Funds to Be Used to Meet Demand for Enterprise-Class Cloud-Based Contact Center Platform
Bellevue, Washington, Feburary 7, 2012 – Spoken Communications, provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers, today announced that it has completed its Series B round of financing. The completion of this transaction includes the issuance of preferred stock totaling $11.5 million led by Ignition Capital and includes participation from Ignition Partners (Series A investor).
The proceeds from this transaction will be used to continue expanding its customer footprint and cloud platform offerings. The Spoken contact center platform is currently processing hundreds of millions of annualized customer talk time minutes and serving over 4,500 call center agents in a remote, work-from-home environment, who are answering calls for twelve separate companies.
As a company delivering an enterprise-class contact center platform, the funding will enable Spoken to expand its cloud hosting capacity for call centers seeking to upgrade legacy infrastructure to virtual and work-from-home models.
Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken, commented, “Spoken Communications is excited to expand our cloud infrastructure capabilities to accommodate the growing demand for the Spoken hosted platform. Ignition’s strategic investment allows us to keep up with the demand for our hosted switch solution while planning for further innovation.”
Spoken’s cloud-based contact center offerings feature the virtualization of key Avaya infrastructure, including call switching, CMS, analytics and skills-based routing, all offered on a hosted, per-minute basis for maximum cost efficiency and minimum capital expenditure.
About Ignition Capital
Ignition Capital is a premier private investment group based in Seattle, Washington with a focus on building and expanding highly profitable long term businesses that occupy significant positions in their industries. With over a hundred years of operating experience from senior positions at some of the largest companies in the world including Microsoft, AT&T and American Express, Ignition Capital brings together a unique combination of deep industry and market knowledge, technical savvy, and battle-tested strategic and tactical insight.
About Ignition Partners
Ignition Partners is a leading venture capital firm dedicated to helping the best entrepreneurs seize opportunity. Founded in 2000 by proven business leaders who have built some of the world's most successful businesses of the last two decades, including Microsoft Windows and Office, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless and Starbucks, Ignition invests in leading technologies and businesses in communications, internet, software, and services across business and consumer targets.
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Funds to Be Used to Expand Virtual Call Centers
Bellevue, Washington, Dec. 15, 2010 – Spoken Communications, the leading provider of proprietary speech recognition technologies for call centers and virtual call center systems, today announced that it has received a strategic investment of $4.0 million from Ignition Growth Capital, LLC. The funds will be used to expand Spoken’s large-scale virtual call center implementations. As a company delivering hosted Avaya ACD and Conversational IVR solutions, the funding will enable Spoken to provide additional hosted capacity for call centers seeking to upgrade to virtual and work-from-home models.
Research firm Gartner has predicted a rise in hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in the call center industry, estimating that by 2012, 65% of customer support conversations will occur “in the Cloud.” Likewise, by 2013, the prediction is that 75% or more of customer service centers will use some type of hosted software application. “It used to be that there was a tremendous fear at the idea of not having direct control over hardware,” said Esteban Kolsky, former Gartner analyst and Founder of ThinkJar, a customer strategy think tank, “But nowadays, the validation of not having to do a large capital investment for call center hardware is leading CIOs to find ways to leverage SaaS. We are seeing a lot of companies making commitments to do SaaS pilots for their next technology refresh.”
Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken, commented, “Spoken Communications is excited to work with Ignition Growth Capital on our strategy to make virtual call center solutions available to call centers facing growing call volumes. Ignition’s strategic investment allows us to enhance and market our virtualized Avaya switch solution to call centers while supporting further innovation in the field.”
Spoken’s virtual call center offerings include a hosted Avaya Automated Call Distributor (ACD), which gives call centers the opportunity for scalable growth without large capital expenditures, and Spoken’s patented Conversational Interactive Voice Response (IVR), which reduces dropped calls by combining automation with a human safety net.
About Ignition Growth Capital
Ignition Capital is a premier private investment group based in Seattle, WA. With a focus on growth equity and specialized buyout investments, the team brings together a combination of domain focus, functional expertise and global operational experience with partners from leadership positions at Microsoft, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless, Cisco, Schlumberger, Starbucks and other industry leaders. Ignition Capital is part of an affiliated family of funds with over $2 billion under management.
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Bellevue, Washington, November 17, 2010 – Spoken Communications, the leading provider of proprietary speech recognition technologies for call centers and virtual call center systems, today announced that Jude Kavalam has joined the company as the new VP of Technology.
“As an industry leader, Spoken has a reputation for being innovative,” says CEO Howard Lee. “We’re very excited about Kavalam joining the Spoken team. He knows the call center space, and he can look beyond our customers’ current needs and focus on innovating into the virtual call center space in the future.”
As VP of Technology, Kavalam will be responsible for overseeing and implementing integration for all current Spoken customers as well as engineering creative solutions for new virtual call center integrations. In addition to sustaining Spoken’s core platform, Kavalam will also seek to develop a deep understanding of client needs in order to inform and explore new features and technologies.
As Spoken continues to innovate in the field of virtual call center solutions, Kavalam will focus on supporting 99.999% uptime for current systems while developing new approaches to integration for the company’s customers.
“I came to Spoken because as a company, it’s proven itself to be adaptive and innovative in the virtual call center space,” reports Kavalam. “My goals at Spoken are threefold: for businesses, to provide an easy, turnkey solution; for agents, to provide tools to increase productivity; for partners, to provide an avenue to showcase their own benefits though a state-of-the-art platform.”
Prior to joining Spoken, Kavalam served as CTO of ClearSight Systems and HyperQuality. Kavalam worked in Microsoft for over 14 years in management and technical leadership roles in various groups, including Windows, Internet Explorer and the Developer Division.
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Spoken Communications will be exhibiting at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas, March 23-25, 2010. Join us in the
Acision Partner Bar, stand 2917, for demonstrations of
GotSearch comprehensive voice search and
GotVoice voicemail transcription solutions. For events during the show,
follow us on Twitter.
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Spoken’s innovative hybrid voice technology and speech to text to be deployed globally by ROK
London and Seattle, 24th February 2010—ROK Entertainment Group, the UK-based mobile technologies, applications and services company, and Spoken Communications Inc., the hybrid voice technology innovator based in Seattle, have today announced the formation of a strategic alliance between the companies, which will see Spoken’s speech-to-text transcription service, GotVoice, and its voice search solution,
GotSearch, marketed under the ROK brand to mobile operators, handset manufacturers and directory-inquiry operators globally.
GotVoice, which will be branded ROKVoice outside the U.S., is a proven carrier-class voicemail to text and visual voicemail solution. The product enables carriers to offer their customers the ability to have all their voicemails transcribed in real-time and presented as SMS or email, centralizing all messaging in a single inbox and optimizing user efficiency.
“We have been looking for a scalable visual voicemail for some considerable time, as we know that such a solution is a killer application. But until we saw GotVoice, we did not feel that any of the existing offerings offered the scalability, reliability and economic model that would deliver value to our carrier partners,” said Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman and CEO of ROK. “What GotVoice offers is a patented and unique combination of voice recognition technology along with structured human mediation that drives the quality of the transcription the system is able to produce. It is demonstrably the most advanced product of its type available today, and we’re delighted to partner with Spoken Communications.”
GotSearch, to be marketed outside the US as ROKSearch, is currently in final development and will offer mobile operators new revenue opportunities because it works on all mobile phones, not just smartphones, and will provide a far more accurate customer experience than existing speech-to-text services. For example, it improves on currently available voice search tools by using Spoken's patented human Silent Guide system, which provides the most effective combination of automated voice technology with pinpoint human intervention through patented software.
"These products are what mobile operators around the world have been asking for, and with ROK, we can now deliver these services internationally," said Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken Communications. "With Spoken's ROKSearch, we will be offering voice search to feature phone and smartphone users alike at a fraction of the cost of delivering traditional directory-enquiry services, with vastly increased accuracy. Mobile operators will even be able to insert location-based services such as adverts, surveys and promotional offers, as well as offer answers to general questions, like 'What is the World Cup?' or 'Who is Lady Gaga?' And we will soon include the ability to make restaurant reservations, get traffic updates and much more. It's the most comprehensive voice search solution on the market today."
About ROK:
Founded in 2004, ROK Entertainment Group is a mobile technologies, applications and services development company with a suite of revenue-generating mobile services which it licenses to mobile operators and handset manufacturers worldwide. Headquartered in the UK, ROK is best known for its award-winning mobile TV services which streams video – live and on demand – over 2.5G, 3G and Wi-Fi®. In addition, ROK has five patent awards and many more patent applications in place. For more information, please visit: www.rokent.com
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Seattle—February 11, 2010—Spoken Communications Inc., the hybrid voice technology innovator, will demonstrate for the first time
GotSearch, its new comprehensive voice search solution, at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Spain.
Developed in conjunction with recently-acquired leading voice-to-text transcription provider GotVoice, GotSearch is being created to meet the unique needs of mobile operators.
“We've been looking at this space for a long time,” says Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman and CEO of ROK Mobile Group Ltd, the leading mobile entertainment company specializing in innovative mobile technologies. “And we've never found anything that we would put our name to until now. GotSearch is really quite different. We've never found anything quite like GotSearch, which stands out because of the level of accuracy it achieves. It works. It does what it says on the tin, as they say. And it reduces the cost of delivery for mobile operators by 90%. That enables us to deliver this solution to a lot of international markets, such as India and Pakistan.”
GotSearch offers mobile operators new revenue opportunities because it works on all mobile phones, not just smartphones, and because it provides a more accurate customer experience. GotSearch improves on currently available voice search tools by using Spoken’s
patented human Silent Guide system, which provides the most effective combination of automated voice technology with pinpoint human intervention through a patented software solution.
With GotSearch, mobile operators are able to:
- Add customers: GotSearch works with any mobile phone; a smartphone is not required
-
Lower 411 costs:
GotSearch’s human Silent Guide system delivers dramatic cost savings
-
Increase quality:
GotSearch’s human Silent Guide system delivers more accurate results
- Support advertisers: Connecting with a local business en route has never been easier
“This is what mobile operators have been asking for,” says Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken Communications. “With Spoken’s GotSearch, they can offer voice search to feature phone and smartphone users alike, all at a fraction of the cost of delivering 411, with vastly increased accuracy and concierge service.
Mobile operators can even insert ads, surveys and promotional offers with special appeal. GotSearch can also answer general questions, like ‘What is the World Cup?’ or ‘Who is Lady Gaga?’ And we will soon include the ability to make restaurant reservations, get traffic status and much more. It’s the best comprehensive voice search solution on the market today.”
Previews of Spoken’s GotSearch will be available at Mobile World Congress from Feburary 15th-18th. To sign up for a demonstration or a live trial of GotSearch, visit www.spoken.com/gotsearch.
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Seamless integration of GotVoice voice-to-text service now available.
Seattle – November 9, 2009 —Spoken Communications Inc., the hybrid voice technology innovator, today announced the availability of its GotVoice Voice Mail Transcription Service as an enhanced option in the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 product. Enterprise customers using Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 now have the option to purchase an enhanced voicemail service that provides voicemail-to-text conversions with unparalleled accuracy and speed.
“Accuracy of the transcription matters,” says Tom Scott, Chief Information Officer and SVP of Operations for Signature Styles, formerly Spiegel Brands, and Microsoft Exchange Server customer. “The ability to now have voicemails transcribed easily, accurately and saved as text in the email system using GotVoice gives me greater assurance that critical messages will get to their intended recipients in a timely manner. I also have the peace of mind of knowing when I’m traveling, I can easily create and send a text representation of a message when all I have access to is my phone.”
As a Microsoft Voice Mail Preview Partner, GotVoice worked closely with Microsoft to develop the specifications for seamlessly integrating premium voice-to-text options into Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Now, enterprise customers can add these best-in-class capabilities easily and benefit from the high quality transcriptions provided by Spoken with its GotVoice Voice Mail Transcription Service.
“We are pleased to be able to offer enterprise customers a new way to both increase their business productivity and address compliance risks with accurate voice-to-text translation services,” says Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken Communications. “With GotVoice by Spoken Communications, any voicemail can be converted to text and sent and stored in the inbox.” To implement this service, no infrastructure changes are needed. There are no up-front costs to implement the service.
For additional information go to: www.gotvoice.com/ForMicrosoftExchange.php
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Spoken’s GotVoice Service is being offered as an enhanced option
to enterprise customers for voice-to-text transcription in the
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 product.
Seattle – October 15, 2009 —Spoken Communications Inc., the hybrid voice technology innovator, today announced it will be offering its GotVoice voicemail transcription service to enterprise organizations as an enhanced option in the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 product through a Microsoft Voice Mail Preview Partnership.
The GotVoice voicemail transcription service lets you receive new voice messages in text alongside the standard audio so you can read your new voice messages instead of being required to listen to them. New voice messages are automatically converted to text and sent to you as an email attachment, as a text message (SMS) to your cell phone, and stored as text in the inbox in your GotVoice account for quick reference and easy organization.
Ankur Kothari, Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, says, “Voicemail-to-text conversion service complements our focus on unified communications in the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 product. We are delighted to be introducing Spoken and its GotVoice state-of-the-art voicemail transcription services as an enhanced feature of Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging. GotVoice stands out as a Voice Mail Preview Partner that understands enterprise security needs and protects voice mail messages to preserve confidentiality.”
“Exchange Administrators will appreciate the way we use technology to split and merge the messages to initiate human intervention only when it is essential, so the security and privacy of voicemails are protected,” says Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken Communications. “We don’t have people listening to your whole voice mail and transcribing it like some other vendors do. Instead, we offer the only hybrid solution that combines software-driven translation with pinpoint human intervention in a single solution, so our customers receive exceptional accuracy, speed and security.”
Spoken is a Silver Level Sponsor for the Microsoft 2009 product launch, named The New Efficiency, because of a shared goal of improving the customer experience and business productivity while reducing security and compliance risks. With GotVoice by Spoken Communications, any voicemail can be converted from any third-party system (wireless, landline, VoIP, PBX, CRM) with no infrastructure changes and no up-front costs.
For a Video Overview, visit http://www.gotvoice.com/business.php
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
Prized for its accuracy, GotVoice provides the most error-free
voice-to-text translation services available today
Seattle – October 9, 2009 — Spoken Communications Inc., the hybrid voice technology innovator, today announced it has bought the voicemail transcription service from GotVoice. The voicemail transcription service uses revolutionary free-form speech recognition technology designed specifically for voicemail content, to deliver voicemail-to-text conversions with unparalleled accuracy and speed. It requires no infrastructure upgrades or capital outlays.
“This acquisition makes a lot of sense,” says Howard Lee CEO of Spoken Communications, “because Spoken and GotVoice share the same approach to meeting customers’ quality and cost demands. We don’t force tradeoffs. We both provide hybrid solutions that combine software with a human safety net, so we both deliver high quality services, cost-effectively. We think of ourselves as the “hybrid car” of spoken voice technology.” With Spoken, you are able to get the best of both worlds - today - just as you can with hybrid cars.
Contact Centers: Benefit from Automation
Scott Davis, Executive Director and Officer of Xeta Technologies, a leading integrator of advanced cutting-edge communication technologies said, “I am excited about how Spoken will be using these new voice-to-text translation capabilities to benefit call centers. They are automating the creation of the service ticket. This is a huge value to us, in our own contact center as well as customers’, because technology is being used to improve the utilization of our best resources, the human customer service representative.” Xeta Technologies has an in-house 24/7/365 call center.
Before
Today, at the end of each call, the Customer Service Representative (CSR) has to create a “service ticket” manually. That means CSR’s need to remember what the customer said and do the data entry themselves. Right now, the CSR spends a substantial portion of call time having to summarize the call at the expense of supporting additional customers.
After
With Spoken, the “service ticket” creation is automated by using technology to capture the voice conversation, which the translation service then automatically converts into text to create a “digital” service ticket. This automated process improves accuracy, removes the burden of data entry from CSR’s and increases contact center efficiency.
Consumers: Continue to Receive Outstanding Service
With Spoken, the voicemail transcription services will continue to be made available to individuals and businesses as a subscription service or as a platform to telecommunications companies for white label opportunities. GotVoice voicemail transcription services stand alone in offering unparalleled accuracy and speed.
- On your cell phone – so you can read your voicemail as text
- In email – so you can read your voicemail as text or listen as an audio file
- At GotVoice.com – so you can read and listen to your voicemail any time
GotVoice also offers voicemail transcription capabilities for enterprise organizations. As a Microsoft Voice Mail Preview Partner, GotVoice transcription services are offered as an enhanced option in the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 product.
About Spoken Communications
Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a provider of a leading enterprise cloud platform for contact centers. The Spoken platform supports cost productivity, enables big data streams and extends a flexible integration model to replace, extend or integrate with any legacy infrastructure and software. Currently supporting over 14 million contact center minutes per month on the platform, Spoken delivers operational efficiency to the contact center and is a proven leader for a superior customer experience. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.