In this growing era of development, Cloud telephony is poised to change the way businesses look at customer communications.Cloud telephony refers specifically to voice services where they deliver scalability and reliability, allowing businesses to communicate better with their customers and vendors.
One of India’s leading cloud telephony companies Exotel is working with businesses, both large and small; enabling them manage their business phone system by leveraging cloud telephony technology. SMEpost.com caught up with Shivakumar Ganesan, CEO & Co-Founder, Exotel. Here are excerpts of an exclusive conversation.
Q: We understand that there are big advantages of switching from traditional telephony to cloud telephony for businesses. Can you please enlighten our readers about some of the key advantages of using cloud infrastructure by an enterprise?
A: Traditional telephony and cloud telephony have always been intended to do very different things. While traditional telephony or an EPABX system is suitable to be used as a telephone exchange, i.e., connect a simple call between 2 people, it was never built to serve business requirements.
Cloud telephony’s primary goal is to help businesses work better. In the case of enterprises, using cloud telephony can improve operational efficiency considerably. For example, one of the problems we solve for our 3rd party logistics clients is the issue of delivery failure. These companies lose a lot of money due to failed deliveries. So now, delivery agents call the customers before attempting deliveries. And this has improved delivery rates by up to 35%.
Due to the agility and ease of use of our APIs, enterprises also use cloud telephony to integrate Call/SMS functions directly in their app or website. Take the case of Ola. The driver can call the customer directly from inside his app, without knowing the phone number of the rider. The level of customisation and intelligence is not possible in the traditional phone system.
A lot of enterprises are also moving towards the “uberisation” model. It becomes necessary, in this case, to keep track of the conversations that the marketplace facilitates. We also help marketplaces connect their vendors and buyers without leaving their platform. This becomes an essential functionality as this the monetization model of most marketplaces. By using Exotel, monetization becomes easier for these businesses.
Q: What is the basic technology principle of Cloud Telephony?
A: Cloud telephony works on the similar lines as cloud computing. Earlier people used to buy hardware and set up a physical phone system. So, now the physical servers are abstracted to the cloud. This eliminates all the hardware that was involved earlier. It also gives users to be location agnostic and access the system on the web.
Q: How do you see the future of Cloud Telephony in India?
A: When we started Exotel 5 years ago, there was a lot of customer education involved. Hardly anyone knew about or understood the technology or the possibilities that lay in front of them. And that has changed to a large extent.
Today, cloud telephony is fast becoming the norm, much like cloud computing.
This being the case, the future looks very promising for cloud telephony. We have just scratched the surface of the possibilities. I foresee a lot of automation and intelligence coming out of the cloud telephony use-cases in the future.
Q: Tell us something about Exotel –Tell us about your growth story so far?
A: Before Exotel, I started a C2C online marketplace called Roopit. The idea behind Roopit was to bring together the buyers and sellers on one platform. When I was running Roopit, Shivku realised the need for one number where I can receive calls and SMS-es. I was bootstrapping and often the only person who was answering calls, and coding and talking to sellers, etc. So, I wanted to ensure I did not miss any calls because missed calls meant lost revenue. Since there were no such tailor-made solutions available in the market at that point, I decided to build it with all the features I needed. Over time, I realised that a lot of other startups and SMEs also needed a similar solution, and that’s how Exotel was born.
Q: What are the products & business solutions provided by Exotel?
A: We are a SaaS company and Exotel works on a pay as you go model. We have two kinds of offerings primarily – a simple plug and product that can help businesses set up a simple call center for support or sales in less than 30 mins. This can be done using our visual API’s drag and drop call flow builder. And this is an ideal offering for SMEs.
For some of our enterprise clients and companies that want to do a lot of integrations and automation, we provide them with our API platform. Using this, they can customize our offerings in a very robust manner.
Q: What has been your client base so far? Please name few of the top brands who have availed your service?
A: Over the last five years, we have grown tremendously. Today, we work with over 1000 companies including Flipkart, Ola, Uber, Swiggy, Quikr, etc. We connect over 3 million customer conversations every day. And just in the last one year, the number of calls we powered increased by 400%.
Q: What are the key market segments you cater to? How do SMEs feature in your profile of clients?
A: Companies of all shapes and sizes use Exotel. Especially companies in the e-commerce, 3rd party logistics, cab aggregator and marketplace verticals find Exotel very useful to improve their operational efficiency.
We have a lot of SMEs using us currently. We are seeing a significant shift in the mindset of SMEs, who are looking to use technology a lot more to improve their operations, particularly when calling and customer interaction are involved.
