Ever since the pandemic has forced organizations to adopt various digital measures for their survival, the IT market has witnessed huge demand from various sectors. Now companies are swiftly migrating from on-premises solutions to cloud-based services. It allows them to unlock the business value and capitalize on cloud intelligence for their benefit. ClearTouch, one of the known brands in tech domain, offers a complete contact center suite with Business Intelligence and Workforce management for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and financial services companies in India. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal recently interacted with Uthaman Bathikrishnan, Executive Director at ClearTouch. He shared crucial insights about their offerings, clients, and growing role of cloud-based solutions in today’s market landscape. Read the excerpts below:
Rajeev: Briefly mention about ClearTouch and the services that you offer.
Uthaman: A subsidiary of TCN, Inc., a global contact center technology provider, ClearTouch introduced the first cloud-based contact center platform in India in 2016 to empower Indian businesses with its advanced technology platform for transforming on-premises infrastructure to cloud-based services.
ClearTouch offers a complete contact center suite with Business Intelligence and Workforce management for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and financial services companies in India. Our contact center platform features a holistic set of easy-to-use, automated agent tools and advanced apps for omnichannel communications, workforce engagement, compliance & data management, integration & automation, intelligence, reporting & analytics etc. Moreover, we offer a deep understanding of the needs of contact centers with a unique approach to pricing – no contracts, monthly minimums or maintenance fees – that supports rapid scaling and instant flexibility to changing business needs. This is seen in how we handhold our customers, enrich their data operations, and intrinsically create more value, and are a part of their success story.
Our greatest strength is our 20 years of rich experience with 1500+ global customers that enables us to bring innovative solutions that are cross-functional. We are proud to be the only company in India for the last five years to offer a managed contact center platform. All-inclusive per-minute pricing with no contracts besides other value propositions such as 24x7 customer support, compliant with DoT and TRAI regulations, integration with in-house CRMs, helpdesk software, and other related applications.
Rajeev: How do you empower Indian businesses to transform on-premises contact centers to Cloud-based Operations?
Uthaman: ClearTouch combines a deep understanding of the needs of contact centers with a highly affordable delivery model, ensuring immediate access to robust, omnichannel contact center technology. This includes outbound and inbound voice channels, IVR and call recording as well as business intelligence, voice and speech analytics and compliance tools required to optimize operations and adhere to both India’s telemarketing and telecommunications regulations. The India market is diverse and unique, with the requirements being very different from that prevailing in the international market. This is where our understanding of the India market, and its intricacies help us better understand, map requirements, and serve our customers.
Our advanced, cloud-based platform enables contact centers to improve agent performance and enhance customer experience while increasing efficiency and reducing compliance risk. ClearTouch’s “always-on” cloud-based delivery model provides customers with immediate access to the newest version of the ClearTouch platform as well as the ability to easily scale up or down adjusting to evolving business needs. ClearTouch is trusted by companies and enterprises of all sizes in India’s healthcare, insurance, financial services, banking, and business process outsourcing industries.
Rajeev: How can enterprises leverage the cloud intelligence to boost their growth?
Uthaman: Traditionally, enterprises have provided their customers with the delivery infrastructure and never did they own the end-to-end customer journey. Technology adoption was low. However, in the last few years, enterprises have started adopting technology to deliver value to their customers. This includes intelligence and analytics engines.
Leveraging intelligent cloud is extremely vital for businesses. It helps streamline business processes, align data across multiple applications, and provide better security. The ongoing third wave has further accelerated interest in cloud-based operations, many Indian businesses are increasingly recognizing the major gains in efficiency and productivity, as well as agent performance and customer experience, although COVID-19 has push-started this pivot to the cloud out of necessity, these benefits will only increase in value after the pandemic. Cloud based systems provide a lot of flexibility such as updates can be made seamlessly, businesses can get real time insights into their growth, consumer preferences, avoid non-compliance penalties and much more.
Rajeev: How do you see the shift in the adoption of cloud-based contact center platform?
Uthaman: According to a Frost & Sullivan report, COVID-19 has accelerated the rate of migration from on-premises solutions to cloud-based services in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, given the need to provide outstanding customer experience remotely. The report’s author also noted that the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) industry will be the leader in deploying contact center applications, followed by telecommunications.
We have seen contact centers increasingly digitise their operations. With evolving customer expectations, it is vital for traditional contact centers to adopt technology solutions. Cloud makes contact center platform more accessible. There has been an uptake of cloud-based contact center platform in the past two years, mainly due to the flexibility that it offers in letting employees to work from anywhere. Moreover, cloud makes it easy to integrate with AI and ML engines, and it can be integrated with best-of-breed IT solutions. This helps provides a single view of customers and with added intelligence, it gives the flexibility to make decision-making easy.
Rajeev: Please tell about your clientele and existing revenues. What are your future plans?
Uthaman: Our customer service is the biggest differentiator in the Cloud Contact Centre space and that is what our customers vouch as a testament of our offering. We haven't had customer churn at all in the past five years, and the main reason for this is the quality customer service that we offer and will continue to remain committed towards it. Besides, we have added cutting-edge features like workforce optimization, list management services, and voice analytics. Our focus is on ensuring compliance to different standards applicable across industries.
Our Indian customers are spread across verticals such as BFSI, Healthcare, Automotive, Education, ARM/Collections, and BPOs. We have migrated 1000+ agents in the last 3 years onto our cloud platform. Our revenue has grown by 200% year-on-year for the past 3 years. In the span of five years, we’re pleased to report that the cloud backbone of our ClearTouch platform has helped many Indian companies covering more than 25000 agents in their business continuity.
We already have a presence in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi regions. Soon, we plan to expand our presence into other verticals such as e-commerce and edtech in India and we are also looking at expanding to South Asian countries, Philippines, and Vietnam.
We are also integrating our platform with various CRMs, Helpdesk software, and other productivity applications. This would help expand our customer base as well.
