Callix brings contact centre at affordable prices to SMEs
AIMS TO EMPOWER FIRMS TO BOOST SALES AND LEVERAGE ON THE COMPLETE CUSTOMER SOLUTION
Dubai-based Callix aims to capitalise on human interaction instead of impersonal digital personas to help small- and medium-sized enterprises in the UAE to drive business and unify customer experience.
According to Forrester data, 72 per cent of businesses list customer experience improvement as a top priority.
Arif Saiyad, founder and CEO of Callix, part of ASA Ventures, is in the technology field for the last 15 years.
He said that he has been in Dubai for the last six years running different projects.
“We found that small companies really need support for customer service and the contact centres that are currently working are based on the HR business model and are tailored for big corporations.
“What we have done is to provide contact call centre as a service to bring the price point to an affordable level so that any small businesses can leverage on the complete customer solution. We also provide the technological backbone to the service,” he said.
Moreover, he said that customer happiness is the motto of Dubai.
“What we have built is something which was not possible a couple of years ago in Dubai due to prohibitive prices of the telecom operators. We came up with a solution based on technology that does not require training. The call centre can be set up instantly and any person can set up in minutes an online call centre,” he said.
Boost sales
Callix picks up unlimited calls on behalf of the company (24/7) according to their scripts and it will cost them less than Dh1,000 a month.
“Some companies are looking at it to boost the sales. Everyone has websites today but there has to be a differentiator. Just having a website is not enough anymore. It has to be interactive. To boost the sales, we have companies that say call us any time,” Saiyad said.
Callix has more than 150 multilingual staff working at the call centre in Dubai Silicon Oasis.
He said the contact centre is equipped to handle inbound and outbound engagement contracts, and the custombuilt AI software enables the centre to feed data back to the client, for actionable business intelligence on customer demands, key issues, outlet performance, stock planning and more.
He said that customer engagement is undergoing significant change, and while there are new channels constantly being added, “We are taking the lead in enhancing the power and potential of the traditional, and arguably most popular, voice-based interaction model.”
“SMEs don’t have the options for setting up a contact centre and the only viable one is to have a receptionist. It is difficult to get a receptionist to answer all the calls and all the time.
“From the cost-cutting side, the companies don’t need to waste time training their receptionist team. We do that part for the SMEs,” he said.
Stats show that 22,000 new companies start every year in the UAE and out of that, 95 per cent are SMEs.
Even though our target is SMEs and start-ups, he said the company gets a lot of interest from government departments and big brands.
Data analytics
“The information we provide to them is far more accurate and scientific when compared to what their own team provides. We give insights and dashboards. These data analytics are devised to help businesses get an insight of recurring customer concerns and successes, thereby allowing management to invest resources towards the best scenario for customer experience and operational efficiency,” he said.
“No one takes the website information of small companies at its face value. I am reading what I am reading on the website. I need still to call them and hear the feedback on the other side. How many of the small companies are picking up the calls.”
Today, Callix has more than 300 SMEs as clients and expects to have more than 3,000 by the end of the year.
Saiyad eyes Saudi Arabia as its next stop as part of the expansion.