What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Revolutionizing Cloud Communications: Avoxi on AI, Multi-Channel Integration, and The Future of Voice Services
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Get ready to revolutionize your understanding of cloud communications with insights from the CEO at Avoxi! Learn from a true telecom industry expert who transitioned from giants like Verizon and Earthlink to leading software solutions at Avoxi. Discover the intricacies of providing seamless international voice services for contact centers and the real-world challenges of integrating cloud-based solutions with legacy systems. Barbara brings valuable perspectives on the enduring importance of voice communication and the necessity of offering multiple customer interaction channels like email, chat, and social media to enhance the overall customer experience.
In the next segment, we unlock the transformative power of AI in voice and contact center applications with Barbara’s expertise. Learn how innovations like AI offload and AI assist can significantly reduce costs and improve service flexibility across various platforms. We address essential topics like the transition of voice services to the cloud, security, compliance, and integrating with multi-channel platforms such as WhatsApp and social media APIs. Plus, Barbara shares her leadership style and the thriving culture at Avoxy, concluding with a fun story about balancing professional responsibilities with quality family time during a memorable trip to South Korea and the value of work life balance.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody Diving into the world of cloud communications today with a true innovator in this space at Avoxy Barbara. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good, Evan. Thanks for having me Great day here in Atlanta, where I'm from Atlanta.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it's warm there. Stay cool. But thanks so much for joining me. Really excited for this chat. Cool, but thanks so much for joining me. Really excited for this chat. You've a lot of experience in the telecom industry with really great organizations over the decades, from Verizon to Earthlink to many others, so I'm so delighted to chat about the industry with you. Before that, maybe introduce yourself a little bit about your biography and who is Avoxy.
Speaker 2:Sure Happy to do that.
Speaker 2:So I started off in the communications industry like gosh now 25 years ago more than that maybe and really started off in the infrastructure space.
Speaker 2:So I've really done infrastructure for data and voice, all different companies, as you mentioned, from Verizon to Earthlink, level 3, fairpoint Communications and I really spent my career largely in product management and product development, bringing solutions to customers.
Speaker 2:And what I do now at Evoxi to pivot, is I've taken that infrastructure experience and I'm able to really apply that in a software world and really take all the great things we know about infrastructure and all the challenging things we know about infrastructure and all the challenging things we know about infrastructure and really work on those from a software platform perspective with our team here at Avoxy. So what we do is we allow contact centers to connect more easily with their customers with international voice services. So if you have a contact center and a client in two different countries, that's really where we specialize and we provide that virtually through a software platform that integrates seamlessly into nearly any kind of cloud or on-premise contact center platform. So whether it's contact center or UCAS, whatever you want to answer the phone in, we're able to provide that voice service to you via our software. Answer the phone in.
Speaker 1:We're able to provide that voice service to you via our software. Fantastic approach. So many opportunities out there for you as people move to the cloud Maybe describe the current landscape as you see it, in terms of both the global voice communications industry and this shift to cloud, which has happened at scale, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
Speaker 2:A lot of work. A lot of work, yes. So what I see? You know, we see kind of a couple things with our customers. We see that they're trying to move their maybe their contact center agents or their employees to the cloud for communication. So they're going to move their agent desktop and the actual physical phone to an online phone. And once they start doing that, they're moving their workforce management, they're moving all their queuing.
Speaker 2:Once they start doing that, then they're like oh, what about all the channels that have to plug into that? What about my services? How do I reach my customers in the UK or in India or in Brazil? And that's really where we come in to help provide the voice piece to that. But there's a lot of players in the industry from the platform side. So you have Genesis, nice in Contact Five, nines, microsoft Teams from a UCAS perspective going into the contact center space, and then from voice you really have more modern platforms like Avoxy. But you also have a ton of legacy voice providers that have been doing voice for a long time more in a TDM world. So a lot of times we're converting that legacy voice over to the cloud for clients.
Speaker 1:Well, fantastic approach. And we've been predicting the death of voice communications for many decades. It's still alive and kicking, still the preferred channel, particularly in the contact center, for many of us still most of us.
Speaker 2:But what is the mix now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, even young people like telephones. Imagine that. But what is the mix that you see from including voice interactions, email, chat, social, even? What are you seeing out there on the front lines, as it were?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:So what I see is that now contact center leaders are able to have a choice and they're really able to look at the whole gamut of channels and make the best choice based on whatever the interaction is.
Speaker 2:So of course, none of us now are going to, you know, we're not going to call someone and ask for, like, a package update When's my package going to get here from a shipment. We're not going to call someone and check on like a flight status. We're going to just use our smartphone, right, and do that online or via chat or via a web app. So all those channels are great for the contact center to use. Now, when I have a real tricky problem and maybe I've done like four chats back and forth and I can't figure out an answer to my question, then I need to pick up the phone and have a real-time two-way interaction, and so that's what I see on the landscape is that because all these channels now are available and they're all becoming available in the cloud, you can really allow your agent and your client to pick the best channel to solve the problem, and that will allow you to have an increased level of customer experience.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, yeah, and many customers, large enterprises, are moving, have moved to cloud, but there's still a large contingent for different reasons, sometimes good reasons who have that customer premise environment. They have legacy technology Sometimes you call it technical debt but there's still a lot of infrastructure out there. What does that mean for everything in the cloud, and how do we interwork or interoperate these two worlds?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think the great thing is, if you have a platform like a Voxy, we can integrate easily into, whether it's a legacy, on-prem system or a cloud-based system. So then IT managers really have a choice on how do they want to start the cloud evolution. They can decide where. Really have a choice on how do they want to start the cloud evolution. They can decide where they want to start that. Maybe you want to just start by moving your voice service, which you can do easily with the Evoxi platform with really no disruption to your team, and then you're getting onto the cloud bandwagon. You're actually making some nice progress. You're getting some of the benefits of rethinking how you utilize voice infrastructure within your own team without disrupting, like, your agents or your employees. But then you know you can go ahead and move the agents or employees to a cloud-based system for their desktops over time and then the cloud voice just goes right with that. It's just a switch of the integration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds so simple. Of course, behind the scenes it's so simple.
Speaker 2:No, it's also very hard, but we try to make it easy for our customers. That's what we do.
Speaker 1:I love it. Measy button. That's much needed. Of course. We're in the era of AI. Everywhere all at once super interesting, a lot of hype, but what?
Speaker 2:do you?
Speaker 1:see as a reality for voice AI in the channels that you work and you know it's very confusing. There's hundreds of different vendors in that space for voice bots, conversational AI. I probably had a hundred of them on my show and I'm only scratching the surface. You know how do you see AI being used effectively in voice and contact center applications?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think really there's two major applications we see. One is really pure offload, so agent offload, so the machine can answer the phone call and if the machine can solve the problem of the client that's great. If the machine can't, the call goes on, is routed on and then is answered by a human. So that's really one major use case we're seeing, and some of our clients call that AI, ivr or AI offload they call it different things. And then the second use case is really AI assist, and so that's really where an AI is allowing the agents in a call center to you know, you can have a lower skilled agent or a less knowledgeable agent, but they can use the AI to be more knowledgeable when they're answering the call with the customer.
Speaker 2:And so both of those things are really exciting to me from a voice channel perspective, because what they do is they really lower the cost of every single voice call. And then that allows my clients to ungate their channels so they don't have to keep voice only for a premium use case because it's so expensive, because most of voice calls the largest cost is really the agent headcount cost. That's the largest cost of a voice call. So now they can really ungate that and say, all right, let's answer the phone figuratively, let's answer the interaction with the best channel possible to meet the need of my customer, whether it's chat, whether it's email, whether it's answered by a machine, whether it's answered by a machine and a human, whether it's answered by a human, depending on what the question is and what the complexity is.
Speaker 1:Great, great points. So we're in this era of doing more with less all around CapEx, opex, netex, people and beyond. Is cloud voice primarily a cost efficiency benefit? Are there other benefits you see, and how do you look at that equation?
Speaker 2:Right, definitely is. I mean a couple of things. So first, once you start moving your voice services to the cloud, you can rethink how you're doing it. You might even need we consult with customers all the time. We say, okay, just because you had this certain type of setup in the physical world, you can maybe take out a lot of that setup. You can take out gear you don't need anymore.
Speaker 2:A lot of those things have been embedded into cloud platforms like Evoxy. One of our clients had a separate whole box, like a physical box in a data center that was used for analytics. Like, okay, that's in the Evoxy platform, you don't need that box anymore, that just comes with your service. They might have certain security boxes or physical infrastructure that you don't need anymore. They might have extra phone numbers or phone numbers in giant blocks that you don't need those. So a lot of this efficiency can happen as you're evolving. And then typically you save a lot of time because instead of having to manage, like all these, different carriers all over the world and different currencies with different operational processes, where you have a lot of lack of visibility, you're centralizing all that into one platform and you can really have full use of all of your resources.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic. The other reason for not moving to the cloud in many cases is still around concerns, perceived or real security issues, compliance considerations. Lots of people in healthcare and finance are pretty highly regulated. How do you help them address those issues when they think about cloud.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely when you think about cloud Right, definitely.
Speaker 2:I mean we spend a lot of time working with our customers on their compliance and we have a lot of compliance ourselves, right, Whether it's PCI DSS compliance or GDPR compliance in Europe or SOC 2, we do all those standards so that when our customers want to bring us into their tech stack, we already have those credentials. Customers want to bring us into their tech stack, we already have those credentials. So if PCI is your main compliance standard you're really focused on, then you can say well, all the vendors I'm bringing on are PCI DSS compliant, so we flow right into that Same thing with SOC 2. So I really think it's more of a conversation on what are you looking for with your compliance? What are the things?
Speaker 1:you're concerned about, and then we really try to help customers answer those questions with how we operate and then also how our technology is built. How do you think about integration with other channels, whether it's a WhatsApp or increasingly messaging with RCS and other? Use cases even APIs for social media. Do you integrate with those, or how does that work with a customer who has so many different pieces to bring together?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one great thing about the evolution of the industry is that a lot of the platforms whether it's a Genesis or Five9 or Nice in Contact they're really providing that integration for the client. So Voxy plugs in best of breed from a voice perspective into those platforms and then they can plug in a best of breed SMS. And they can plug in a best of breed SMS and they can plug in a best of breed you know they can plug in WhatsApp and then those platforms like a Genesis, nice and Contact 5.9, really then manage the multi-channel experience for the agent because they know everything that's going on with that agent and that it really allows our customers to pick the best solution, the best cost point, the best you know in-country experience for all of their different clients and then that integrates into our platform for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's both a great time to be a customer. So much choice and overall can be overwhelming though Right Right. Yeah, it's navigating that as a challenge. Would you love to talk a little bit about you and your business leadership style? Sure, sure, maybe give us a peek into the culture at Avoxy and any advice you can give to fellow business technology leaders in this new world.
Speaker 2:We're in Happy to do that. So at Avoxy, I'm sitting here in our office in Atlanta. Atlanta is the only physical office that we have. We have about 160 employees based all over the world. We have employees in five different continents. I actually just got back from a two-week trip to Asia where I was in Seoul, singapore, bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. And I just say that because I do think in this new world of like, we're a remote-first company. You know, with remote work, you really have to think about how do you bring people together and how do you bring cultures together and how do you really make the world smaller for your company. And we spend a lot of time doing that at Voxy and really working. You know, going into market and working with clients and working with employees and, you know, really focusing on how do we all deliver solutions for our customers and make sure we're all together to do that.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic. Well, something we could all abide by. I also must say I've had hundreds of CEOs in the telecom industry on my show. I could count on probably two hands, maybe more, the number of women CEOs I've had on my show, the number of women CEOs I've had on my show. How do we get out of the old boys network that has existed in telecom certainly since you and I started 25 years ago?
Speaker 2:Right. I mean, gosh, that's such a good question. People ask me that I mean I've always had a career in this industry. I was a really young executive. I mean I was a VP when I was 30 years old. I was a C-level officer by the time I was 35. So I've had just a great run, a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 2:I will say that for me, one of the key things, two key things I tell people is number one run towards problems. Run towards problems. If you see something that's broken, that's a mess. That's a great opportunity to really get to make a name for yourself and move your career forward. And then the second thing is find mentors. I have so many great mentors who I and most people will be your mentor if you just ask them. If you ask I don't think I've ever had anyone turn me down. I said hey, I'd really like you to talk to me a little bit about your path and what you think and how you've evolved your career and what I can maybe learn from it. Nobody's ever said no, no, never, never. So I think those are probably two things, and the more that women can do that, which I don't know if it's necessarily as natural for women to do things like that Right. I think the more that that women can can find those mentors.
Speaker 1:Oh, really great insights, very practical, and I'd love to hear more about your customers. I know you have many customers, I don't have to pick favorite children there. But do you care to call out or talk about or describe what they're?
Speaker 2:doing really focus on institutions or clients where their customers and their contact centers are in different countries. So what that has? We originally really had a lot of great traction in our business with hospitality and travel Because, if you think about it, almost all major hotel brands have global reservation centers. They have hotels in all different places all around the world. The people trying to get to the hotels need to call the reservation centers and vice versa. So that's been a great channel for us. Airline reservation centers have been a great channel for us as well, but now we're really starting to branch out into other different areas.
Speaker 2:We have great growing vertical with logistics and, if you think about those companies, they are doing similar things in that they have presence all over the world. Lots are, you know, they are doing similar things in that they have presence all over the world lots of different shipping ports, lots of different local call centers, and they need to talk to their high-end business customers when something's stuck in customs, something's on the dock, something's on a boat, something's at the port, and we need to really they need to have a conversation about where that high you know value item is, or stock of items or pallet of items. And so we're starting now to work with those clients as they're moving to the cloud and connect them around the world with voice as well. So those are a couple of different examples. We're also starting now to work with the financial services industry, so I'm pretty excited about that.
Speaker 2:A lot of global banks virtual banks are looking to be more connected with their clients. So, you know, we also have a really nice vertical with luxury goods. Kind of think about that environment, not that different from hospitality on a smaller scale, where they have luxury stores. The agents in the stores are busy, the representatives they are busy helping you. You know, pick out, evan. I know you're picking out your Louis Vuitton bag or something like that, Of course.
Speaker 1:yeah, I have it right here.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. They're helping you pick that out. They don't want to be interrupted, but they also want to somebody's calling them in the store. That call can then be routed to a centralized call center, can be answered as if it was a store by the Evoxi platform, and then you know that customer can be assisted. So a lot of great use cases really. As more of the world moves, more things to the cloud.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. And how do you go to market? How does a customer start with you? Is it directly calling, is it through channel partners or Microsoft? Or how do you tend to go to market?
Speaker 2:Mostly direct. So we started our business direct. We started the business really online and direct. So we would write a lot of content on our website and it would say things like do you have a problem connecting in Brazil? Do you have a problem reaching customers in Mexico? Do you have a problem reaching your clients in Puerto Rico or in Portugal? So we started writing a lot of content online and that drove our initial flood of leads into the business and we had an inside sales team that would answer those calls.
Speaker 2:We also have an e-commerce cart, like really a shopping cart that allows you to go in and buy your number and you can really self-trial it. Think about like AWS back in the day, when they had, you could go in and you could put some AWS compute on your credit card, which a lot of IT people did just to get started. That's how we got started, but now we're really expanding more to larger clients, more project based, but far majority of what we do 80% of what we do is direct. We are working on expanding some partnerships. We just got into the Genesis app foundry, for example, and that's been really exciting. So we're working on doing some more from an indirect perspective, but most of it's direct, but you're happy to call us. Go to our website, wwwavoxycom, and you can fill out a form. You can buy a trial service in the cart. You can interact with the platform in a few different ways.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, what else are you up to this summer, you and the team? I guess adjusting from all the jet lag is mission number one, but anything else on the radar I know Personally, professionally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. So we went. So you know what I try to do and this is sort of maybe something that's more accepted in the modern world than it was maybe 20 years ago is I have three kids and I try when I travel, when I take my big, long international trips, I try to like put a family trip like on one end of it. So number one, they can see what I'm doing, but also also I'm not gone for so so long, right, and I can kind of, you know, get a little bit of adjusted to whatever time zone I'm in. So I took my family to the front end of my Asia trip, so they went to Seoul, korea, with me and it was really fun, it was amazing. I mean it's amazing because I think what South Korea has done, you know, just in like 25 years, is kind of is just phenomenal, and all the technology and all the development and they've really come so far. So that was very fun. That was a really fun trip for us.
Speaker 1:I bet Wow, what an extraordinary opportunity. Really enjoyed this chat. Congratulations on all the success and, onwards and upwards, reach out everyone to a box. You do put out great educational content, not just marketing content, so I appreciate that as well. Thanks, barbara.
Speaker 2:Thank you I.