CEOCFO: Mr. Salvato, would you tell us the idea behind TouchPoint One?
Mr. Salvato: The idea behind TouchPoint One is to enable organizations to more effectively equip, engage, empower and inspire employees ― the keys to strengthening customer bonds and business results. We do this through Acuity, our contact center performance management software solution.
CEOCFO: On a basic level, what do you understand about contact centers and how they should be managed that is unique?
Mr. Salvato: Contact centers rely largely on outdated technology to support their performance management strategies and processes. This is not really a unique insight, as most contact center managers we speak to admit they rely on tools like Excel or something similar to aggregate, analyze and report on disparate systems data. A modern performance management platform can not only address all of the limitations, risk and inefficiencies this model presents, but provide an incredibly powerful suite of analytics, communications and process execution capabilities that can maximize people, process and technology and elevate the performance of the entire operation.
CEOCFO: What types of companies come to you?
Mr. Salvato: We work with contact centers in just about every industry. Companies with or that are developing people-centric cultures and that understand the relationship between employee engagement and well being and their customers’ loyalty and experience we consider our prime targets. And we find this in many industries from BPOs and utilities to travel, retail, ecommerce, financial services and increasingly even the public sector.
CEOCFO: What is a typical engagement?
Mr. Salvato: There are several consistent themes voiced by the companies we typically engage. We can’t easily communicate the organization’s goals and KPIs or deliver consistent, timely performance info to agents or others. We suffer from information overload and data sprawl. Our customer experience and business results are poor due to high employee turnover, low engagement & morale, poor attendance, and sub-standard performance. We can’t consistently verify whether allocation of training, services, IT, etc. is effective. Through a simple but structured implementation methodology, we start with a thorough examination of the customer’s key points of pain. With that, we configure all aspects of Acuity and then assist with system training, rollout, adoption and ongoing support. We never leave the customer’s side and monitor the use and effectiveness of nearly every aspect of Acuity to guide our efforts in ensuring it delivers progressively higher value over time.
CEOCFO: How do you help implement the system so that there is no loss of data?
Mr. Salvato: An important aspect of Acuity implementation involves establishing formal procedures for data collection and/or import from various systems and other sources. Data loss is not a challenge, but we do work closely with our customers’ system administrators and utilize a range of methods and procedures to import of otherwise collect the data needed for our calculations. Once setup on this level is completed, we employ automated and manual processes to continuously verify import routines are on schedule and complete.
CEOCFO: Do you hear from your customers that they take action based on what they find?
Mr. Salvato: Yes, we do – on a daily basis and from all levels of the business. Agents tell us how having direct visibility to what’s important to their success and how they are performing against these expectations enables them to manage their development and performance more effectively. Supervisors appreciate the analytic and dashboard tools that enable them to isolate areas of weakness and immediately act on that intelligence. HR leverages Acuity for performance reviews and similar evaluations and shares with us how it’s enabled them to reduce risk through standardized processes. Sales reps are able to provide empirical evidence of program performance to existing customers or to differentiate their organization’s capabilities for new opportunities. Management actively tunes or modifies their Acuity implementation to reinforce a specific KPI, influence a behavior or prepare for a new program or customer. Acuity is designed for almost every category of personnel so they are very vocal about not only how it’s delivered value but ways it can provide even more.
CEOCFO: TouchPoint One has been recognized by a number of organizations such as 2015 Customer Magazine, Product of the Year Award. How are you attracting attention and how does it help you as you continue to grow and develop and work with new clients?
Mr. Salvato: We try to do the best job for our customers as we possibly can and there’s no better way to attract attention than to share great success stories at the conferences, member network events and through business publications like yours. Staying very close to our customers enables us to align our product development roadmap with their highest priority needs and we’ll continue to provide case studies and other reports of our efforts and achievement so that others experiencing similar challenges can know that there are very effective solutions available to them, too.
“Pay attention to TouchPoint One for more leading-edge analytics and performance execution innovations focused on increasing employee engagement and well-being, improving the customer experience and generating insightful and actionable business intelligence - and further news of our work with the organizations that successfully leverage Acuity to strengthen their businesses.”
- Greg Salvato
CEOCFO: What surprised you as the company has developed?
Mr. Salvato: I was surprised, early on, by the extent to which contact centers still relied on inadequate and outdated technology to operate a part of the business that is so critical to the customer experience and thus the health and success of the business itself. I think there was limited awareness about the new performance management solutions that were emerging and how affordable, feature-rich and effective they were. This trend has begun to shift in the past few years and TouchPoint One is proud to be among the vendors helping to establish its awareness and contribute to an era of tremendous business prosperity as a result of its adoption.
CEOCFO: Why pay attention to TouchPoint One?
Mr. Salvato: TouchPoint One is focused solely on performance management and committed to helping contact centers function at the highest levels possible. We have a proven technology solution and broad feature set that has provided value for recognized industry leaders. And I am honored to serve such a fantastic team. From software development and engineering through sales, operations and leadership - most with career-long experience in the contact center industry, they truly understand contact centers and how they operate. Pay attention to TouchPoint One for more leading-edge analytics and performance execution innovations focused on increasing employee engagement and well-being, improving the customer experience and generating insightful and actionable business intelligence - and further news of our work with the organizations that successfully leverage Acuity to strengthen their businesses.
