State of the Union: Part 1

The January 17^th, 2023, Telarus Tuesday call welcomed Patrick Oborn, CPO and Co-Founder, and Sam Nelson, VP of Advanced Solutions – Contact Center, Telarus. Part 1: Contact Center. The entire recording can be viewed here.

About Telarus

Telarus is owned by Adam Edwards, Patrick Oborn, and Richard Murray, with investment from Columbia Capital. In 2002, Adam and Patrick bootstrapped the company from savings and commissions they earned as Commission River online affiliates. Telarus first consisted of Patrick Oborn generating leads with ShopforT1.com and Adam Edwards making sales from the steady stream of new prospects. That early stream of the residual commission was re-invested into channel managers who could support new agents and software developers and employ the services of a patent attorney to assist us with the patent application for GeoQuote®, our new real-time quoting software. In October 2017, Telarus acquired CarrierSales, a competitor in the technology solutions brokerage space, to create the country’s largest privately-held technology solutions brokerage. Columbia’s investment in Telarus will fuel its continued growth as it expands its lead as the largest privately-held technology solutions brokerage. Telarus’ existing management team continues to lead and maintain a majority stake in the company.

Advanced Solutions Team

The Advanced Solutions team is in charge of vetting suppliers that come into their practice to ensure that the suppliers that Telarus Partners with are the most up-and-coming advanced suppliers that partners will need to make a big difference in your customers’ lives.  They also help supervise, advise and consult with the Telarus Sales Engineering and Solution Architect Teams.  They are also heavily involved in the Telarus Education circuit.

Contact Center

• Core Products
  • (ACD)
  • APIs and SDKs
  • Call and Screen Recording
  • CRM/ERP Integration
  • Dialers
    • Preview
    • Power
    • Predictive
  • Inbound/Outbound/Blended
  • Interactive Voice Response
  • Omnichannel and Digital Engagement
    • Voice, Email, Chat, Mobile, Social, SMS/Text, Video
  • Reporting, Analytics, and BI
  • Self-Service
  • UC Integrations
• Artificial Intelligence
  • Conversational AI and Chatbots
  • Real-Time Assist Coaching
  • Virtual Assistants
• Business Process Outsourcing
• Compliance Consulting and Implementation
• CRM Integrators and Licensing
• Employee Engagement
  • Gamification
  • Workforce Management
  • Workforce Optimization
• Knowledge Management, Quality Management, and Assurance
  • Agent Coaching and Performance
  • Compliance and Monitoring
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Contact Center Sales – The Numbers

The slight decrease is due to the bump after the pandemic.  There was a skyrocketing following the Pandemic, but now those numbers have started to level out.  There has also been a shift from the Core functionality to ancillary services.

Contact Center Top 10

2023: Contact Center Trends to Watch 

• Digital First Approach
  • People want to reach out digitally before they pick up a phone. People want to try and use the most straightforward path of doing business.  That can be through chat, text, or email.  These technologies are now being incorporated into the customer journey to make it easier for customers to do business.
• AI/Automation
  • AI is not here to replace humans. Companies still want and need that human element and human touch in the customer journey.  AI will optimize what customers are doing today, but it will continue to learn in this industry.
• Employee Engagement
  • Happy employees equal happy customers. There is a strong focus on keeping employees focused, comfortable, and engaged.

CCaaS Ecosystem (Traditional Contact Center)

Critical Factors in Selecting a CCaaS Vendor

1. Digital Channel Integrations (out of the box)
2. Implementation Proficiency
3. Support/Maintenance Structure
4. Digital Channel Customizations
5. Customer Retention/References
6. Workforce Management Plug-ins
7. Outage History
8. Modular Cost (Ability to add individual elements as needed)
9. Overseas Deployment Capability
10. Physical Path of Traffic (International)

For more detailed information discussed in the call, please watch the recording on YouTube! The entire recording is available here.

To learn more about Telarus, visit www.telarus.com.