As a company in a very competitive sector, how do you differentiate your company and its products from the other vendors? What are your most discernable strengths?
While it is important to know where you are going, it is just as important to know where you have been, for where you are going will certainly change.
etalk has been in business for 20 years. In fact, we were the first company to automate the quality monitoring process in 1992. Our 20 years of experience in product innovation allows us to deploy customizable, scalable solutions that benefit organizations with fewer than 50 agents and in excess of 30,000. This foundation allows us to truly understand the industry while allowing us to continue to develop and deploy innovative technologies for the future.
Since etalk is privately held, we are able to focus more clearly on providing a return on investment to our customers. We guarantee our customers broader and more sophisticated support and services that are essential to the continued growth of their business. Our professionally trained service and support staff, which averages 12 years of industry experience, helps identify business requirements for each client and then provide solutions that fit those requirements. Our Performance Impact™ model enables us to provide a blended approach of technology expertise and business consulting.
etalk is an extremely agile company. In many instances, customers need a fast reliable approach to solve a business problem, so speed of execution is critical. Support after the sale and strong references are important in meeting those expectations. Other customers need a longer evaluation time as they learn about new challenges exposed in their environments. From specialized recruiting tools to enhanced training, custom projects and helping clients build a service ROI model, etalk goes beyond just providing Quality Management tools.
As contact centers begin to adopt new technologies, the most successful solutions will be flexible with a customized technical integration that fits within the ‘snowflake' created by each contact center. We know that contact center quality is based on an infinite process and that solutions must be designed to impact performance through the entire life cycle of each agent; including recruiting, recording, evaluating, training and analyzing.
We partner with the ‘best of breed' technology companies to extend the capabilities of our quality optimization tools. These include Utopy for speech analytics, IEX for workforce optimization and Cisco for IP capabilities. When you tie all those core product functionalities together with our professional services and then add analytic capabilities using voice mining/recognition engines, and reporting analytics to pull out key data about your business, etalk can exceed our customer's expectations.
etalk is a privately held company. Please discuss the current financial status of your company and its outlook. How can a prospect verify your financial information?
Although etalk is a privately help company, we have been in the business for two decades. Over the years, etalk has built a vast customer base crossing the globe supplying products and services to both new and existing customers for longer than many of our competitors have been in business. Our financial future is bright. Because we are owned by a private investment firm that manages more than $6 billion in assets, etalk has the ability to reinvest in our products, services and people so that we can continually improve to suit our customers' needs. etalk also finished the fourth quarter as the company's most successful in two years. Revenues have increased 20% year over year. A significant part of our revenue growth is attributed to new customer wins (both domestically and internationally) and expansions or upgrades of existing customers.
As with most private companies, financial information is not available to the public. Current customers and prospects can request financial information for review through our CFO.
We all have been impacted by the slow economy. What factors have you encountered in doing business that differs from "normal" times? Do you have any opinion as to when our economy will turn around?
It is true that many companies have been adversely impacted by a slow economy. etalk has also felt the pinch of constrained purchasing. However, we have done well to manage through these tough economic times. For example, new customers are holding off on their buying decisions, but existing customers see an opportunity to expand their relationship with etalk by purchasing additional solutions to help their business grow.
For our customers, the economic outlook is one of increased competition, better informed and more demanding customers, commoditization of products and services, and relentless pressure to cut costs. In this environment, customer service is the single biggest differentiator for both large and small businesses. Generally, when companies downsize, they look for ways to contain costs as well as retain key employees. etalk's products such as Recorder®, Advisor™, and Survey™ address the needs of companies looking to achieve higher employee performance. In fact, Survey has been one of our biggest hits through the downturn.
As companies look for ways to measure the effectiveness of their programs and policies, the ability to secure customer feedback immediately after an interaction with an employee is key. For example, with Survey, the recorded transaction is available, as well as the customer's feedback, so management can quickly ascertain what symptom could be causing any level of dissatisfaction or even customer defection. The beauty of this is that the management team does not have to execute a "witch hunt" to find the root cause for customer dissatisfaction, but instead can drill down immediately on the causes buried directly within the transaction recording, both voice and screen, from the desktop of the employee.
That being said, we do see the economy turning around, but slowly. Our global sales team sees a different picture in each part of the world – from South America to Europe into Asia, Australia, Africa and Canada. In the US, we are seeing a growth especially in cases where capabilities are matched with business objectives. We are also finding that there is an impetus for speed of installation once a buying decision is made. This tells us that the benefits of the purchase need not be wasted with long deployment cycles.
Many of the monitoring companies are expanding their suite of applications. What are some of the technologies and applications that we can expect etalk to focus on?
Value is essential to a capital purchase when selecting a Quality Monitoring system. The real answer to creating value is the ability to aggregate multiple applications into a single suite where a solution can be fully put to use without managing multiple vendors.
A convergence of both recording for quality and recording for compliance or logging is also a natural consolidation for technologies where a company should be able to work with just one supplier. As we know, call center technology is not just contained to a single site, or even a local geography, but instead reaches beyond the borders of the US to support companies connected through multi-national business relationships where key records have to be made available immediately in any time zone at any time. Therefore, a system needs to be scalable to meet the demands of a single site or a large enterprise made up of dozens of call centers.
Additionally, we are seeing a move to IP. A recent Datamonitor report, reassessing the opportunity for IP in contact centers, predicts that the popularity of IP call center solutions will increase significantly. Additionally, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), growth in the contact center market is attributed largely to the increased implementation of IP-enabled call centers. etalk Recorder is a potent, efficient and cost-effective automated Quality Assurance monitoring solution that supports service observation, on-demand voice and desktop recording and logging for financial, legal and other compliance applications. For call centers that are moving to Voice over IP (VoIP)- based ACDs or “softswitches”, Recorder provides the ability to capture traditional voice calls, as well as multimedia interactions through an efficient and cost-effective VoIP platform.
etalk will continue to broaden product lines to provide a fully integrated workforce optimization solution, including monitoring, recording, eLearning and analytics. We will continue to provide our customers with new product enhancements and will work fast and furiously to ensure that all customers have the most up-to-date, enhanced etalk products installed within their contact centers. Additionally, we will continue to forge strategic partnerships in order to help enhance and expedite product integration.
In the economic environment, what are the main drivers/reasons in closing sales? Do you find that many sales are being consummated because of the value that senior management places on the information captured by the agent?
Over the last couple of years, we have seen a significant increase for companies to defend their purchasing decisions with business cases. If a business case does not exist or is not supportive of a capital purchase, the sale will not go forward. Our sales team has done a wonderful job of relaying the benefits and "paybacks" a business should expect when deploying etalk solutions. In many cases, once the senior management team is aware of the potential impact of an etalk solution, the process for approval moves quickly. As companies focus internally on rewarding employees who have been retained through downsizing and restructuring, they have found it critical to focus knowledge and education on the agent as a means to reduce turnover and increase morale. This, in turn, translates to a more satisfied customer.
We find in this economy many companies "tightening their belts" and cutting back significantly in their marketing budgets. Has etalk changed their marketing strategies?
etalk has taken the opportunity to focus precious resources toward targeted programs where we can be assured to directly impact current and perspective customers. Attendance at large industry tradeshows has declined to the point that the return on investment is so minimal that this year we have decided to shift our focus dramatically. Beginning this summer, in celebration of our platinum anniversary, we will host a series of one-on-one regional workshops. We will host the first customer workshop in Chicago the week of Advanstar's ICCM conference, August 26th-28th. Additionally, we have found great success participating in our technology partner's user conferences including IEX, Nortel and Aspect, as well as holding our own annual customer conference. Also, during the past two years, etalk has not only brought on a new VP of marketing and a new marketing and PR team. The company has also implemented an aggressive integrated marketing communications strategy that includes online and offline PR, marketing and advertising initiatives.
What changes have you seen in the recent past regarding the allocation of budget dollars for technology?
Dollars are definitely more tightly coordinated between business units and departments by either a central IT group or a manager. In many instances, dollars are allocated to purchase products only after a trial period at the customer site to provide a "proof of concept" – often before an RFP is even sent out. The "proof of concept" allows for a single person to lead the selection and deployment, ensuring success across the enterprise. If an extended group of decision makers who will be impacted by the deployment are unable to participate in the purchasing decision, there may be dissension. The key is to gain consensus early and with the confidence that a solution can be deployed with integrity. Companies such as etalk have the track record of supporting and sustaining critical buying decisions as demonstrated by our vast global customer base.