flex embodies the perfect vision of the programmable omni-channel contact center, streamlining both the customer and agent experience by providing the right information at the right time throughout the customer service journey,” said Schweitzer.
The Vision Point Systems Difference
A contact center that is easy to utilize for customers and agents is important. It keeps an operation efficient and provides customers and employees with the positive, seamless experience they deserve. The MLC’s contact center was the product of a collaborative process between The MLC and VPS and a highly-functional, customizable platform that had the necessary means for transforming the center.
Major and The MLC team found collaboration with VPS natural and effective.
“VPS clearly had an understanding of our needs and goals with Twilio Flex. They listened, asked questions, reviewed our documentation, and came back with a clear scope and project plan. VPS was also able to hit our aggressive timelines with ease,” said Major.
The MLC services music professionals who operate in a rapidly changing industry and they provide a vital service in the streaming-dominated environment. A contact center that could scale with the growth of The MLC was a must.
The previous infrastructure the contact center relied on was holding back the ability of employees to handle a large number of requests through different channels at a rapid pace. The Twilio Flex system they now have allows for easy single-tab processing, so workers don’t have to consistently cycle through channels. It is enabling The MLC to handle a larger number of member inquiries at a faster pace.
