The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the criticality of business continuity planning, the need and value for cloud solutions, especially in the context of how disruptions can rapidly impact businesses everywhere.

ClearTouch is a cloud-hosted contact center platform provider, which enhances the customer experience of organizations across Banking, Insurance, Healthcare, BPOs, ARM/Collections, eCommerce, and Automotive, among others. The ClearTouch platform comes packaged with everything – dialer, telephony, team management, analytics & intelligence, data & digital services, and integrations — all of this at a per-minute pricing with no contracts. This includes outbound and inbound voice channels, IVR and call recording as well as business intelligence, voice and speech analytics and compliance tools required to optimize operations and adhere to both India’s telemarketing and telecommunications regulations. Since 2016, ClearTouch has grown its presence pan India with offices in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Mumbai, and data centers in Mumbai and Bangalore as well as other data centers throughout the world, which provides the capability and agility to handle various client requirements.

I recently managed to have some time with Uthaman Bakthikrishnan, Executive Director, ClearTouch, to understand the current state of play, the ClearTouch playbook, and its value proposition for India, amongst others.

On ClearTouch and the pandemic-induced cloud adoption trends

Uthaman Bakthikrishnan: A subsidiary of TCN, Inc., a global contact center technology provider, ClearTouch introduced the first cloud-based contact center platform in India in 2016 to empower Indian enterprises with its advanced technology platform for transforming on-premises infrastructure to cloud-based services. In the span of five years, we’re pleased to report that the cloud backbone of our ClearTouch platform has helped many Indian companies covering more than 25000 agents in their business continuity.

The pandemic has been an eye-opener for a lot of industries, including healthcare. For many enterprises, it was tough to be ready on day one of the pandemic and be able to help customers in a remote-first environment. Until the pandemic, many enterprises had skepticism on the safety and security of Cloud. However, all this changed overnight when the pandemic hit, and a remote-first culture began taking shape. With employees working from home, it was tough to deliver their services from home.

When the pandemic hit, we guided our customers to migrate to Cloud, and support their customers remotely. We explained to our customers how to keep data safe. In addition, we dived deep into what cloud security entails, and how it complies with the different compliances and standards around the world.

Our platform has taken care of the security from all different perspectives. For example, for those in healthcare, we have HIPAA compliance. Similarly, for the banking and financial tech industry sector, we are at par with all the latest compliances. We have ensured our platform is complying with all of the security components.

This, in turn, has provided the confidence to end-consumers to be able to consider and uptakeour services. We are a unique service provider.

On the India Opportunity

Uthaman Bakthikrishnan: Our greatest strength is our 20 years of rich experience with 1500+ global customers that enables us to bring innovative solutions that are cross-functional. We are proud to be the only company in India for the last five years to offer a managed contact center platform. We provide continuous customer support, and engagement. This is seen in how we handhold our customers, enrich their data operations, and intrinsically create more value, and are a part of their success story.

The India market is diverse and very unique, with the requirements being very different from that prevailing in the international market. This is where our understanding of the India market, and its intricacies help us better understand, map requirements, and serve our customers.

All-inclusive per-minute pricing with no contracts besides other value propositions such as 24×7 customer support, compliant with DoT and TRAI regulations, integration with in-house CRMs, helpdesk software, and other related applications.

The India Journey for ClearTouch

Uthaman Bakthikrishnan: In India, we are focused on addressing a big gap in the existing large, medium, and small market. As an enterprise class solution, we are geared to answer challenges across industry verticals. For instance, Fintech is a big focus segment for us. We have >600 financial institutions globally with us.

Over the past five years, we have been focused on understanding and serving the India market. In probably within a year, India will become like a second largest market for TCN.

ClearTouch Case Studies Healthcare

One of the interesting client projects for has been Sankara Nethralaya. It caters to patients not just from India, but internationally as well. Patients from neighboring countries fly into India for treatment.

Addressing and constantly communicating with all these inbound patients, speaking many different languages, in the run-up to their eye procedure was a challenge for them. This involved guiding patients on the process, ensuring that they follow all the requisite protocols in the run-up to the treatment at Sankara Nethralaya.

We worked with Sankara Nethralaya, introducing many different languages, plotting for many scenarios, building native applications for addressing patient queries from different parts of the world. Within 10 days of implementing teleconsultation, the hospital has consulted over 1200 patients on this platform. The numbers have seen an upward trend since then.

BFSI

One of our clients is into financial services and is part of a large conglomerate. This particular client was in a rapid growth phase, opening more branches across India, and building physical networks. It was a challenge for them to connect on-field agents with the IT Office located in one particular city. Their rapid growth made it really challenging for them to manage the processes.

Our solution enabled them to gain more flexibility and scale faster. We offer support in multiple languages, multiple locations and multiple working hours. This, in turn, helped the on-field agents to liaise smoothly with a decentralized head office. In addition, we onboarded 1000+ agents in 48 hours

using our platform. We have a dedicated team for customer interactions. What this means is that our customers would always get to speak to a dedicated person, and not some toll-free number. We work closely with our customers on a daily and weekly basis, understanding their business pressures, and guiding them on resolving challenges.

On the ClearTouch value proposition

In the Indian market, one of the challenges is the high cost and time required for initial implementation. Some service providers take weeks or even months to get their solutions going. At ClearTouch, our platform capabilities are really strong. As such, implementation time is swift, and we are up and running within a day, or in most cases, 48 hours.

In addition, over the years, we have gained experience and expertise across industry verticals,and across geographies. This enables us to swiftly understand client challenges in India, and offer bespoke solutions to them.

Unlike other markets, India requires hands-on approach, and built on relationships. We pride ourselves in putting the effort to map requirements and deliver on expectations.