INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Twilio, a company best known for supplying a communications APIs for developers has a product called Twilio Flex for building sophisticated
customer service applications on top of Twilio APIs
Today, it announced it was acquiring Ytica (pronounced Why-tica) to provide an operational and analytical layer on top of the customer
service solution.
The companies would not discuss the purchase price, but Twilio indicated it does not expect the acquisition to have a
material impact on its &results, operations or financial condition.& In other words, it probably didn''t cost much.
Ytica, which is based in
Prague, has actually been a partner with Twilio for some time, so coming together in this fashion really made a lot of sense, especially as
Twilio has been developing Flex.
Twilio Flex is an app platform for contact centers, which offers a full stack of applications and allows
users to deliver customer support over multiple channels, Al Cook, general manager of Twilio Flex explained
&Flex deploys like SaaS, but because it built on top of APIs, you can reach in and change how Flex works,& he said
That is very appealing, especially for larger operations looking for a flexible, cloud-based solution without the baggage of on-prem legacy
products.
What the product was lacking, however, was a native way to manage customer service representatives from within the application,
and understand through analytics and dashboards, how well or poorly the team was doing
Having that ability to measure the effectiveness of the team becomes even more critical the larger the group becomes, and Cook indicated
some Flex users are managing enormous groups with 10,000-20,000 employees.
Ytica provides a way to measure the performance of customer
service staff, allowing management to monitor and intervene and coach when necessary
&It made so much sense to join together as one team
They have huge experience in the contact center, and a similar philosophy to build something customizable and programmable in the cloud,&
Cook said.
While Ytica works with other vendors beyond Twilio, CEO Simon Vostrý says that they will continue to support those customers,
even as they join the Twilio family
&We can run Flex and can continue to run this separately
We have customers running on other SaaS platforms, and we will continue to support them,& he said.
The company will remain in Prague and
become a Twilio satellite office
All 14 employees are expected to join the Twilio team and Cook says plans are already in the works to expand the Prague team.
