Prem Puthur
Founder, Chairman & CEO
Contact centers have undergone a sea of changes over the past two decades. They are not mere contact centers for business stakeholders, but one of the largest drivers of business in today's world. No wonder the IT infrastructure of a typical contact center is often more tangled than the intricate electric circuitry that wraps around data centers. This technology revolution started in AT&T Bell Labs, the very company that invented most of the telephony technology we see today. Both Prem Puthur (Founder, Chairman & CEO, Interlink Network Systems Inc.) and Sharath K Shetty (Co-Founder & MD, Telenetix (P) Ltd) worked at AT&T Bell Labs in the early part of their career, and discovered the huge potential in this area.
TxContact Is Born
Interlink started working on telephony applications in 1999. Initial products focused on customized IVRs and Voice Recorders for the medical transcription industry. This effort naturally progressed into developing TxIVR and TxRecorder for the contact center industry, while integrating with TDM technologies like T1/E1 and computer telephony technologies like Avaya, Dialogic, Audiocodes & NMS. Between 2009-2011, Interlink moved their suite of telephony products into voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP), and named it TxContact. Since then, Interlink has added an automatic channel distribution system for channels like call, chat, email & social media. Interlink’s TxContact showcases the real power of omnichannel customer interaction through its six intelligent & robust modules (TxSmartQ, TxIVR, TxRecord, TxDialer, TxTalk & TxVirtualGuide). TxContact streamlines all the functions of a contact center with a very high level of efficiency, resulting in significant cost savings and higher operating margins.
“The key challenge is not just about engineering a resilient product, but also keeping the overall costs low while meeting clients’ sophisticated & discrete requirements. We achieve this by making sure that the underlying technology is customizable, robust and developed in house to reduce our dependence on third party components,” asserts Prem. He adds, “It’s not surprising that Interlink’s costs are considerably lower than large companies that stitch together products acquired through buyouts. Moreover, TxContact’s optimized hardware footprint is four-to-five times less than that of its peers. In other words, it can run on mini-computers that can be placed in a handbag. On the other side of the spectrum, we still compete with open source solutions, as our platform requires less number of servers for large deployments. So, besides saving cost, our solutions save space and power, and produce better turnaround time while integrating with third party applications. Above all, our complete ownership of technology makes sure that our platform performs with high efficiency”.
The Complete Solution
Recently, one of the major healthcare solution providers in the U.S. was upgraded with the innovative capabilities of TxContact. The company faced a problem with their service executives spending 5-8x the required time in their attempt to talk to the insurance agents. The
delay was almost inevitable, as the execu-tives were required to manually feed the insurance company’s IVR with patients’ medical records and subsequently wait (for up to 40 minutes) in the queue for the insurance agent to come online – just to have a routine 3-5 minutes talk. Interlink deployed the TxContact suite to solve the issue.
"We achieve this by making sure that the underlying technology is customizable, robust & developed in house to reduce our dependence on third party components"
The result was astounding. Instead of 100 executives calling 100 insurance agents simultaneously & waiting in the queue, TxDialer, the predictive dialer & call progress analysis module, was set to make those calls and route them to TxIVR – the intelligent IVR module that supports any thing from touch-tone to speech recognition in multiple languages. TxIVR automatically fed the required medical record and did the waiting in the queue, until the call was received by a live agent. It detected the event and trans-ferred the call to the executive on the local TxSmartQ, the universal channel distributor module (routes anything from call to social media interactions). In other words, live attendants on both sides pick-up the call almost simultaneously. The solution not only reduced the required agent count from 100 to just 20, but also provided the client with huge time and cost savings.
Intelligent Modules
Along with the aforementioned use-cases, TxContact boasts additional modules & impeccable features that cater to customers’ discrete & sophisticated requirements. While TxTalk handles voice calls, live chats, emails, and social media channels, in addition to supporting the standard SIP features to enhance customer engagement, the TxRecord module constitutes a full-fledged recording system, and the TxVirtualGuide module cuts training costs drastically to enable new agents to work faster. These highly customizable modules over the last couple of years have been very effective in solving the contact center puzzle for many global giants across the U.S., Canada, Africa, the Middle East and South-Asia, including Sutherland Global Services and PraxAir, Inc. Any day of the week, an enhanced level of productivity with minimum training however is an undeniable proposition.
“Our computer telephony integration (CTI) connects TxContact’s modules to multiple software systems simultaneously. For instance, TxContact supports easy integration with various on-demand CRMs such as Connectwise, Microsoft Dynamic CRM, Salesforce, Oracle, Sugar CRM, VTiger and Siebel among others,” proclaims Sharath.
One of India’s Highest Rated Places to Work
The customer support industry is set to move along yet another growth curve. According to a report by Grand View Research, Inc, the global contact center software market is expected to reach $47.76 billion by 2025. With this burgeoning number, catching a significant number of eyeballs from the global market is Telenetix – Interlink’s world class R&D center in Manipal. A campus in the lap of pristine nature, effusing a unique feel of greenery & wilderness, Telenetix is best known for its magic of hiring from the local rural population and creating highly skilled technology professionals out of them. “We have a family like work culture. Everyone who has completed five years in the company is eligible for a sponsored (online) MS program in computer science at Georgia Tech (U.S.). Similarly, in eight years, they can attain an online MBA program at Edinburgh Business School (UK),” says Sharath. His words well-
"We achieve this by making sure that the underlying technology is customizable, robust & developed in house to reduce our dependence on third party components"
The result was astounding. Instead of 100 executives calling 100 insurance agents simultaneously & waiting in the queue, TxDialer, the predictive dialer & call progress analysis module, was set to make those calls and route them to TxIVR – the intelligent IVR module that supports any thing from touch-tone to speech recognition in multiple languages. TxIVR automatically fed the required medical record and did the waiting in the queue, until the call was received by a live agent. It detected the event and trans-ferred the call to the executive on the local TxSmartQ, the universal channel distributor module (routes anything from call to social media interactions). In other words, live attendants on both sides pick-up the call almost simultaneously. The solution not only reduced the required agent count from 100 to just 20, but also provided the client with huge time and cost savings.
Intelligent Modules
Along with the aforementioned use-cases, TxContact boasts additional modules & impeccable features that cater to customers’ discrete & sophisticated requirements. While TxTalk handles voice calls, live chats, emails, and social media channels, in addition to supporting the standard SIP features to enhance customer engagement, the TxRecord module constitutes a full-fledged recording system, and the TxVirtualGuide module cuts training costs drastically to enable new agents to work faster. These highly customizable modules over the last couple of years have been very effective in solving the contact center puzzle for many global giants across the U.S., Canada, Africa, the Middle East and South-Asia, including Sutherland Global Services and PraxAir, Inc. Any day of the week, an enhanced level of productivity with minimum training however is an undeniable proposition.
“Our computer telephony integration (CTI) connects TxContact’s modules to multiple software systems simultaneously. For instance, TxContact supports easy integration with various on-demand CRMs such as Connectwise, Microsoft Dynamic CRM, Salesforce, Oracle, Sugar CRM, VTiger and Siebel among others,” proclaims Sharath.
One of India’s Highest Rated Places to Work
The customer support industry is set to move along yet another growth curve. According to a report by Grand View Research, Inc, the global contact center software market is expected to reach $47.76 billion by 2025. With this burgeoning number, catching a significant number of eyeballs from the global market is Telenetix – Interlink’s world class R&D center in Manipal. A campus in the lap of pristine nature, effusing a unique feel of greenery & wilderness, Telenetix is best known for its magic of hiring from the local rural population and creating highly skilled technology professionals out of them. “We have a family like work culture. Everyone who has completed five years in the company is eligible for a sponsored (online) MS program in computer science at Georgia Tech (U.S.). Similarly, in eight years, they can attain an online MBA program at Edinburgh Business School (UK),” says Sharath. His words well-
explain Telenetix’s whopping Glassdoor rating of 4.6/5.
"Our computer telephony integration (CTI) connects TxContact’s modules to multiple software systems, simultaneously"
En route to the future, Interlink remains focused on innovation to strengthen its position as a leader in customer service solutions. While its first application-to-application (A2A) in-voice product is all set to hit the road, developing advanced signal processing & analytics programs and employing AI in its innovations are the next ones in the pipeline. “A contact center generates a huge amount of voice and metadata on a daily basis. Unfortuna-tely, only a small amount of data is converted into actionable information. In the long term, we plan to develop products to unleash the intelligence from this untapped repository,” concludes Prem.
Key Management:
Prem Puthur, Founder, Chairman & CEO
Prem has 40 years of technology experience and is responsible for the direction of all technology initiatives for the enterprise. In 2004, Prem started Telenetix, a world class technology center,to enhance Interlink’s capabilities to get the best out of India’s expertisein software design and development.
Academic Qualifications:
•Master of Science, Computer Science, Rutgers University, New Jersey (1979)
•Master of Science, Engineering, Rutgers University, New Jersey (1977)
•B-Tech Engineering, IIT Kharagpur (1975)
Sharath K Shetty, Co-Founder & Managing Director
Sharath joined Interlink Network Systems in 1998. In a career that spans nearly three decades, Sharath has mostly worked on leading edge technologies, overseeing the development of niche products in computer telephony and healthcare area. He has built and trained teams with R&D competencies in enterprise telephony, distributed computing, and enterprise application integration.
Academic Qualifications:
•MBA, Edinburgh Business School, UK (2006)
•BE, Electronics & Communication, BIT Bangalore (1990)
Interlink in Spotlight:
•A Telephony & Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) software products & services company established in the year 1991
•Flagship product, TxContact – an Omni-Channel Contact Center Platform, allows enterprises to engage customers in all demanded communication channels. It offers an enhanced level of productivity with minimum training.
•TxContact boasts of six robust modules & impeccable features that cater to customers’ discrete & sophisticated requirements
•Telenetix – Interlink’s world class R&D center in Manipal
•TContact named one of 2019’s most promising Contact Center Solution by CIO Magazine
Quick Facts:
Year of Establishment:
1991
Offices:
New Jersey (Headquarter) & Manipal
Offerings:
•TxContact
•TxIVR
•TxRecord
•TxDialer
•TxVirtualGuide
•MITS
•TRANSZIP
•TxClick2Call
•TxCallVerify
"Our computer telephony integration (CTI) connects TxContact’s modules to multiple software systems, simultaneously"
En route to the future, Interlink remains focused on innovation to strengthen its position as a leader in customer service solutions. While its first application-to-application (A2A) in-voice product is all set to hit the road, developing advanced signal processing & analytics programs and employing AI in its innovations are the next ones in the pipeline. “A contact center generates a huge amount of voice and metadata on a daily basis. Unfortuna-tely, only a small amount of data is converted into actionable information. In the long term, we plan to develop products to unleash the intelligence from this untapped repository,” concludes Prem.
Key Management:
Prem Puthur, Founder, Chairman & CEO
Prem has 40 years of technology experience and is responsible for the direction of all technology initiatives for the enterprise. In 2004, Prem started Telenetix, a world class technology center,to enhance Interlink’s capabilities to get the best out of India’s expertisein software design and development.
Academic Qualifications:
•Master of Science, Computer Science, Rutgers University, New Jersey (1979)
•Master of Science, Engineering, Rutgers University, New Jersey (1977)
•B-Tech Engineering, IIT Kharagpur (1975)
Sharath K Shetty, Co-Founder & Managing Director
Sharath joined Interlink Network Systems in 1998. In a career that spans nearly three decades, Sharath has mostly worked on leading edge technologies, overseeing the development of niche products in computer telephony and healthcare area. He has built and trained teams with R&D competencies in enterprise telephony, distributed computing, and enterprise application integration.
Academic Qualifications:
•MBA, Edinburgh Business School, UK (2006)
•BE, Electronics & Communication, BIT Bangalore (1990)
Interlink in Spotlight:
•A Telephony & Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) software products & services company established in the year 1991
•Flagship product, TxContact – an Omni-Channel Contact Center Platform, allows enterprises to engage customers in all demanded communication channels. It offers an enhanced level of productivity with minimum training.
•TxContact boasts of six robust modules & impeccable features that cater to customers’ discrete & sophisticated requirements
•Telenetix – Interlink’s world class R&D center in Manipal
•TContact named one of 2019’s most promising Contact Center Solution by CIO Magazine
Quick Facts:
Year of Establishment:
1991
Offices:
New Jersey (Headquarter) & Manipal
Offerings:
•TxContact
•TxIVR
•TxRecord
•TxDialer
•TxVirtualGuide
•MITS
•TRANSZIP
•TxClick2Call
•TxCallVerify
