I don’t like to “sell” through the blog, but this time I have to. It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement surrounding this company. I have noticed significant changes even in the three months since I came on. We have hired three new sales reps from a wide variety of backgrounds, prepared and released a new study that has created a great deal of controversy, and are discussing implementation in some of the most consumer-facing brands. The excitement surrounding the company’s mission confirmation became very palpable to me in the past few days, when our whole sales team flew in from every corner of the country for an intensive sales meeting, coupled with some training. At one point during the meeting, each rep took a great deal of time discussing his or her accounts and the variety of applications, and I can’t express how much potential the Interactions platform has. But enough of that.

Along with getting to know the new reps, I also spent a good amount of time with our experienced sales reps, who came to Interactions with a resume full of IVR and speech technology firms, hoping to apply their industry knowledge in a new direction. One theme of these conversations left a strong impression on me. We discussed the heyday of this space, back a few decades, when you could take a bus through Silicon Valley from one IVR company to the next. Each company was expanding, and the employment opportunities were numerous. Those were the days when people loved the IVR because they could check their bank balances without speaking to a representative.

Well, this struck a chord with me. I’m in my 20s; I don’t want to work in a dying industry, an industry that peaked and is now in decay. The consumer perception study confirmed that people hate IVR and in my generation, our phones are being used about 10% of the time to make calls. I was promised that I would be working with a hot company, not one whose heyday is long over…

But on my commute to the office this morning, I came to a realization based on discussions I hadn’t had time to fully process until now. We aren’t an IVR. We’re something new. We really are a virtual customer service representative, not just a wall that separates you from an agent or forces you into a tree of options. An IVR takes a year to implement, we take a quarter of a year. We continue to monitor your system and upgrade, whereas an IVR gets installed, and making a change is like pulling teeth with a dentist who doesn’t have an open appointment for months. We even save companies money over an IVR. It’s hard to come up with valid objections to our product. Of course, I’m a little biased, but the Customer Advisory Board meeting confirmed this as well. The praise our customers gave Interactions did not sound at all like the way people usually speak about an IVR company.

Well, I hope more companies start joining us as we forge a new industry. It’s getting lonely here.