UNOX Meets 95% of Service-Level Customer Requests, Drives Innovation by Going All In on AWS

UNOX’s mission is to create “intelligent” ovens for the food service equipment industry that can perform tasks like adapting temperature and humidity to optimize the cooking process. But by 2019, UNOX’s customer service technologies needed a boost to keep up with its impressive Internet of Things (IoT) ovens. “Our on-premises contact center lacked the capability to report key performance indicators and metrics,” says Gabriele Ballarin, chief information officer at UNOX. “We couldn’t measure the customer satisfaction level, and customers on hold were hanging up before their calls were answered.”

UNOX revolutionized its customer service on Amazon Web Services (AWS) by using Amazon Connect, a simple-to-use omnichannel cloud contact center. After that success, UNOX decided to go all in on AWS, migrating its on-premises SAP enterprise resource planning system and high-performance analytics appliance (HANA) infrastructure and its corporate website and product configurator to the cloud. It also began using AWS serverless services to create new cutting-edge projects for data-driven cooking and smart ovens. By going all in on AWS, UNOX has experienced an overall increase in cost savings, time optimization, and customer satisfaction.

UNOX, an international company headquartered in Italy, designs and manufactures professional ovens for food service operators. It uses IoT technologies to provide customers with data, information, and artificial intelligence–generated ideas.

Before it migrated to AWS, UNOX’s technology infrastructure was all on premises or on other cloud providers, which gave rise to several issues. Its on-premises contact center didn’t provide adequate data or transparency and didn’t provide local phone numbers for businesses operating in other countries. UNOX also wanted to innovate faster to become a leader in data-driven cooking technology, but its cloud infrastructure didn’t provide the scalability or insight into customer needs necessary to achieve this goal.

In 2018 Ballarin realized AWS could provide the key to solving these challenges when he saw a presentation about how to establish a contact center in hours using Amazon Connect. “It really impressed me and gave UNOX the motivation to pursue AWS,” he says.

View the UNOX Breakout session from re:Invent, “Smart products and machines for  new revenue streams (MFG204).”

In 2019 UNOX used AWS solutions to revamp its customer service call center. It needed a scalable solution that didn’t require agents to constantly manage phones. Amazon Connect—which provides tools for task management, real-time and historical analytics, and skills-based routing, all with pay-as-you-go pricing—fit the bill.

UNOX launched a pilot program in France, creating the contact flows in a few weeks. When it saw immediate benefits, it expanded the program to its sales and after-sales teams and then to other European branches. Soon it began to use the Salesforce integration provided by AWS, along with the free integration managed by AWS developers, enabling classic computer telephony integration workflows, like pop-up screens.

After experiencing the benefits of Amazon Connect, UNOX saw the potential in expanding its use of AWS. It decided to migrate its business-critical SAP HANA infrastructure, which was entirely on premises, to the AWS Europe (Milan) Region. UNOX completed the configuration of its SAP HANA infrastructure in just 6 hours using AWS Launch Wizard, which offers a guided way of sizing, configuring, and deploying AWS resources for third-party applications. It finished the migration in 1 week.

UNOX then used Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)—an object storage service built to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere—to migrate its corporate website and product configurator. “AWS helped train our developers, which impacted their performance because they can now deliver more on each project faster,” says Ballarin.

UNOX quickly built up steam as a leader in data-driven cooking and smart ovens by using AWS IoT services. “IoT cooking brings a lot of economic value to the customer: the intelligent technologies save energy while delivering a reliable and predictable cooking result, and the ovens don’t have to be supervised,” says Matteo Lora, digital experience team leader at UNOX. The company used AWS IoT services and AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service that lets users run code without provisioning or managing servers, to develop a new web application for domestic kitchen ovens within a matter of weeks. UNOX also used IoT services to develop three apps that help customers take advantage of more oven features, monitor and remotely program ovens from anywhere, and set up cooking programs to drastically streamline production.

UNOX is currently deploying a new streaming application built on multiple AWS services, including Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS), a managed live streaming solution that is quick and simple to set up and ideal for creating interactive video experiences, and Amazon CloudFront, a fast content delivery network service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency and high transfer speeds. The application will deliver content to UNOX sales associates and business partners, as well as cooking courses to customers worldwide.

Going all in on AWS has helped UNOX celebrate multiple successes, including increased scalability, internal cost savings, increased cost efficiency for its customers, time optimization, and agility. In terms of its original goal—improving its contact center—UNOX has dramatically improved its service level, which it defines as the number of calls it can remove from the queue within 90 seconds. On AWS, UNOX now meets 95 percent of service-level requests from customers, whereas it previously met 67 percent.

UNOX has many plans to use AWS services further and integrate new AWS technologies into its products. It’s in research and development for progressive machine learning that incorporates Amazon SageMaker, a comprehensive machine learning service. UNOX is considering moving its fluid dynamic tests of cooking effectiveness within ovens onto AWS infrastructure for faster performance simulation.

Ballarin suggests other business leaders seeking faster innovation may also benefit from AWS services. “You don’t have to spend a lot of money before testing the reliability and effectiveness of the solution,” he says. “You can adapt to a style of workflow and research and development to create more effective products and faster interactions that lead to more effective business results.”

Looking back on UNOX’s list of innovations in 2019 and 2020, Ballarin gives AWS credit for helping his company stay ahead of today’s customers’ needs. “Using AWS has been a real game changer for us in terms of product innovation and process digitalization, enabling us to shorten our time to market and increase operational efficiency while maintaining a data-driven focus,” he says. “The wide spectrum of AWS technologies that are constantly improving and pushing customer success to new levels plays a central role in our mission to expand our business at scale.”

To learn more, visit aws.amazon.com/connect.