Unified Factory LLC opens in US and Canada with Paul Butler as Country Manager

It seemed appropriate that we were discussing the opportunity facing Unified Factory in the Warsaw Stock Exchange TV studios last week. The company, which went public in 2016, has been tremendously successful in its home market, and is now looking to grow value for its investors and stockholders by expanding into new markets.

Already active in 10 European countries, Unified Factory is now turning its focus to the large North American market, which is both highly innovative, and a market which has an unrelenting focus on Customer Service. This makes it a perfect match for the Unified Factory Customer Service Automation tools, which deliver increased efficiency for any business which is handling customer interactions-through the use of Associative Memory in Customer Service Departments and Contact Centers.

Potential to grow on US and Canada markets is high. Paul is an experienced manager extensive sales and sales management experience on those markets – developing and leading successful sales campaigns to deliver revenue and profit in new markets. During almost all his career he was involved in offering communication and telecommunication software (on-premises, cloud based, SaaS). All of this Paul’s experiences should be a strong points in the development of Unified Factory.

What are the big changes being seen in Customer Communications today?
The biggest single change is the shift away from the traditional use of the phone for voice only. Across almost all age groups, people no longer use the telephone for just voice, they tend to use their phones for texting and e-mailing far more today, so the communication channels between customers and companies needs to change to recognize these shifts in how their customers want to be in contact. That is a very strong trend which is being seen and felt everywhere, and increasingly companies are engaging in social media interactions such as Facebook and Twitter, with their customers. That is the market which Unified Factory directly addresses with our innovative technology. What we do is to assist the agent and help them be far more efficient in handling the increasing number of incoming messages across multiple formats, and be enable them to be far more effective and accurate in in their responses.

Why is Associative Memory so important in improving efficiency?
Over the coming years there is predicted to be rapid growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support business operations, and Unified Factory is well positioned to be part of this emerging market through the deployment of its “Associative Memory” implementation. In broad terms, Artificial Intelligence refers to a number of technologies which enable machines to sense, understand, learn, and act—either on their own or by complementing human activities. The ability of capital investment, and/or labor alone to accelerate growth is close to its maximum capacity. Artificial intelligence though can change this equation, by introducing new sources of growth, changing how work is done and reinforcing the role of people to drive growth in business. The impact of AI technologies on business is projected to increase labor productivity by up to 80 percent and enable people to make more efficient use of their time.

Businesses worldwide are challenged by how to provide accurate and consistent information in a timely manner in a fast-changing world. In the past, the main channel of communications has been the phone-both fixed and mobile- but in today’s environment the use of Email, Text/SMS, Chat, Video and Social Networks all offer customers a greater range of alternative ways of communications to best suit their preferences.

Unified Factory pulls together all these threads into a platform which can be used by any business to increase the efficiency of their customer service operations.

The Unified Factory Box solution provides Customer Service Automation software for businesses of all sizes to automate and improve their customer interactions across the full range of communication channels – voice, email, text/sms, chat video and Social Media. This omni channel (or multichannel), customer centric platform, also leverages the benefits of applying Unified Factory’s specific implementation of AI, called Associative Memory, to help businesses improve their communications efficiency.

Why do Unified Factory refer to our implementation of AI as “Associative Memory”?
As our CEO, Maciej Okniński, described in the interview, Unified Factory is looking to address to a specific set of customer challenges which are focused on improving the customer communications and interactions that any business will have on a regular basis with its customers and potential customers. We are not looking to take on every challenge the business may have, such as accounting or logistics, just those where our experience and expertise in Contact Center environments can make a difference. Key tasks are the repetitive day to day activities every business has such as questions about shipments, checking on payments, reaching out to new prospects, following up on enquiries, etc.

This will vary by application and increase over time, but in one Unified Factory customer deployment, the ability for Agents to handle customer emails was increased from 15 per hour to 100 per hour. The Unified Factory Assistive Memory technology allowed the customer service team to respond more accurately, more consistently, and more quickly with less need for the agent to spend time creating the email response. They could just review the suggested response, and reply to the customer query, or make small edits if needed.

The Customer Service Automation market is quickly emerging as an important way in which businesses of all types can improved their customer service handling capacity, control the level of resources and training which they need to support increased numbers of interactions while servicing a broader range of communication methods. Customers to choose the method which is best for them at the time and location they want to connect.

We invite you to watch the full interview with Maciej Okniński (CEO) and Paul Butler (Country Manager, US&Canada)