I had the opportunity to attend Twiliocon this week, and what I saw there convinced me that the way organizations reach out and communicate with their customers or constituents has changed forever. Twilio CEO, Jeff Lawson, was nearing the end of his keynote address, which focused on why software-based outreach and contact solutions were so much better than contact center systems offered by the traditional communications vendors.
The convincing event occurred when Lawson stopped talking and began doing. He went over to his laptop and typed in about 10 lines of PHP code. (PHP is a common Web scripting language.) The code did something extremely simple, yet powerful. It first opened up an Excel file and extracted out a name, mobile phone number, and shirt size. It then called a QR code generator and encoded the name, phone number and shirt size in a QR code. It then sent a text message to the mobile phone number with the QR code image and some text that indicated that the person who owned the mobile device had won a t-shirt. The code looped through each row of the spreadsheet, sending out approximately 1,800 real text messages to those in the Twiliocon audience in a matter of a few seconds.
Why is this remarkable? It is because Lawson did not have to even think about how his code would actually send the message or how to contract with carriers to receive it or what the tariffs would be. His company, Twilio, has put a very simple API (application programmer interface) between web developers and all of the telecommunications messiness that occurs behind the scenes, making it extremely simply for any web developer to create a real-time or near real-time communications solution that can interface with the public telephone system and with mobile carriers.
Twilio has APIs that enable voice, text messaging, and picture text messaging applications to be created just as simply as Lawson created his small app. This allows organizations to build their own customer engagement solutions rather than buying a contact center solution, with its accompany price tag for the hardware, software, and professional services required to customize it to meet the organization’s needs. Twilio also has relationships with carriers across the world so that calls or messages can be routed to people in nearly any geography and so that local inbound dialing numbers can be obtained in these geographies. The pricing in the U.S. is simple: 1¢ per minute for voice, 0.75¢ per text message, and 2¢ to send and 1¢ to receive a picture message.
Clearly there are a number of capabilities a full-fledged call center provides that Twilio does not, such as an IVR system, an auto dialer, dashboards, etc. But the ability for an organization to so easily create customer engagement applications is going to change how companies, governments, and non-profit organizations reach out to their respective customers or constituents. For organizations with existing PBX or call center infrastructure, Twilio now supports SIP, which will enable these organizations to continue using their existing equipment while beginning to leverage the capabilities Twilio has to offer. It also supports WebRTC, which on its own has the potential to completely disrupt the communications market.
Twilio is on a roll. The company garnered $70 million in new funding in recent weeks, and Twilio users are generating over four million voice calls per day, which is causing the company to project 100% revenue growth for 2013. Twilio’s executives believe the company has tremendous growth potential, pointing out that many customers have used Twilio in limited scenarios to verify that it works and that these customers are now beginning to build out very significant apps. In fact, Lawson claimed that 96% of Americans have already interfaced with an application that is based on Twilio. Twilio and a few others like it, are completely changing how organizations reach out to and engage with their customers.
