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Two companies are transforming call center experiences for consumers

By Karissa Neely daily Herald - | Jun 22, 2015
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Art Coombs, CEO of KomBea, poses for a photo outside the company's office in Lehi on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. SPENSER HEAPS, Daily Herald

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Convirza president Jeremiah Wilson and CEO Jason Wells work on a training call on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Convirza has created an automated system that tracks and educates businesses on how to better service customers on incoming calls. SAMMY JO HESTER, The Daily Herald

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Convirza CEO Jason Wells poses for a portrait in his office on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Convirza has created an automated system that tracks and educates businesses on how to better service customers on incoming calls. SAMMY JO HESTER, The Daily Herald

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Convirza marketing director McKAy Allen works in his office on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Convirza has created an automated system that tracks and educates businesses on how to better service customers on incoming calls. SAMMY JO HESTER, The Daily Herald

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Convirza CEO Jason Wells works on a training call on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Convirza has created an automated system that tracks and educates businesses on how to better service customers on incoming calls. SAMMY JO HESTER, The Daily Herald

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Convirza employee Mike Riding works in his office on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Convirza has created an automated system that tracks and educates businesses on how to better service customers on incoming calls. SAMMY JO HESTER, The Daily Herald

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Art Coombs, CEO of KomBea, poses for a photo outside the company's office in Lehi on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. SPENSER HEAPS, Daily Herald

The call center industry is not one well-loved by consumers. Two local businesses are changing that.

For Art Coombs, founder of KomBea in Lehi, the industry needed a change. He’s spent most of his life managing thousands of call center employees, and has seen where the industry fails. When he started KomBea in 2003, he chose the name based on the Spanish word for change, “cambiar.”

“When I start companies, I’m trying to find a solution to a problem. I want to change things. With KomBea, we are changing swaths of the call center industry – not the whole industry, but huge swaths,” Coombs said.

His change started with one of KomBea’s first products, ProtoCall, which combines pre-recorded computer technology with a real person. His technology allows call center employees, using soundboard technology, to interact with callers more efficiently. For many call types, Coombs said, there is a prescribed way of handling the call, and the vast majority of the calls are highly repetitive.

“There are three things a consumer wants in a call center experience: respect my time; be polite, professional, and friendly; and make it easy,” Coombs said.

The annual attrition rate in the call center is very high – that’s why most call centers are always hiring. Coombs said he had an epiphany about this one day when driving down the freeway.

“I had a daydream of Sisyphus, the one who had to push the boulder up the hill every day, only to do it again the next day,” he said. In call centers that can sometimes house thousands of employees, managers do this every day, trying to train and retrain their employees – many of whom don’t stick around for more than six months.

“As soon as you get one trained, he leaves, and then you have to train the next guy,” Coombs said. “I had to break that cycle.”

That’s where ProtoCall comes in. A call center employee now works through a soundboard that has pre-recorded information to tackle more than 90 percent of the calls that come in. For the odd questions, the employee can seamlessly come on the line to answer those questions.

“Based on millions of calls, we know how to handle almost every type of call. You’re talking to the intellect of the person through the technology. ProtoCall blends the intelligence, intuition and flexibility of the live agent with the accuracy and consistency of technology, giving consumers a fast, polite, accurate, easy experience,” Coombs said. “I don’t have to change each individual agent over and over again, to get them to say exactly what I need them to say. You change the process, and that change happens in minutes.”

KomBea now has other products, including SecureCall, that allows consumers to share their credit card information over the phone much more safely than previously.

For Coombs, who didn’t necessarily plan to work in the call center agency when he was a young kid, his passion is that every product in KomBea’s line should make the consumer’s experience a better one.

For Convirza, a call marketing optimization company based just on the edge of Utah Valley in Draper, making the customer’s experience a good one is key.

Founded in 2001 by Jeremiah Wilson, Convirza’s goals are to use conversation analytics technology to analyze and increase the effectiveness of customer calls to their client companies. While Coombs works to better the user experience from the side of the call center, Convirza works to better it on a smaller scale for small businesses and their employees.

Their focus is on “three A’s” — attribution, analytics, and automation — according to McKay Allen, Convirza director of content and communications. Their technology allows businesses to see the ad source that is fueling the customer’s call: the attribution. The analytics part of the technology lets the business then analyze how effective the actual conversation between the customer and employee was. Finally, the system automatically can alert the business or employee as to the next step in the process, or even to a missed opportunity.

“When we first started telling our story in 2010, people would say, no one uses the phone anymore. But with smart phones, more people are searching for businesses on their phones, and clicking to call. Data shows that if you make a call, you’re ready to buy. The call is so important,” said Jason Wells, Convirza CEO. “This is why what we’re doing is so important. So many companies handle calls so poorly. It’s a shame.”

Over at KomBea, Coombs agrees. To him, the call is a product, just like any other in the business world, and he wants to make it the best product he can.

Both KomBea and Convirza have experienced significant growth. Allen said Convirza has grown 800 percent in the last two years and has more than doubled in size from 30 to 65 employees just in the last six months. Their technology caught the eye of investors, and last week they closed $20 million of Series B Funding led by a large East Coast-based investment group.

With their funding, they acquired a division of a Southern California company, and added its powerful attribution technology to their offering.

“There are companies that can do some of what we do, but we’re the only one with the triple A approach,” Allen said. “Our service is hugely valuable to our clients, because it helps them take better care of their customers.”

For KomBea and Convirza, that is the end goal.

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