{"id":13851,"date":"2019-08-01T18:28:21","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T18:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/?p=13851"},"modified":"2022-10-14T18:28:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T22:28:34","slug":"13851","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/fow\/13851.html","title":{"rendered":"Quiq Gets Funded for Bots, Messaging for Future of Work. Exclusive Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Quiq<\/a> recently raised $12.5M to bring bots and messaging to customer service. This is a very important and fast-growing space as society moves to texting in their daily lives as their primary communications channel. Businesses are behind on this trend but are catching up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Quiq offers a platform<\/a> that makes it easy for businesses to integrate multiple messaging tools into their websites and apps, including SMS, Apple Messages (via Apple Business Chat), Twitter, Facebook Messenger, web chat, Kik, and Google\u2019s RCS-based RBM. Quiq also enables companies to integrate messaging into their own native mobile apps, and it offers a one-way \u201cbroadcast\u201d service for disseminating important messages to customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To learn more we had an exclusive interview with Mike Myer, CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How are you differentiating yourself in the customer\ninteraction space?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customer interactions take place across a multitude of channels.\nQuiq built the first asynchronous, enterprise-grade digital engagement\nplatform. Traditional channels like email and phone calls are synchronous,\nmeaning there is one agent working with one customer for a fixed time period.\nDigital channels like messaging are fluid or asynchronous, meaning agents can\nhandle multiple simultaneous conversations because the cadence of each conversation\n(the pace at which the customer engages) is constantly changing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another digital channel is chat. Nearly every chat vendor actually\nhas \u201csynchronous\u201d chat. We built chat from the ground up to be asynch and to\nfit in better with today\u2019s customer. Have you ever started a web chat session\nand then gone to a different website and the chat disappears? Or have you had\nto step away from a chat conversation and the agent is saying, \u201cAre you still\nthere?\u201d and if you don\u2019t respond fast enough, they close the chat. Now, the\nconversation never closes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You asked about differentiation…We support 2-way inbound and\noutbound messaging for all the key platforms including SMS\/text, rich messaging\nfrom Apple and Google, web chat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Message,\nand more. Conversations can start on one channel, shift to another, and change\nagain seamlessly without any disruption to the agent or customer experience.\nAlso, we allow our clients to use homegrown bots, 3rd-party bots, Quiq bots, or\nany combination of bots at any point in any conversation on any channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At our core, we help brands present customers with consistently\njaw-dropping customer experiences across SMS\/text messaging, rich messaging,\nweb chat, and social channels. The Quiq engagement platform enables companies\nto easily orchestrate commerce and service conversations, involving both bots\nand humans, at scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are customers choosing Quiq?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, companies choose to deploy chat and\/or\nmessaging because they want to better engage with their customers. Everyone\ngets that 2-way messaging is the most preferred and convenient way to connect\nwith customers.
\n
\nThen, companies need to choose a vendor. Companies choose Quiq because we\nhonestly have the best application. It is incredibly feature-rich, but built by\nour engineers to be highly efficient and easy to use. We are constantly\ninnovating to lead the market, and last, but most importantly, companies will\nnot find a better team who cares about making them successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How big is the market for your product?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The market size is in the multiple billions of\ndollars. It has attracted many big and small, old and new vendors. You will\neven continue to see Apple and Google focus on mobile communications between\nbusinesses and customers. There are only a few hundred companies that have even\ndeployed messaging. Quiq is well poised to for the inevitable shift to these\nnew digital channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does Quiq help with the Future of Work \u2013 this is our <\/strong>definition<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the 8 trends, Quiq is directly supporting or\nin line with 1 (mobile mandate), 3 (cloud delivery), 4 (bots, AI, learning to\nimprove experiences and efficiency), and 6 (digital transformation – abandoning\ntraditional channels for ones that are more consumer-friendly and convenient.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do your customers determine ROI?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our solution is used for both sales and\nservice, so ROI comes in a couple different flavors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a couple ways our clients determine\nROI. The first is the shift in phone calls to the messaging channel. Phone\ncalls are the most expensive channel and messaging is the least expensive. When\nyou add concurrency on top of that, the ROI grow exponentially. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some customers focus on cost savings,\nothers are focused on conversions and upselling. Messaging is the most\nopen\/read channel out there at 98%. Because we offer outbound (2-way)\nmessaging, companies are able to provide tailored suggestions to consumers that\nthey are more likely to take advantage of. With rich messaging, consumers can\nsecurely pay and complete transactions with messaging on their mobile device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some financial institutions, one great ROI\nexample is around loan payments and collections. Who answers their phone to an\nunknown number? Who checks their old email addresses for notices? Retail banks\nare able to send payment reminder notifications or loan collection alerts via\nmessaging and 98% of those are read and a staggering amount are responded to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not an ROI metric per se for most companies, but every one of our clients highlights that their customer satisfaction scores on the messaging channel is the highest of any other channel, often by double-digit percentage points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the biggest competitive threat you face?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest competitive threat today is \u201cdo nothing\u201d\/\u201dwait and see\u201d. Companies have a lot on their plates and their traditional channels and customer interactions, while not ideal, are generally working. They all will add chat and messaging but are able to keep the wheels on the bus without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is next for the company?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will be expanding the realm of messaging from just sending and receiving messages to transacting business. And, by leveraging the data from existing conversations that have already occurred between your agents and customers, we will help companies handle customer interactions more efficiently than ever before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do organizations go to learn more? The world\u2019s only <\/em>Future of Work Expo<\/em><\/a> (collocated with the <\/em>ITEXPO <\/em><\/a>#TechSuperShow) of course. Feb 12-14, 2020 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Quiq recently raised $12.5M to bring bots and messaging to customer service. This is a very important and fast-growing space as society moves to texting in their daily lives as their primary communications channel. Businesses are behind on this trend but are catching up. Quiq offers a platform that makes it easy for businesses to integrate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":13858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[1975,1900,2029,2275],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13851"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13851"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13868,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13851\/revisions\/13868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}