Contact centers help business to expand the communication channels: Tikal Networks

Tikal Networks is an Israel-based technology company that provides a range of communication solutions for businesses. The company’s flagship product is a multi-channel contact center, which allows a business to leverage modern communication channels into its mainstream business processes. Doron Dovrat, CEO, Tikal Networks, shares his vision and plans for India, with Dataquest.

How is Tikal positioning itself in India?

A business uses a contact center to manage its interactions with customers. For instance, one familiar use of a contact center is making sure that inbound calls are efficiently directed to the correct destination within the company. Contact centers are highly integrated with a business’ CRM, ERP and similar systems and can also be used for outbound activities, such as marketing campaigns. The idea behind a multi-channel contact center is that a business can expand the communication channels within a unified framework through which it interacts with its customers. Eventually, Tikal is currently ramping up its network of sales channel partnerships and it sees a lot of potential for its multi-channel contact center in India.

What are some of the big priorities for Tikal Networks today and how important is India as an opportunity?

We are currently expanding our sales activity worldwide. We intend to do this by building more relationships with local sales channel partners, such as distributors, resellers, systems integrators and so on, in new markets. This will position our company for accelerated growth. The opportunity for Tikal in India is significant. Most of the large vendors of call center systems are present in India and, from what we see many have relationships with the prominent system integration companies and consulting firms in the country. These companies are selling mainly to the large enterprises and have priced their solutions accordingly. For SMBs as well as some mid-sized businesses in India, most of these solutions are way beyond their reach.

This creates a great opportunity for our company and our sales channel partners to offer a state-of-the-art multi-channel contact center at a highly competitive and affordable price. With the right set of sale channel partners, we are confident that we can capture valuable market share in India.

What is your business strategy for India? How do you plan to target the SMB and enterprise communities here?

Our strategy for India starts with establishing relationships with a network of sales channel partners. We are at the initial stages of building these relationships. Beyond the obvious, from what we have learned so far and the feedback we are receiving, we are very excited about India. These partnerships will provide our access to the market and our targeted segment.

We provide a comprehensive communications platform that will satisfy the entire communication needs of a client. The system is available from the Cloud in a SaaS mode. It can also be installed on premise, if required by the customer. Our intention is that together with our local Indian partners we will provide our customers with an end-to-end solution from the local phone access numbers to the PBX and contact center as well termination services, which refers to outbound calling minutes.

We are planning to host our platform locally in India with our local partners providing first level support in the local languages. I believe that high quality product and competitive pricing supported by strong local partnerships will attract a lot of attention from the SMBs segment across India.

How different is your contact center solution from what is available in the market today? Why should SMBs look for adopting your solution?

Most contact center solutions that are available today are designed for the enterprise market. These systems are usually too expensive and too complex for SMBs. There are also many mid-sized companies that suffer from this problem. This is where Tikal comes in and this is the gap in the market we are filling.

Our solution includes advanced contact center functionality, such as incoming, outgoing and blended calls, multilayer IVR, multi-channel communications, built-in call recording, predictive dialers, monitoring and control tools, real-time reporting and more. We have designed the solution to be easy to install, configure and manage without compromising on features or capabilities. We have a lot of customers that can attest to this. With this advanced functionality combined with our attractive pricing, we intend to offer among the best product per value for SMBs in India.

Today SMB customers look for better ROI and solutions that can help them increase their bonding with customers. How can your solutions help in this direction?

Because of the cost and complexity of existing systems, many SMBs simply do not implement contact center solutions. As a result, their customer interaction processes are not properly defined and are generally inconsistent. This clearly is not ideal to say the least and can even be damaging to the business. This is happening in India and many other places.

SMBs using our contact center solution can benefit from improved customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as increased operational efficiency. Rather than relying on ad-hoc processes, our solution enables an SMB to define customer interaction workflows. Better customer service can give an SMB a competitive advantage and give the impression to its customers and market that it is an organized company. We do all this at a price point that fits the resources and budgets of the SMB market.

What are some of the innovations that you are bringing to the market today?

Our concept of managing multiple communication channels is definitely innovative. Contact center systems have traditional way of managing voice interactions when customers call a business’ service or support center. However, today there are many additional types of communication channels that are regularly used. In some sectors, fax communications are still common and in other spaces there is growing acceptance of communication over messaging applications and even social media networks.

We want to incorporate all these communication channels into business’ customer interaction processes and workflows. A business can further strength its customer satisfaction and loyalty by allowing the customer to interact with the business through its preferred communication method. There is definitely a need for this innovation in India and around the world.

How does your solution utilize the recent advancements in virtualization and SDN?

Our contact center system can be set up in virtual servers for cloud-based customer. We have extensive experience working with Amazon, Google and others. Our system can also be installed on a customer’s existing virtual environment. The same goes for SDN. We have a lot of experience in this area too.

What are your plans to grow in this market? What are your targets for India?

Our intention is to establish partnerships with a network of sales channels across India. The relationships with sales channel partners will likely be according to regions or possibly vertical markets. We are in the initial stages of this process and are pleased with the progress that we have made so far. We see a lot of potential here to fill the market demand and are ready to invest in making India a success story for us.