Comms Business talks to Jonathan Marsden, Managing Director of Leeds based business telephony, internet and mobile firm The Technology Group, about their plans for growth which includes AI as part of its ‘TTG Vision 2022’ blueprint plan for the next five years.
Business communications firm The Technology Group recently took over The Light Cinema in Leeds to announce its exciting plans for the future with the development of pioneering voice Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology
Managing Director Jonathan Marsden says, “Part of the vision to more than treble in turnover from £4m to £15m and double headcount to 65 people by 2022, The Technology Group intends to integrate AI into our customers telephone systems and we plan to work with the likes of IBM, Google and Amazon as one of the cornerstones of this business strategy.”
The team also plans to continue on the acquisition trail that started in November last year with the acquisition of Exchange Comms of St Albans, to become the market leader in the mid-large corporate market, where Marsden believes there is significant growth potential.
“AI has the potential to help businesses in so many ways. A specific use case being to give AI a voice; say to answer a call and speak, in English indisguishable from a real person and route the call through to the right extension.
The example I use is in a doctor’s surgery where a huge number of calls are received but with many going un-asnswered. Typically surgeries can only take calls for appointments at a certain time of the day during set opening hours. Everyone can understand the frustrations of this in real life.
This technology will be coming to market soon and will crossover from consumer to business quickly. Google has already announced a contact centre AI application so consider the trends – the Google assistant can booking user appointments now.
AI voice is a lot better than IVR screens, it saves time, and provides a better service. It will behave and talk like a human, in context and has self learning. It is a bold strategy we have conceptualised; IBM, Google and Amazon won’t build this in to telephony but will provide APIs to do so and it is here that we will use our own developers to make the integrations.”
Complementing its presence across four UK offices, ‘TTG Vision 2022’ will also see The Technology Group embark on establishing a presence in overseas markets by opening offices internationally enabling the firm to support its expanding client base, which encompasses more than 400 businesses worldwide across a wide range of industry sectors.
“We believe the mid to large corporate market is being overlooked by the channel. It’s a perfect market for AI and they typically have an overseas operations. So, we are likely to makes acquisitions overseas which will enable us to readily deploy overseas and offer true 247 services. The concept has been proven and we have a number of opportunities already under NDA.
The Technology Group has always strived to be an innovator in the telecoms sector: we’ve launched our own private hosted VoIP platform and our own business mobile network. The next step is developing pioneering voice AI solutions for the business communications market. By working alongside leading technology giants who are at the forefront of consumer AI platforms, we see enormous potential with this breakthrough technology across a wide range of industries for both existing and new business clients.
We have created a culture where customer service excellence lies at the heart of everything we do, and assembled a hugely talented and dedicated team across four offices led by an experienced management team that means we are primed to deliver these ambitious expansion plans.
Having enjoyed huge year on year growth since The Technology Group was founded, I believe we have the knowledge, expertise and momentum we need to deliver our vision over the next five years.”