New Contact Center as a Service delivers a human experience at scale with omnichannel, mobile-first interactions

Plivo, the cloud communications platform that enables businesses to engage with their customers, today announced Contacto, the omnichannel, mobile-first contact center platform that delivers seamless customer experiences with a human touch. Contacto allows B2C businesses in retail and ecommerce to boost customer service teams’ efficiency and enable personalized, high-touch interactions—weaving together artificial intelligence, sentiment analysis, and omnichannel capabilities to offer a superior experience, embedded directly into brands’ websites and applications.

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Now more than ever, customers interact with brands online. Ecommerce has soared throughout the pandemic—in the US, ecommerce sales in 2020 grew more than 30% from 2019, with mobile commerce accounting for 45% of the total market. And this trend shows no signs of slowing down. With more mobile-first customers, come more avenues with which customers can request help—retailers must be able to service their customers with the same experience regardless of channel—whether that be Twitter, Facebook, in-app chat, WhatsApp, SMS messaging, or voice call.

In fact, as B2C sees tremendous growth, with new businesses entering, disrupting and innovating in the space, a contact center built for today’s mobile-first customers will be a significant differentiator for B2C businesses. Winning and retaining customers is dependent on delivering a seamless, effective and efficient experience. No one wants to sit on hold for an hour—or repeat their problem or information endlessly—and, with Contacto, there’s a better way.

“Most businesses don’t have the time or resources to build out a fully customized call center. They’re already too occupied with running their own business,” said Venky Balasubramanian, Founder and CEO at Plivo. “That’s why we created Contacto—so every company from Fortune 100s to small business owners can provide their customers with world-class customer service interactions. Contacto’s AI-powered chatbots can quickly qualify customers and escalate tickets seamlessly to live representatives, where real-time sentiment analysis helps them provide better service—all within the brand’s existing platforms.”

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Contacto: Next-level customer service with a human element

Great customer experience depends on the human touch—customers want to feel heard and appreciated while their requests are efficiently resolved. Contacto delivers on these expectations, making technology feel more human and helping agents provide contextualized, personal, and effective service in the customer’s preferred channel.

Key features and benefits include:

• Conversational chatbots: Intelligent chatbots help verify and qualify customers, increasing agent productivity and helping resolve requests faster.
• In-app chat: Embedded directly into a brand’s application, customers can easily raise a request via in-app chat, initiating their customer service journey without having to switch channels.
• Native voice calling: Contacto comes with full-featured voice and messaging capabilities, native to the platform, so there’s no need to engage costly, third-party vendors.
• Omnichannel platform: Integrating chat functionality, social media, SMS messaging and voice calls, Contacto allows customers to select the channel they prefer to communicate in, then switch channels as desired throughout their journey. For example, a customer could choose to describe their problem via voice call, then have an order tracking number sent to them via SMS. This level of channel personalization helps to reduce friction and create a positive experience for every customer.
• Customer interaction history: Contacto allows agents to view all of a customer’s previous interactions alongside their current service request, giving them the context they need to solve issues faster and create a better customer experience.
• Sentiment analysis: Agents interacting with customers see real-time coaching scores, based on sentiment analysis, so they can adopt the right approach to helping the customer. These scores help ensure quality and allow supervisors to provide effective feedback and update workflows.
• Deep CRM and Help Desk integrations: Designed to work seamlessly with a business’ existing systems, Contacto features out-of-the-box integrations with Salesforce, Service Cloud, Zendesk, Shopify and many more.

Contacto Launch Marks the Next Phase of Plivo’s Growth

The launch of Contacto marks the culmination of Plivo’s first phase as a company—its 10-year evolution in providing customers with a simpler, better business communications platform. Quietly rising to the top of the Communications Platform as a Service market, Plivo has spent the last 10 years building a solid customer base and a stellar suite of APIs alongside a comprehensive and evolving product offering. Today, Plivo’s SMS and Voice APIs are used by thousands of innovative businesses in more than 190 countries, including IBM, Mercadolibre, BYJU’s and Deckers Brands.

Now, with Contacto, Plivo is entering into its next evolution in the market—offering not only best-in-class API products for technical teams, but also cloud-based communications solutions that offer superior out-of-the-box functionality for B2C customer service teams.

“Plivo is in a unique position to offer vertically integrated, end-to-end products, and the market opportunity here is tremendous,” said Balasubramanian. “As Plivo embarks on its next 10 years of growth, we look forward to continued innovation and evolution, while maintaining our focus on providing customers with the solutions they want and need to succeed.”

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