Bellevue, Washington, April 4, 2013 – Spoken Communications, a leading provider of the only cloud-based Avaya contact center available today, announced that it is welcoming John Nassar as its new Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Nassar, formerly of Avaya, will lead the company's efforts to expand its market base while continuing to innovate within its cloud contact center platform.
"We're excited to have Nassar on board. He has a deep knowledge of what Avaya users need and want to run contact centers effectively," said Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken Communications. "Nassar really understands how cloud technology impacts both business performance in the contact center as well as its day-to-day operations. We are looking forward to his leadership to grow our Avaya-loving base."
Formerly a VP of Worldwide Sales at Avaya, the leading global provider of contact center applications, Nassar has extensive experience developing go-to-market strategies for enterprise sales in the contact center and technical operations arenas. During his tenure as a global VP, Nassar built global sales strategies, developed strategic corporate initiatives and headed up go-to-market offerings for enterprise customers. In his early career at Avaya, as Vice President of U.S. Sales--West Area, his organization topped Avaya's charts every year for customer satisfaction and sales.
Prior to Avaya, Nassar spent 10 years serving up technology solutions for small, mid-size and large enterprise customers at Cisco Systems. Embracing a sales approach focused on business goals and architecture strategy rather than specific product sales, Nassar won the loyalty of numerous key accounts.
"Frankly, I joined Spoken because of its unique technological offerings," says Nassar. "Spoken is in a distinctive market position here: no other company has built out multiple data centers using Avaya equipment or offers tenant services on an Avaya system. Those alone provide a lot of value. And I think the usage-based pricing model Spoken offers is very attractive to the majority of contact centers that use Avaya and are looking for ways to increase cost efficiency. I'm here because this is the contact center of the future; right here, right now."
Spoken’s popular cloud contact center platform encapsulates the virtualization of Avaya infrastructure, including the range of functionalities offered by Avaya: 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 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 cloud 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 servicing over 17 million contact center minutes per month for 12 organizations supporting 5,000 remote agents, Spoken can deliver operational efficiency to any contact center and provides a superior customer experience. For more information, contact Heidi Miller at heidim@spoken.com visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.
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 cloud 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 servicing over 17 million contact center minutes per month for 12 organizations supporting 5,000 remote agents, Spoken can deliver operational efficiency to any contact center and provides a superior customer experience. For more information, contact Heidi Miller at heidim@spoken.com 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 cloud 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 servicing over 17 million contact center minutes per month for 12 organizations supporting 5,000 remote agents, Spoken can deliver operational efficiency to any contact center and provides a superior customer experience. For more information, contact Heidi Miller at heidim@spoken.com visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog.