This Is How Customer Service Is Evolving

The pandemic has brought significant changes in the way customers buy and the way companies like Uniphore sell to large enterprises.

Ravi Saraogi, Co-Founder and President, APAC, of Uniphore

Uniphore is disrupting a $500 Billion customer service market and an outdated customer service model by bridging the gap between humans and machines through their Conversational Service Automation (CSA) platform.

The platform optimizes customer experience and agent productivity with Conversational AI. The co-founder and president, APAC, of Uniphore Ravi Saraogi says the company is at the forefront of redefining the customer service industry with the transformational experiences and is setting a new standard for customer service.

“We are among the top 5 Conversational AI companies globally today and are disrupting the customer service model by focusing on conversations. Our CSA platform is showing rapid momentum and growth globally. We are at the forefront of redefining the customer service industry by delivering transformational experiences and setting a new standard for customer service amid era of remote work and high customer expectation,” he says.

The pandemic has brought significant changes in the way customers buy and the way companies like Uniphore sell to large enterprises.

In 2020, Uniphore won significant deals with some of the world’s largest telecom providers, insurance companies and financial service organizations, including customer contracts with customer experience (CX) providers including Tech Mahindra, NTT DATA, Sitel, Firstsource, and WNS.

“These deals are all focused on customer experience improvement by leveraging tools and platforms like conversational service automation (CSA) that Uniphore brings to the table. These wins and others will enable support to over 75,000 customer service agents who can handle approximately 160 million engagements every month. That is the kind of growth we have seen over the last year or so during the pandemic,” he says.

With the focus of ensuring that the overall customer experience remains intact despite the pandemic, Uniphore decided to acquire some very niche technologies in the domain.

ROBOTICS

The first niche technology Uniphore acquired is Robotic Process Automation (RPA). They acquired an exclusive third-party license in October last year for RPA technology from NTT DATA to drive innovation, quicken time-to-market and deliver intelligent front office automation for modern contact centers.

The second technology acquired focuses on video AI solutions which uses AI and machine learning, to identify emotion and engagement levels in real-time over video-based interactions. When combined with Uniphore’s CSA platform, which understands, analyzes, and automates voice conversations in real-time, these extensive video-focused AI capabilities will deliver entirely new applications and experiences across the enterprise.

Along similar lines, mid this year, Uniphore also announced its intent to acquire Jacada, a customer experience pioneer with the industry’s leading low code/no code platform for contact center automation. Combined with Jacada’s innovative low code/no code platform, Uniphore’s industry-leading conversational automation platform will empower businesses to easily automate key interactions across self-service and agent-assisted customer engagements. With this comprehensive platform, business users can realize state-of-the-art digital transformation, resulting in significant ROI. 

Saraogi says, “At one point in time, I remember, I used to travel four days a week and now, I roughly take about 16 calls a day. That is the transformation that has happened, and each and every call has sort of transpired largely into a video conversation. Now, when you have those kinds of conversations, it is also important to know how to leverage that opportunity and that is what Uniphore is doing. “

“We have teamed up with global leaders such as Idiap Research Institute and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), including a couple of large Ivy League institutes in the US to really focus and grow our platform. We also joined the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Innovators Community – an invitation-only group of the world’s most promising start-ups and scale-ups that are at the forefront of technological and business model innovation.

Talking about their growth comes with a conversation about the expansion of their people and the board.

“We onboarded and we were lucky to have John Chambers as a part of the board now, along with Andrea Ayers and she was at one point in time, led large contact centre BPO companies across the globe. An industry stalwart, John was the chairman and CEO of CISCO and today runs his own company called JC2 Ventures

“We have also really calibrated our executive team with people like Stephan Berthier joining the organization as a CFO to guide our company through this era of rapid growth and global expansion. We also have Curt Hill, who was the head of a particular accounts programme for CISCO globally, joining us as chief customer officer.”

Uniphore has raised close to about $210 million globally across four different rounds of funding. The last round was the Series D funding about a couple months back which came to around $150 million.

“As mentioned earlier, we have also seen some big client wins, renowned industry associations like WEF, IDIAP, IITM to develop next-generation capabilities in advanced AI, machine learning, automation, and voice and video technologies to really drive the transformation of contact centers and enterprises around the world.”

“The funding will certainly help us in terms of bringing in both organic and inorganic growth in the company through modes of natural expansion, be it geography, people or product, or inorganic growths through the modes of mergers and acquisitions that we can potentially look forward to in the coming months and quarters.”

Previous articleTurning SMEs Into Malaysia’s Green Exporters
Next articleCross-border Travel Bubble Vital For Recovery

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here