New Kids in the Customer Interaction Management Space: Twilio
In August 2016, Twilio dropped a mini bomb in the Contact Center space announcing that ING Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the world would replace its 17 separate legacy call centers systems with one global solution built on its APIs. Twilio has been growing steadily its presence in the customer interaction management space and it is time to explore its solution set. I was able to discuss with Al Cook, who heads its Contact Center Business.
An early focus
Twilio popped on the radar screen of the industry when it provided Uber with the infrastructure to enable drivers to seamlessly communicate with customers in the context of their ride. We became accustomed to such capabilities. However, when it was released, it was a breakthrough and set a new bar for digital experiences. A significant fraction of Twilio's projects are enterprises leveraging its communication-Platform-as-a-Service (cPaaS) to enable such new customer experiences. With 1.9 million developers, the company has grown into a powerhouse. It elevated its customer interaction management capabilities last May when it rebranded them as Twilio Engagement Cloud. During its December Analyst conference, the company further positioned it as a strategic growth driver.
Beyond contact center augmentation
The ING project signaled that some companies were going beyond "augmenting" their existing infrastructure with cPaaS and building their Contact Center infrastructure on top of it. Building a contact center is not a simple task and the announcement left many pundits dubious. Twilio doesn't provide many references of full-fledged contact centers built from the ground up using its APIs. Eighteen months after the announcement, the deployment is underway in the Netherlands with several departments already using the solution. ING Spain has also started to use video for high-value interactions. Last November, the company announced the National Debt Relief was able to replace its legacy contact center technology in 90 days to support 1,300 agents and employees.
A different approach
If Twilio wants you to know you can build a contact center using its API and toolset, it is touting a different, “hackathon” approach. Developers can create new communication experiences one at a time in a continuous way. These experiences can get added to existing solutions without having to rip or replace them. This model brings speed and agility to enterprises in a domain where changes have always been difficult and taken time. Companies can improve their existing contact center in an iterative way and may or may not over time decommission their legacy infrastructure.
The desire to become agile was the key driver for ING when it chose the do-it-yourself route. The Dutch bank wanted the flexibility of being able to create its own, differentiated customer experiences. Many software providers also found this approach compelling to add voice capabilities to their products.
Twilio has embraced a use case approach for its development as well. It put agility at the center of its mission. The company has built a learning culture and machine around use cases. Despite its 800 employees, it has preserved an organization in small autonomous teams that learn from what customers do with their APIs, and deepen the capabilities that enjoy the most traction. Twilio has been able to scale this model by having these focused teams negotiate what they need from each other in the form of APIs.
The second distinctive element of Twilio's philosophy is an approach not limited to contact centers. It has named its platform, Customer Engagement, purposefully. Probably the best way to appreciate it is to look at representative solution partners:
- AirCall, NewVoiceMedia, Serenova, and Talkdesk for contact centers
- ServiceNow and Zendesk for customer service
- Outreach, RingDNA, Salesforce, and Salesloft for sales automation
- It is now "tip-toeing" in the marketing category with call tracking analytics.
Its bigger promise is to enable customer experiences that cross the traditional Marketing-Sales-Service boundaries.
This broad ISV support also had DMG Consulting credit the company with an installed base of 299,000 seats in July 2017. It placed the company in the number 2 position of the Cloud Contact Center market, second only to the combined Cisco and Broadsoft. I estimate on my end customer engagement to represent about 25% of Twilio's $400+M business.
Footprint
Twilio has not just been adding new APIs, expanding beyond the two, historical, SMS and voice use cases. It has lately provided more ready-to-use components to accelerate development:
- Task Router, a matching engine to route interactions to agents
- Studio, a voice self-service development kit
The company has also started to groom a partner ecosystem and assemble a marketplace. The size of the market opportunity is such that some vendors have started to plug some of the functionality gaps. Most notably, Ytica has integrated its analytics package to Task Router in an attempt to convert its event stream into a more usable set of reports.
I tried to summarize Twilio overall capability footprint using my upcoming blueprint:
Cost
Another concern raised about Twilio is the telecom cost. Indeed Twilio is a broker reselling network access. Despite the buying leverage it is gaining as it grows, this middleman position puts the company at a disadvantage in a price-sensitive market. This struck me particularly when Amazon launched its Connect solution with telecom prices significantly lower. Al was quick to point out that I was comparing apples and oranges as Twilio prices bundle telecom and API usage. He also stressed two unique features of Twilio Super Network. It makes local phone number provisioning easy across the world and offers unique reliability levels by being able to reroute traffic from one provider to another in case of an issue. The cost issue burst when the company announced that its largest customer, Uber, would scale back its usage and explore most cost-effective solutions. It has put Twilio's gross margin, lower than typical software companies, under the scrutiny of investors.
Twilio has grown into a major player of the customer interaction space. If building from the ground up a contact center based on its API and toolsets remain a significant undertaking, the company offers many compelling augmentation solutions. In an industry still plagued by complexity and silos, its presence and role will continue to expand.
Start YourCustomized Search
SOLUTION AREA
SOLUTION PROVIDERS
- 8x8 (40) Apply 8x8 filter
- Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (50) Apply Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise filter
- AT&T (44) Apply AT&T filter
- AudioCodes (49) Apply AudioCodes filter
- Avaya (397) Apply Avaya filter
- Cisco (574) Apply Cisco filter
- Dell (11) Apply Dell filter
- Five9 (54) Apply Five9 filter
- Fuze (39) Apply Fuze filter
- Genesys (100) Apply Genesys filter
- HP (98) Apply HP filter
- IBM (171) Apply IBM filter
- Jabra (9) Apply Jabra filter
- Logitech (56) Apply Logitech filter
- Lumen (4) Apply Lumen filter
- Masergy (50) Apply Masergy filter
- Microsoft (766) Apply Microsoft filter
- Mitel (233) Apply Mitel filter
- NEC (128) Apply NEC filter
- Nectar (58) Apply Nectar filter
- Polycom (95) Apply Polycom filter
- Ramp (37) Apply Ramp filter
- RingCentral (126) Apply RingCentral filter
- Sennheiser (18) Apply Sennheiser filter
- Slack (13) Apply Slack filter
- Tata Communications (59) Apply Tata Communications filter
- Unify (186) Apply Unify filter
- Vonage Business (80) Apply Vonage Business filter
- Yealink (8) Apply Yealink filter
- Zoom (21) Apply Zoom filter
- Acme Packet (24) Apply Acme Packet filter
- Allworx (2) Apply Allworx filter
- Arkadin (22) Apply Arkadin filter
- Aspect (34) Apply Aspect filter
- BT (25) Apply BT filter
- CaféX (8) Apply CaféX filter
- CallTower (14) Apply CallTower filter
- Clarity Connect (10) Apply Clarity Connect filter
- Continuant (1) Apply Continuant filter
- Damaka (4) Apply Damaka filter
- Dialogic (5) Apply Dialogic filter
- Dimension Data (44) Apply Dimension Data filter
- Empirix (11) Apply Empirix filter
- Enghouse Interactive (17) Apply Enghouse Interactive filter
- Inference Solutions (9) Apply Inference Solutions filter
- IntelePeer (27) Apply IntelePeer filter
- IR (11) Apply IR filter
- Jive (21) Apply Jive filter
- Kurmi Software (21) Apply Kurmi Software filter
- Lifesize (33) Apply Lifesize filter
- Lightware (3) Apply Lightware filter
- Mavenir (6) Apply Mavenir filter
- Modality Systems (8) Apply Modality Systems filter
- Momentum (36) Apply Momentum filter
- Netfortris (5) Apply Netfortris filter
- NetSapiens (6) Apply NetSapiens filter
- NewVoiceMedia (31) Apply NewVoiceMedia filter
- Nureva (26) Apply Nureva filter
- NUWAVE (5) Apply NUWAVE filter
- Orange (32) Apply Orange filter
- OVCC (8) Apply OVCC filter
- Panasonic (18) Apply Panasonic filter
- PanTerra Networks (9) Apply PanTerra Networks filter
- ScanSource (21) Apply ScanSource filter
- SIPPIO (3) Apply SIPPIO filter
- Snom (20) Apply Snom filter
- Star2Star (8) Apply Star2Star filter
- StarLeaf (12) Apply StarLeaf filter
- Tadiran Telecom (2) Apply Tadiran Telecom filter
- TekVizion (9) Apply TekVizion filter
- Unimax (7) Apply Unimax filter
- Verint (41) Apply Verint filter
- Voice4Net (2) Apply Voice4Net filter
- VOSS (85) Apply VOSS filter
- Voxbone (14) Apply Voxbone filter
- West (28) Apply West filter
- XO Communications (3) Apply XO Communications filter
- Yorktel (17) Apply Yorktel filter
- Zultys (2) Apply Zultys filter
- 3CX (8) Apply 3CX filter
- ADDASOUND (1) Apply ADDASOUND filter
- Aerohive (1) Apply Aerohive filter
- Aryaka (1) Apply Aryaka filter
- Asurion (22) Apply Asurion filter
- Avnet (7) Apply Avnet filter
- Bandwidth (5) Apply Bandwidth filter
- Calabrio (5) Apply Calabrio filter
- Consilium Software (13) Apply Consilium Software filter
- Drum (5) Apply Drum filter
- ESI (6) Apply ESI filter
- Esna (16) Apply Esna filter
- Exinda (2) Apply Exinda filter
- EZuce (3) Apply EZuce filter
- GUnify (6) Apply GUnify filter
- Highfive (4) Apply Highfive filter
- Huawei (47) Apply Huawei filter
- Imagicle (3) Apply Imagicle filter
- IPCortex (1) Apply IPCortex filter
- KnoahSoft (1) Apply KnoahSoft filter
- KOVA (1) Apply KOVA filter
- Logmein (9) Apply Logmein filter
- Metropolis Technologies (4) Apply Metropolis Technologies filter
- Mutare (2) Apply Mutare filter
- NextPlane (27) Apply NextPlane filter
- Ooma (16) Apply Ooma filter
- Patton (11) Apply Patton filter
- Radish Systems (1) Apply Radish Systems filter
- Radisys (3) Apply Radisys filter
- Shango (1) Apply Shango filter
- SMART (163) Apply SMART filter
- Stack8 (1) Apply Stack8 filter
- Swyx (1) Apply Swyx filter
- TrueConf (4) Apply TrueConf filter
- UJET (13) Apply UJET filter
- Voximplant (3) Apply Voximplant filter
CONTENT TYPE
- BC Expert Insights Market (43) Apply BC Expert Insights Market filter
- BC Expert Insights Objective - Vendor Neutral (42) Apply BC Expert Insights Objective - Vendor Neutral filter
- BC Expert Insights Planning (15) Apply BC Expert Insights Planning filter
- BC Expert Insights Solution (12) Apply BC Expert Insights Solution filter
- BC Expert Insights Vendor (80) Apply BC Expert Insights Vendor filter
- BC Expert Insights Vendor Solution (145) Apply BC Expert Insights Vendor Solution filter
- BC Expert Roundtable (133) Apply BC Expert Roundtable filter
- Bcs Webinar (0)
- Bcs Webinar Registration (0)
- Best Practice (38) Apply Best Practice filter
- Buyer Guide (14) Apply Buyer Guide filter
- Case Study (29) Apply Case Study filter
- Executive Interview (145) Apply Executive Interview filter
- Expert Roundtable (450) Apply Expert Roundtable filter
- Guest Contributions (35) Apply Guest Contributions filter
- Multimedia (38) Apply Multimedia filter
- News Analysis (2081) Apply News Analysis filter
- Newsfeed Article (1303) Apply Newsfeed Article filter
- Newsfeed Article (1) Apply Newsfeed Article filter
- Thought Leadership (21) Apply Thought Leadership filter
- Vendor Collateral (211) Apply Vendor Collateral filter
- Vendor Resource Best Practices (24) Apply Vendor Resource Best Practices filter
- Vendor Resource Buyers Guides (2) Apply Vendor Resource Buyers Guides filter
- Vendor Resource Multimedia Content (4) Apply Vendor Resource Multimedia Content filter
- Vendor Resource White Paper (4) Apply Vendor Resource White Paper filter
- Webinar (13) Apply Webinar filter
- Webinars (7) Apply Webinars filter
- White Paper (64) Apply White Paper filter
MORE FILTERS
INDUSTRY
- Banking And Investment (800) Apply Banking And Investment filter
- Education (446) Apply Education filter
- Energy And Utilities (487) Apply Energy And Utilities filter
- Finance (12) Apply Finance filter
- Government (675) Apply Government filter
- Healthcare (482) Apply Healthcare filter
- Hospitality (180) Apply Hospitality filter
- Insurance (100) Apply Insurance filter
- Manufacturing (704) Apply Manufacturing filter
- Media/Publishing (422) Apply Media/Publishing filter
- None (43) Apply None filter
- Professional Services (745) Apply Professional Services filter
- Retail & Distribution (798) Apply Retail & Distribution filter
- Technology (1611) Apply Technology filter
- Transportation (110) Apply Transportation filter
Comments
There are currently no comments on this article.
You must be a registered user to make comments