Paris, May 28, 2020 – AKIO, publisher of the Akio.cx software platform for call centres and customer services, announces the acquisition of Algoria, a software publisher specialised in unified communications. The combination of the two applications will allow any company to organise the processing of customer requests more efficiently, by facilitating collaborative work between customer advisors and internal employees, especially through teleworking.
In a context of economic instability accentuated by the coronavirus crisis, it is vital for companies to take care of their customer relations. For example, two-thirds of consumers are willing to change brands if they are not satisfied with their first interaction (LSA-AKIO, 2019).
However, in order to handle a request properly, the customer advisor must be able to call on the company’s internal skills – the salesperson in charge of the customer, the department manager in the warehouse, or the expert in the field concerned. Until now, this collaboration has been made difficult by the diversity of communication equipment used, as they are often unable to connect to each other. To overcome this, AKIO has acquired Algoria and its TWS technology.
AKIO is a French software publisher specialised in call centres and customer services. It publishes the Akio.cx platform for managing incoming customer requests, enabling routing to the right customer agent whatever the channel: voice, email, chat, social networks. Algoria’s TWS is a software tool that allows the immediate and simple installation of a “SIP softphone” on a computer, thanks to a normal Internet connection. In the same way, it allows you to easily create video-conference and chat (WebRTC) communications. It can also control all the company’s existing telephones, regardless of the PBX to which they are attached (Alcatel, Mitel/Aastra, Cisco, Siemens, etc.).
The combination of Akio.cx and Algoria’s TWS makes it easy to connect any company employee, including teleworkers, to the contact centre, in order to involve them in the exchange with the customer. “Algoria and AKIO are part of the move to bring the Unified Communications (UCaaS) and Contact Center (CCaaS) markets closer together, a move facilitated by the proximity of the two companies’ industrial know-how,” said Marc Chartier, in charge of business development for the TWS offer. This association includes in particular:
– Immediately providing employees with SIP softphones and WebRTC communications, including remote sites or teleworking.
– Enabling the agent to check the availability of the employee (presence management) by consulting the centralised directory.
– Initiate a conversation with the employee over the phone, via SIP softphone or CTI connectors to Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Cisco, Mitel/Aastra, Siemens; or via email, chat, video conferencing (WebRTC).
– Integrate the conversation into the exchange with the customer, live or afterwards: historical management of internal-external conversations, standard APIs with most of the major CRM tools on the market (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, E-Deal, …).
– All this in a collaborative work process on the customer file: visualisation of availability, internal requests and validation stages, with assistance by AI (semantic text analysis).
Patrick Giudicelli, President of AKIO: “The acquisition of Algoria by AKIO is part of a vision of unification of the different communication technologies. This vision, which AKIO has been implementing for several years, has recently accelerated thanks to the global partnership with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. Algoria’s TWS will further strengthen this strategic alliance.”
“Thanks to AKIO, TWS partners will have access to a huge market with very strong perspectives for development, that of the customer relations sector” underlines Jocelyn Azière, President of Algoria. “And this, while maintaining their historical positions in corporate telephony.”
AKIO will continue the development of TWS as an autonomous offer through Algoria’s historical network of partners, while continuing the exploration of commercial synergies between the Akio.cx+TWS offer for contact centres. As such, Algoria’s team has joined AKIO’s team in Vallauris. The integration work has already led to a first exploitable version which will soon be officially launched.
About Algoria
With its TWS (Telephony Web Services) suite, Algoria enables its clients to place communication and collaborative work tools at the heart of their information system. 100% thin client, TWS does not require installation on the users’ workstation and provides them with all the advanced functions of telephony/computer coupling unified communication and collaborative work in a single web interface. This reduced deployment and operating cost allows companies to achieve a very rapid return on investment.
About AKIO
A member of Croissance Plus, cited by Gartner and Frost & Sullivan as one of the leading customer relationship software publishers in Europe, AKIO has 80 employees on 5 sites, and more than 10,000 users in all sectors of activity (Kiabi, Axa Banque, Engie, DHL, Sarenza, Interflora, Sandoz…). Its Akio.cx platform is designed for call centres and customer service departments. Distributed by the largest operators around the world and a member of the BPI Excellence innovation network, the company has built its success on its four values: humility, benevolence, high standards and openness.
Contact: Philippe Guihéneuc I Telephone 01 53 20 84 58 I Email pguiheneuc@akio.com