In the context of strong growth in the Customer Relationship market, AKIO has announced a €7 million investment to finance the evolution of its omnichannel cloud platform. Objective: simplify an increasingly complex profession in order to improve customer satisfaction.
The quality of customer relations has become an increasingly vital issue for companies as the sector has become more and more competitive. Gartner estimates that the market for cloud-based contact centres (CCaaS) will grow from €6 billion to €18 billion between 2017 and 2022, i.e. 25% per year.
However, Customer Relations departments face two growing challenges: on the one hand, they must be able to handle sudden increases in the volume of interactions, regardless of the contact channel used (voice, email, chat, social networks, etc.); on the other, they require tools to manage and analyse interactions in order to optimise the way they are handled. Being able to combine these two qualities is the Grail to be achieved for Customer Relationship Software vendors.
In this race, AKIO has solid assets thanks to its Akio Unified platform that manages all contact channels in a unified way, while guaranteeing data protection (GDPR). For its customers, major players in e-commerce (OUI.sncf, Kiabi, Interflora, Sarenza), services (La Poste Mobile, GLS, Engie) or insurance companies (Chorum, Energie Mutuelle, Kerialis), voice and data are processed in the same way. The interaction data from all channels are centralised in the platform at a single location. The system guarantees consistent processing and native multi-channel supervision.
AKIO now wants to step up to the next level by investing more than €7 million from its own funds and bank financing from its partners (Banque Populaire Val de France, BNP, Caisse Epargne IDF and BPI France). Séverine Pretesac, Corporate Customer Advisor at Banque Populaire Val de France: “We have been very happy to support Akio since its creation in 1998. It is a French software editor whose development is a true model of economic and financial virtue.”
In addition to restructuring its shareholder base, AKIO will focus most of its investment on developing its new generation Customer Engagement platform: Akio.cx.
Akio.cx aims above all to facilitate the work of call centre agents. “An efficient agent will lead to a satisfied client, a supervisor who achieves his goals will lead to better company performance. Everyone benefits from increased simplicity,” says Patrick GIUDICELLI, President of AKIO . This is why the Akio.cx platform is based on a few key principles:
– An easy-to-deploy, open, robust cloud architecture (API) that can support very high volumes.
– Simplification of the use of the platform and strengthening of the tools to assist agents (AI, assistant, bot).
– Distribution rules based on content & sentiment analysis to significantly improve task prioritisation.
– A predictive dashboard offering recommendations for workforce management through real-time analysis of activity statistics, all channels combined.
– And finally, a cloud model based on a pay-per-use billing system with no minimum commitment.
AKIO is targeting two markets: telephone operators and telecom equipment manufacturers who are looking for additional value-added services; and Client Relations departments that are currently equipped with silo applications that are poorly adapted to a rapidly changing market (outsourcing of customer services, multiple channels, managing customer data).
The first evolution of the current platform is expected by the end of the first half of 2019. The most significant developments will take place during the second half of the year and throughout 2020.
To achieve these objectives, in addition to pursuing its R&D investments, AKIO is recruiting new talent in all businesses areas: marketing, communications, sales, services, support and production. A Chief Marketing Officer, a Cloud Services Director and a Customer Relations Manager have already joined the company.
About AKIO :
AKIO is the editor of the Akio.cx platform (including Akio Unified, Akio TWS and Akio Insights applications) for customer experience management. Faced with the multiplication of interaction channels, the quality of customer relations has become a major challenge for companies. With the Akio.cx platform, customer relations departments develop a personalised experience with their contacts regardless of the channel (voice, email, chat, social networks, etc.), thanks to unified customer knowledge that is reinforced by intelligent conversation analysis.
Contact :
Celine MOLINA, Communications Manager
Email: cmolina(at)akio.com