Sabio has become a master at marrying digital, social, mobile and traditional customer contact channels to create a seamless client experience, and incoming CEO Andy Roberts aims to double the size of the business based on its proven formula supported by new investment.
Sabio's multi-million pound Lyceum Capital investment and £30 million funding along with last month's appointment of Roberts as CEO has given a green light to the company's drive for UK and international expansion. The customer contact technology specialist currently generates £40 million turnover based on organic growth but last month's developments mark a new beginning. "We'll be looking to accelerate our growth plans, action an acquisition strategy and identify more opportunities for international expansion," stated Roberts.
"Our goal is to double Sabio's size over the next three to five years. The acquisition strategy will help to broaden our customer base and provide a greater target market for our WFO, automation, digital and multimedia solutions. Then we'll begin to build out our global presence in European and APAC markets, expanding our 24/7 support capability for those organisations seeking a single support partner for their customer contact technologies. The third part of our strategy is to investigate technologies that are adjacent to and complement our current portfolio, particularly those that help support our customers in bridging the divide between their digital and customer contact strategies."
Prior to his CEO appointment Roberts was a board director at the company since 2003 responsible for pre-sales, solutions delivery, managed services and support for the firm's UK and international operations. He also served as executive sponsor for Sabio's strategic partnerships with technology partners such as Avaya, Verint and Nuance. Roberts has been a member of the Avaya EMEA Partner Advisory Council and also served on the Customer Contact Association's CCA Supplier Council. He joined Sabio's Sales and Business Development team in 2001, and before that spent the previous ten years working in the financial services sector for LloydsTSB.
"Having begun my career in banking, joining Sabio and the communications technology sector in 2001 was a great opportunity for me to contribute directly in terms of growing a business," he commented. "As CEO of Sabio, my business development experience and background in managing all parts of the business will be critical as we drive the company through its next critical growth phase."
In recent years Sabio has grown ahead of the market, secured an increasing market share and delivered a consistently profitable performance. However, there is also a real opportunity for the company to accelerate its business plans and build out in terms of addressing broader opportunities. "Securing additional funding and putting the next generation of Sabio leadership in place will be instrumental in delivering on those plans," added Roberts. "In the short-term we're looking to accelerate how we execute against our current business plan, taking advantage of our new funding to make sure we have all the right resources in place.
"Longer-term we will focus on complementing our organic growth with a number of targeted acquisitions, both in the UK to gain a broader customer base, and internationally in Europe and APAC to support the growing number of customers with a global contact centre vision."
Sabio was founded in 1998 by Paul Began, Adam Faulkner, Sebastian Henkes and Ken Hitchen, all still engaged in the business. The firm has bases in the UK and Singapore and helps businesses to simplify customer engagement by enabling 'digital front door' strategies that create the right balance between self-service, assisted service and contact centre operations.
"From day one Sabio has always been dedicated to helping organisations deliver above-expected customer service by addressing their contact technology challenges," explained Roberts. "That's our exclusive focus area. And with over 17 years experience and a proven team of more than 200 solutions, services and support experts, we aim to be easy to do business with. It's an approach that works well for our customers as Sabio consistently achieves high CSAT support scores across our key technologies."
Sabio has been an Avaya Platinum Partner for over 10 years, a Verint Premier Partner since 2007, and a Nuance specialist since 2004. "We're also committed to high quality standards, holding both ISO 9001:2008 quality management certification for the provision of our customer contact technology strategies and solutions, as well as ISO27001 Certification for Information Security Management," added Roberts. "From our service hubs in the UK and Singapore we're able to provide contact centre technology support across multiple regions. We typically support at least three different technologies for each of our global customers, and now operate in 57 countries."
In 2015 Sabio was also named as one of the UK's Best Workplaces for the first time, and was also listed in The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200, reflecting the company's performance as one of the UK's top mid-market private companies with fast growing international sales, delivering 15.4 per cent overall growth over the last two years and 25.4 per cent for the international business. "We've also grown successfully in terms of employees and now have 208 people across the business," added Roberts.
Sabio has also invested heavily in its partner technologies to deliver more flexible solutions. "For example, we've recently focused on the mid-market contact centre sector leading to the introduction of our Sabio OnDemand hosted solution that directly addresses the strong mid-market requirement for cloud-enabled contact centre technology," explained Roberts. "Investment in the Sabio business will help to accelerate the Sabio OnDemand roll out on a broader scale."
Sabio also works closely with technology providers such as Semafone, Conversocial, LivePerson, RMG Networks and Gamma to address specific customer contact requirements. "Looking forward, we will continue to investigate adjacent technology across disruptive market areas, potentially in the digital arena to support the growing number of our customers requiring a more integrated approach to omnichannel engagement," noted Roberts.
How organisations engage with their customers has never been more critical, and there's a clear international demand for a technology specialist such as Sabio that can help businesses to close the gap between digital and traditional customer contact channels. "Given that 90 per cent of customers are now looking for a seamless engagement experience, organisations can't just expect their digital or marketing teams to deliver on the omnichannel promise," added Roberts. "That's why Sabio is increasingly focused on helping organisations to optimise their 'digital front door' strategies, helping them to design customer journeys that create exactly the right balance between self-service, assisted service and the contact centre."
After effectively running parallel digital and contact centre strategies, more and more organisations are now recognising that all their different service channels - traditional and digital - have an important and complementary role to play. "For example, if your digital journey isn't performing optimally you might offer additional web chat support or use a virtual assistant to drive customers to the right self-service sites," added Roberts. "That's why we're focused on helping organisations to enable this transition, whether that involves the latest digital assistants or supporting broader infrastructure developments around technologies such as WebRTC."
In a world where the customer service and the actual experience offered is often the only differentiator, it's imperative that organisations do as much as they can to get this right. Roberts commented: "That's where Sabio can help, regardless of whether you're wanting to adjust to the demands of today's increasingly mobile and socially connected customers, want to streamline complex customer journeys to reduce customer effort, or simply need to close the gap between your digital and traditional customer contact channels.
"Whether organisations are simply looking to upgrade their existing contact centre infrastructure, evolve towards a next generation cloud architecture, or deploy a more comprehensive approach that addresses all of their omnichannel contact requirements, our challenge is to help them make sure that their customer engagement strategies are fit for purpose."•