Thai software firm makes inroads into call centres

Database News - Wednesday December 12, 2007

Thai software firm makes inroads into call centres

CT Asia debuts v4 of flagship product

DON SAMBANDARAKSA

A Thai software company has released new call centre software that promises to bring an unprecedented level of flexibility to marketing campaigns via any touch points - ATM screens, credit card point of sale machines, instant messenger, television or even the mobile telephone - while promising to integrate with all existing enterprise and management systems.

Chalermpon Punnotok, CEO of CT Asia, showed off Infocentrix 4.0 SOA, a call centre platform designed with a service oriented architecture so that it is extensible and can provide as much or as little functionality as needed.

For instance, for the voice component, the system can interface with PBXs from any major manufacturer. For those without an existing call centre system, it can use Skype for both incoming and outgoing calls for a complete software-only call centre solution with only an Internet connection.

The software is designed so that it provides contact centre services that can then be taken and integrated in any point of contact. This means that it can provide the call centre and campaign logic, which can then be fed to an ATM screen to offer bank customers targeted services after withdrawing money.

Chalermpon put forth another scenario where someone with a Starbucks loyalty card could receive an SMS after buying a cup of coffee offering a special offer at a nearby bank branch. In that case, the actual Starbucks point of sale machine is the point of contact. Another possibility is to integrate the call centre into a cable TV set top box to offer campaigns via the remote control or even push the contact centre right into the customer's pocket with a 3G mobile phone application - something he is working on for a Japanese telco right now.

Chalermpon claims that CT Asia is the only player in the market that offers this level of flexibility. He said that all the call centre incumbents were still too worried about protecting their legacy, proprietary hardware systems to open up and mash-up.

The users can use as much of CT Asia's graphical user interface or as little as they wish. For instance, when used with SAP all his software is hidden behind the scenes, with only the SAP "Make Call" button present. Another system integrator could take the same logic and create a virtual phone in the Second Life virtual world community and manage customer calls that way.

CT Asia has recently moved into Vietnam and signed Viet Securities as a customer. Vietnam has over 80 banks most of which are at an earlier stage of evolution in their contact centres than here in Thailand. Chalermpon has set his sights on 70 percent of the Vietnam market and believes that the timing is perfect to as none of the customers there want legacy systems.

CT Asia has signed an agreement to partner with IBM to go into markets in Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. IBM will help provide contacts and sponsor events and will be the platform of choice in return.

Chalermpon believes that software provides a huge opportunity for Thailand. Rather than go after outsourcing projects - which requires huge numbers of programmers we do not have - he believes in finding a niche, such as his extensible SOA call centre solution, doing it well and then hopefully selling it all over the world.

Bangkok Post