Here at Akixi, we are focused on assisting businesses to better engage their customers via cloud communications systems. Our products have been either attached or embedded with the cloud communication service, offering either analytics or more enhanced call reporting. Going forward we have outlined a six-stage evolution, which takes the business into the forefront of the cloud communication engagement market. The stages are not sequential, and we are working on many of them in parallel.
Stage 1: Simplify
Previously, Akixi offered a range of products to address various use cases, but as the market has matured, we have simplified our offerings into two main products, both of which are delivered via service providers:
Business Insights – delivering short form call analytics for businesses lacking data analysis skills. Business Insights are simple to use and understand – ideal for the small business.
Call Center Reporting – addresses the need of a business with formal call handling, including dedicated call handling agents. Deep detail for the business that requires superior insight into its customer engagement.
Both these products run on a common platform hosted and managed by Akixi in AWS. Optionally, Akixi can run its platform in the cloud communications provider’s AWS tenancy.
Stage 2: Wider Cloud Communications Base
Akixi addresses a range of use cases across the Cisco (BroadSoft) base of cloud communications providers. As the market has developed, the number of major cloud communications providers has increased and we are ensuring our engagement solutions can be combined with those platforms. Alongside the various derivatives of Cisco/BroadSoft, we have added Webex for BroadWorks and Webex Calling support to our latest product releases. By the middle of the year, Akixi intends to add support for Microsoft Teams, where informal contact center use cases are particularly important.
As part of our multi-cloud support strategy, we will offer a generic ingestion API, which allows cloud communications providers with multiple platforms to pass traffic to our reporting layer. This is driven by M&A in the cloud communications market, leaving service providers with multiple platforms which require common analytics and reporting.
Stage 3: Lighting Up the Cloud Communications Base
One of the greatest challenges in the cloud communications market has been the ability to efficiently upsell a base of customers to new services. Often it requires the service provider to allocate valuable sales channel capacity to the upsell to ensure success. At Akixi, we intend to make the upsell process frictionless with the automation of targeting, nurturing, trialling and in some cases, the close. Central to this strategy is the delivery of a new product – Intelligence Hub. The Intelligence Hub works with Business Insights to provide a deep view into the engagement behavior of a business, identifying the best targets to upsell, as well as managing the nurturing and trial process. Intelligence Hub is intended to be used by the cloud communications provider sales channel as a fast-track way to accelerate the upsell process.
Stage 4: Go Digital
Businesses are looking to enhance their customer engagement via a range of digital channels to best meet the needs of the demographics they serve. Typically, this means adding messaging channels including the likes of SMS, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Digital transformation is happening at different rates in businesses depending on their size and vertical segment. Although most small businesses still heavily depend on the phone for inbound engagement, there is increasing use of messaging and bot technology to service customer enquiries. We recognise this at Akixi and will be including multi-channel in the product going forward, to serve the changing market needs.
Stage 5: Integrate into Cloud Communications
Going forward, we envisage Akixi being more tightly integrated into the cloud communication provider’s experience. This requires Akixi to integrate into the providers operational and business management systems to fully automate provisioning, support and billing of service. We have developed a range of APIs to enable these capabilities. Furthermore, we are ensuring the product is highly flexible to be added with self-service portals and user clients delivered by the cloud communications provider. This flexibility also includes the option to deliver multi-level administration between the service provider, channel and reseller, alongside full branding control.
Stage 6: Customer Intelligence
The data captured by Akixi with its Business Insights provides a forensic view of the engagement activity in a business. Previously, we have used this data within Intelligence Hub to identify customers who would benefit from the more advanced Akixi reporting solutions. However, we can also use Intelligence Hub to identify other upsell opportunities for solutions such as call recording, more advanced voice handling and device refresh. Over time the level of insight will be enhanced to identify businesses at risk of churn from the service provider. Over the coming months, we expect more Intelligence Hub use cases to unfold, especially in the development of digital customer journeys.
If you would like to know more, please contact us here and a member of our team will be in touch.
