How Lynk Uses Aircall with HubSpot to Scale Global Communication

Career success once depended on what people could make or do and, in many cases, who they knew. Now workers' value often lies in what they know. There are now more than 1 billion knowledge workers worldwide, and Lynk is on a mission to connect the best and brightest among them with hedge funds, investment banks, Fortune 500 companies, and major global consulting firms.

Lynk offers "knowledge as a service", matching its clients with leading subject matter experts worldwide. To make these connections, Lynk's team must have in-depth conversations with clients and build close relationships with top talent, which means spending a lot of time on the phone.

As Jeong Lee, VP Strategy and Operations, Lynk Answers, explains:

"Our ultimate mission is to democratize access to knowledge. Our goal is to power the new knowledge economy through our platform and, as we scale our business, we want to touch more customer bases."

To power that growth, Lynk relies on Aircall's call center solution and its one-click HubSpot integration to make its teams more efficient and continually improve the customer experience.

How Lynk Uses the Phone to Augment Communications

The phone is a critical communication channel for Lynk's customer-facing teams, including Client Solutions, Sales, Account Management and Customer Support. Whether they're speaking to clients to learn more about their business needs or searching for and recruiting experts for these clients, Lynk's agents need high-quality communications tools to facilitate these high-value conversations.

The Client Solutions team spends the most time on the phone. After the team receives an expert request from a client, they call the client for more details so that they can find a great match. Then, they use Lynk's internal database to search for a relevant expert. If they can't find one in the existing network, they make more phone calls to recruit one externally.

As time is of the essence for their clients, voice conversations are a key component of Lynk’s business model. But until recently, the company didn't have a reliable communications solution in place to facilitate these mission-critical interactions.

From Shared Phone Numbers to Shared Client Insights

Before moving to Aircall, Lynk used Skype for Business. As the business grew, this voice solution presented some problems.

"Skype let us make outgoing calls, but our clients couldn't call their agents back because everyone had to share phone numbers," Lee explained. "There were a lot of errors that happened, with calls not going through. We had no way to track calls, and without individual caller ID, it wasn't clear to our clients which of our team members made the call. It was also impossible to track call activity and performance metrics."

As the business scaled, so did the call volume, and Lynk needed a robust enterprise-grade communications solution that integrated with HubSpot, the company's new customer relationship management (CRM) solution. Lynk uses HubSpot to centralize client information, run analyses, identify where deals are in the pipeline, run marketing campaigns and track outbound activity, so HubSpot integration was a top priority when choosing a call center solution.

Aircall is HubSpot Account Executives' most recommended phone system. It integrates with HubSpot in one click and automatically logs all call activity, making it easy for Lynk to track the customer journey and monitor team and individual agent performance. Additionally, when agents answer inbound customer calls, Aircall displays which customer is on the line as well as their recent communication history.

When Lee learned about Aircall’s easy HubSpot integration, as well as Aircall's competitive pricing and advanced sales- and support-focused features, the choice was clear.

"With the Aircall and HubSpot integration, we're now able to use call tags to track our team's outbound activity with our clients and experts, which we were not able to do before. Our end goal is to get more consistent client service implemented across our front line, and Aircall helps us to do that."

Call From Any Location; Answer From Any Device

Alongside the HubSpot integration, Lynk chose Aircall for its ability to create users and local phone numbers in 150+ countries in just one click. Team members can have multiple numbers in multiple locations, and Lynk no longer has to worry about customers failing to get in touch with individual team members.

"We want to have a consistent touchpoint with the client and be able to respond immediately. With Aircall, we have our individual phone numbers available on our desktop and mobile phones, so we can always receive calls and respond to client communication even faster."

Lynk uses Aircall's global calling package to make unlimited calls across the world, using local numbers in any country. Given Lynk's global client base and the international scope of client requests, this has been a game changer.

"We're spread across seven different offices, and our client requests are often global," Lee explained. "For example, someone sitting in the U.S. can have a client ask about investments or certain market trends in China. So being able to make and receive unlimited calls internationally really improved the way we worked."

Some team members also use the Aircall mobile app to ensure they're always available to take calls from clients and maintain a high level of responsiveness across the organization.

Looking Forward

Phone calls have always been essential to Lynk's customer service model, but since the company upgraded to Aircall's call center solution, voice communications have become even more integral to the way customer-facing teams work.

"We've been pushing our team to use phone communication more than email and messaging, and Aircall really helps us move customer service in that direction. Many of our clients prefer to speak on the phone, so being able to effectively reach out to us in their preferred channel is important. We're really looking forward to scaling our partnership with Aircall."