10K Banter Services Set to be Achieved by Exetel

According to Exetel’s Chief Executive Richard Purdy, the cloud communications offering of the telco is set to close ten thousand endpoints after being in the market for almost a couple of years. 

The company recently announced that it had integrated voice data and artificial intelligence capabilities from Dubber’s cloud recording system into Banter, which is developed internally by the company. According to Purdy, “Dubber is a great add-on to put on top of what’s already a great product.” He further added that the integration of the service from the company was a “proactive” move by the telco. “We saw the need for it within our own organisation for a start,” he said.

According to the telco, with the addition of Dubber to Banter, calls can already be automatically recorded into “rich voice data for compliance, customer experience, call sentiment, evidence and performance improvement”. This can be attributed to the fact that Banter offers cloud PBX, unified communications, and collaboration capabilities for the business customers of the telco. Exetel also uses Banter to support its contact centre operation in Sri Lanka.

With Banter, the customer support function of Exetel operating amidst the global pandemic was maintained, according to Purdy. “On numerous occasions, curfews have been called over in Sri Lanka,” he said. “Even the very first time that happened right at the beginning of COVID, we didn’t miss a beat.” This is compared to other telcos with offshore call centres that were “shut down for two or three weeks, or even longer.” Nevertheless, the chief executive added that the telco’s staff were able to quickly transition to working from home.

The CEO further added that the COVID-19 pandemic also drove an uptick in Banter sales. For this reason, there is an ongoing development pipeline for the service. A particular focus area is the enhancement of the call centre capabilities of Banter. This is set to support not only the needs of Exetel’s customers but the company’s own needs as well.

With a team leader dashboard offered in Banter, managers and supervisors can “actually look at what’s happening in their departments: Who’s on calls, what is the average call time, how long are customers waiting? That sort of stuff,” said Purdy. However, Exetel is “making it even better.”

The CEO also said that in the company, it is “business as usual” even if he failed to address the recent acquisition of the telco by Superloop for $110 million. “Everyone’s just getting on with their job the same as they always have. And I think everyone feels pretty comfortable and excited even.”