1. Altitude’s suite of applications, Altitude uCI™, includes a significant number of solutions. What applications are “hot” for Altitude in 2008?
We are seeing a lot of interest in Outbound applications, especially Predictive dialing and Outbound IVR. Home based and Branch Office based agents are also of key interest to companies, and lastly First Call Resolution is another hot topic as it drives many things from improved customer satisfaction, to lowering costs and reducing agent turnover. Our application suite allows us to address these demanding market requirements.
2. As a provider of IP contact center solutions, what has been user acceptance of the IP technology? What have been the major implementation obstacles?
From our perspective, acceptance has been great as companies that are looking to consolidate operations, or tie together previously “silos” of departments, are looking for IP to enable this shift. Probably the biggest obstacle deals with network bandwidth between the data centers and the agent populations. Particularly in Predictive dialing campaigns, latency is not an option to stay in compliance with the various Federal and State regulations.
3. What new products and services can we expect from Altitude in 2008?
Out-of-the-box connector to sales force.com, providing inbound and outbound call handling (including predictive dialing) for the SFDC users. With this connector companies that standardize their Sales Force Automation on salesforce.com can extend the application use to the contact center agents. We will also introduce a Workflow Module, because in many companies/organizations customer satisfaction in the contact center relies heavily on other departments. Altitude Software addresses this need by adding a business process automation module to Altitude uCI, with tight integration with interaction handling, allowing extension of the contact center discipline to other departments in the company/organization. Another innovation will be improved Analytics based on Operational and Business KPIs to allow management more effective control over the customer experience while lowering costs. On the services side we are expanding the number of customers who are assigned a Technical Account Manager(TAM) who is a single point of contact for Technical Support for our largest global customers. This is a high touch, value-added service for the most demanding large customer with thousands of agents deployed worldwide.
4. Have the users’ processes for selecting technology changed over the past years? If so, please explain the changes?
Yes, in my opinion they have changed. What I see is the users are placing tremendous pressure on IT organizations to better understand the business requirements and seek out technology partners that can best meet those needs. From that point they expect IT to narrow down the field to sometimes as few as 2 vendors that will actually get to meet with the end users to review the solutions. This is very different then the end users meeting with say, 5 or 6 vendors to understand the offerings. In today’s competitive market they are focused on running the call center, servicing customers, and watching the bottom line. They simply don’t have the time to meet with many solution providers.
5. Altitude is a major player in the contact centers outside of North America; and a relative newcomer to the NA market. How do you expect to compete in this highly competitive environment? What are your differentiators?
We have had success in North America, and have a good base of reference customers here. They will tell you our Customer Support is excellent. We don’t point fingers here, if you have a problem, we help you solve it, even if it turns out not to be our software. We have excellent processes in place, in fact out Technical Support is ISO 9001:2000 certified worldwide. Given the complexities of these applications, Customer Support should be high on the evaluation list. From a product perspective, the software suite is beautifully integrated with a single language to design contact flow across all media types. Further, our Unified Desktop is critical to organizations that are striving towards First Call Resolution.
6. Your suite of solutions has a predictive dialing component. Considering the governmental limitations, what are the unique applications for predictive in the North American market?
Outbound IVR applications are becoming increasingly popular. Proactive customer service notification in the Banking, Automotive, and Government sectors are a natural fit. Customers surveyed indicate they are very receptive to , and inclined to continue to do business with, companies that proactively alert them to events or specials in their interest.
7. Apparently, according to many of the economic pundits, the US economy is either approaching or in a recession. How do you expect the anticipated economic slowdown to affect your marketing efforts?
We planned for 2008 in 2007 with a key goal to be more targeted in our marketing efforts. Rather than attempt to market in general to the “contact center industry”, we took a step back and analyzed where we have traction. A third of our customers are Outsourcers, another 3rd are International Financial Institutions, and a third are doing Predictive dialing. We aligned ourselves with organizations, such as the ATA, and other industry events, that will promote our brand in vertical markets where we have experience.
8. Please comment on Altitude’s financial status. What is your anticipated growth for 2008?
In a word, healthy. Altitude has achieved strong 20+% growth year over year growth, for 7 years in a row. And most importantly, profitable. We expect to see this level of growth through 2008, especially as we continue to win deals in North America and APAC, which are the fastest growing regions for us currently.