Telstra Corp’s venture capital arm has emerged with a stake in cloud-based contact centre provider ipSCAPE.
Based in North Sydney, ipSCAPE is a global provider of contact centre applications and technology designed to reduce costs for customers, which include salesforce.com.
Telstra will incorporate ipSCAPE’s technology into its own virtual contact centre (VCC) solution for its large corporate clients that have big customer-facing operations.
The VCC product aims to improve responsiveness in an era of multiple devices and free funds tied up in expensive IT infrastructure and equipment.
The deal, worth less than $5 million, is the third made this month by Telstra’s applications and ventures group, headed by long-serving executive Deena Shiff. It looks for early-stage investments in start-up and emerging companies that complement Telstra’s capabilities.
Powered by ipSCAPE, Telstra Global’s preferred contact centre solution provider, the new Telstra Global Virtual Contact Centre solution delivers a state-of-the-art customer service solution for the high growth Asia region.
Telstra Global, a leading supplier of managed network and hosted services, today announced its global Virtual Contact Centre (VCC) solution.
Telstra Global’s VCC is powered by ipSCAPE, a global provider of contact centre applications and technology that enables organisations to transform expensive and complex legacy contact centre set up.
The announcement of this partnership with ipSCAPE follows a recent investment by Telstra’s Applications and Ventures Group in the company.
As the first enterprise grade cloud application of its kind to be fully integrated into a global telecommunications portfolio, the new VCC service is unique in its ability to deliver the latest in-cloud innovation backed by highly resilient hosting and network services. Alongside Telstra Global’s world class voice and data networks, it offers companies of all sizes access to a global multi-channel customer service experience with a single service level agreement.
With VCC forward-thinking businesses can take full control of their technology and create an agile, state of the art service experience with greater business agility and commercial flexibility.
This flexibility allows companies to quickly scale their contact centre capabilities to accommodate initiatives such as new product launches, trials or peaks in customer demand, with no long term commitment or new license fees.
Accessed via Telstra Global’s Secure IP VPN, the VCC software can be updated or changed within minutes to update campaign scripts, add agents to different campaigns or activate remote agents. It also offers real time CRM integration to direct customer calls to the right operator regardless of the contact channel used.
Telstra Global’s Director of Portfolio and Marketing, Mr Nathan Bell said leading global businesses are now looking to innovative public cloud technology solutions to help them respond faster to changing customer demands, whilst also demanding greater business and commercial flexibility.
“Today’s customer service environment is the most challenging and complex we have ever faced. Customers are using a variety of different devices to connect with businesses so customer service needs to be smarter, more agile and responsive. At the same time businesses need their contact centres to accommodate fluctuating customer demand. The new VCC solution is perfectly aligned with these needs and with the rising demand for contact centre solutions in the high growth Asia region.” said Mr Bell.
Simon Burke, CEO ipSCAPE believes the new partnership will accelerate the adoption of cloud solutions in the Asia region as more businesses are able to use Telstra Global VCC to create an agile, smart customer experience solution.
“When ipSCAPE was established in 2007 our vision was to change the game and give all businesses, no matter what size, a better way of buying and managing contact centre technology. Five years later ipSCAPE is enabling forward-thinking businesses to communicate with their customers in the same way their customers already communicate with each other – in real time, across multiple channels and through any device,” said Mr Burke.
“The partnership with Telstra Global through the new virtual contact centre solution takes this vision to the next step by providing a global solution which all businesses can use to innovate the customer experience. In five years we expect cloud solutions such as the Telstra Global VCC to be the ‘norm’ and the traditional to simply be seen as ‘out of date’,” he concluded.
Deployment of Telstra Global VCC will take weeks rather than months and the solution can integrate and operate within any existing legacy system to deliver greater scale, features or to create a new integrated virtual contact centre operation. It requires no material capital spend and organisations can pay for the service based on usage or flat fee, and can also be integrated into any cloud or on-premise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in a matter of days.
About Telstra Global
Telstra Global is a leading global supplier of managed network services and international data, voice and satellite services. It is a division of Telstra Corporation Limited and owns one of the most technologically advanced IP backbone networks in the world.
Telstra Global provides innovative and flexible global communications services and solutions for organisations looking to maximise the benefits of globalisation, particularly across growth regions such as Asia, whilst driving sustainability and enhancing business agility.
Together with its offshore subsidiaries and international investments, Telstra Global serves over 200 of the world’s top 500 companies, spanning Asia Pacific, EMEA and the Americas. It operates award-winning networks which are amongst the largest and most diverse in Asia Pacific. It has licenses in Asia, Europe and the US and facilitates access to over 1,400 PoPs in 230 countries and territories across the globe.
About ipSCAPE
Founded in 2005 and now operating in 17 countries, ipSCAPE delivers contact-centre applications and technology via a unique global cloud platform.
ipSCAPE’s vision is to enable forward-thinking businesses to communicate with their customers in the same way customers already communicate with each other – in real time, across multiple channels and through any device.
Companies that use ipSCAPE benefit from low entry cost, maximum flexibility and enterprise class Reliability Availability Serviceability (RAS) – which transforms the customer experience.
Unlike traditional solutions, campaign scripts can be reworked, sales agents reallocated and IVR systems reprogrammed all in minutes – without the lengthy delays of working through IT departments or third party providers. In sales or service teams using ipSCAPE’s Agile Messaging Service new customer conversations can be created in the unique drag and drop interface within hours – with no need for complex, expensive computer programming.
ipSCAPE customers also benefit from Live Disaster Recovery at no extra cost. Agents can be activated from any remote, new office or home based location in minutes. Any employee with a laptop or mobile phone can be turned into a Service Agent.
ipSCAPE also has proven successful integration across multiple CRM platforms including Salesforce.com.