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If you are like me, you walk the exhibit hall at Enterprise Connect with a plan of the booths you definitely want to visit – to see a demo, visit with a solution provider or talk to an expert. Along the way, you see booths for vendors you are unfamiliar with and say to yourself,
“I wonder what they do?”
Last year, I was prompted by signage to stop at one such exhibitor, Klearcom. There was enough in their booth messaging to convince me that contact centers were part of their story, and so I decided to find out more. Besides, the ginger-headed man dressed in his corporate color, kelly green, looked like my kind of (Irish) guy. It turned out to be Liam Dunne, CEO, Klearcom.
To explain what Klearcom does, let me start with the consumer. You arrive in a foreign country, say El Salvador or China, and your credit card is denied by the hotel. You need to reach your card provider to sort it out. You dial the local number provided on the website for the country you are in, and there’s a problem.
Now, let’s shift to the contact center professional. From potentially half-way around the world, how does a contact center manager begin to troubleshoot the stranded customer’s issue?
Before I go on to describe how Klearcom solves issues like those listed above, a brief explanation of regression testing is in order, as it is key to understanding Klearcom’s services. Regression testing is a type of software testing that re-runs functional and non-functional tests after every change to ensure that the change does not introduce any new bugs or issues. It is an integral part of the software development cycle, aimed at maintaining the stability and quality of the software application by checking the functionality of the existing codebase after updates, revisions, improvements or optimizations.
In a contact center setting, the term regression testing has been used to describe testing circuits and integrated voice response systems (IVR) prompts and logic. This process checks that systems continue to perform as expected following any updates, additions, or integrations, such as third-party applications. Also, a carrier can make changes that impact customer service or have service issues that require attention to avoid contact center impacts.
Klearcom offers automated IVR regression testing. In contact centers, automated IVR regression testing is often preferred due to its efficiency in covering more elements of the end-to-end system on a regular basis compared to manual testing. Automated IVR regresson testing can discover and highlight corrective actions before they become customer service problems.
Klearcom’s mission is to make sure that negative outcomes don’t befall a consumer or business seeking service, no matter where they are in the world. Their vision is to offer end-to-end solutions for companies’ telecommunications needs, ensuring that they have the best tools at their disposal to create exceptional customer experiences.
Klearcom executes this vision by enabling companies to test every telephone number they publish continuously and proactively. Klearcom allows companies to validate the IVR path from the customer to the agent. This includes toll-free numbers and locally dialed ones, called from a landline or a mobile phone. Klearcom also provides a managed service to do the testing for companies.
Klearcom was founded in 2018 by experienced executives with deep roots in the carrier market. Since then, it has grown its operation to provide service in ninety-seven countries around the world, in every global region.
In each country, Klearcom provides connections to a minimum of two to four telecom operators, allowing a company to validate and test across all local service providers. To accomplish this, Klearcom maintains relationships with over 260 different telecom operators across both fixed and landline services. Toll, toll-free, universal international freephone numbers (UIFN), international toll-free service numbers that are country-specific (ITFS) and direct inward dial numbers (DID), e.g., using the in-country dialing codes, are all included in their regression service.
While companies have offered IVR regression testing for almost 20 years, as with other contact center software solutions, the move to digital channels and the use of AI has created opportunities for Klearcom. The company supports its global network of testing and validation with transcription services in over forty languages, allowing for the regression testing and validation of IVR messages, intent, and speech in multiple languages.
Come to Klearcom’s Enterprise Connect booth (830) to see a demo of soon-to-be announced in-country Gen AI testing capabilities. According to Dunne, “Using the Klearcom platform is more convenient than legacy providers as we were built to solve global problems. Legacy providers have adopted a piecemeal approach, turning on functionality based on third party integrations or acquisitions. At Klearcom, our tech stack was built from the ground up, internally.”
Dunne reports testing speech based IVRs and voicebots is working in-country today - with local languages - confirming Generative AI is interpreting local language intent correctly. This allows the creation of a real- time feedback loop back to contact center management if any problems are identified.
Klearcom’ s booth is not the only place you’ll hear an Irish brogue at Enterprise Connect. In 2023, Zoom purchased Cork-based Workvivo to add to its employee experience offerings and CEO John Goulding will likely spend some time in the Zoom booth. In addition, Genesys has a key AI development center in Galway with 300+ team members – built-out after the company purchased Altocloud in 2018. You may find Joe Smyth, SVP of R&D, Digital and AI, Genesys, on hand.
Sheila McGee-Smith will be in the "Keynote Panel: Is Gen AI Already Delivering Business Value to Enterprise CX" session on Monday, March 25 at 2 pm EST. See you there!
Enterprise Connect 2024 will be held at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL, from March 25-28. Preview the conference schedule or register to attend. To keep on top of all Enterprise Connect developments, subscribe to the weekly newsletter.
