Messaging For Customer Service: Bozeman Startup Quiq Brings Its Tech To Office Depot, Overstock.com

Things have been looking up for customers of Office Depot since last year, when the commercial-messaging startup, Quiq, came to their rescue. According to Mike Myer, Quiq"s founder and CEO, Office Depot customers no longer have to call or fill out an online inquiry form to find out, say, what a particular location has in stock or the status of an existing order. Today, that customer can send a text and have it answered by a helpful Office Depot employee almost immediately. (The first text reply generally gets to the customer within a minute, and the entire back-and-forth is usually completed in less than ten).

Office Depot (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Skiers in Jackson Hole are in luck as well, says Myer, who spoke to me from Quiq"s offices, located in the improbably booming tech hub of Bozeman, MT. Wondering about snow conditions or tram hours? All that’s needed is to text the resort for an immediate and up-to-the-minute response. For the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Company, whose entire customer base is a certifiably mobile-only whenever they’re on or headed toward the slopes, this makes a lot more sense, Myer tells me, than a desktop- and email-based support approach.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Gondola. (Photo by Education Images/UIG via Getty Images)

Overstock.com has also recently implemented Quiq’s solution and is now providing up-to-the minute order information via text. According to Overstock, the most quantifiable “aha” they’ve enjoyed from the new approach is the open rate: 98% for text messages as opposed to “in the single digits” for email.

Micah Solomon, Forbes.com: Tell me what Quiq is and what makes it special.

Mike Meyer, CEO and Founder, Quiq: Quiq is a company in Bozeman Montana that’s focused on making people’s lives easier. You, me and nearly all the consumers out there lead a digital-first lifestyle, where we are always connected. People love text messaging (SMS, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, Web chat, etc.) because it’s convenient and fits in with the crazy pace of our lives. By bringing text to business communication, Quiq makes it as easy to talk with companies as it is with friends.

No one likes to make phone calls (let alone to customer service!) and waiting for an email response is like waiting for paint to dry. Messaging is also more efficient for companies since one agent can serve multiple customers concurrently, unlike phone calls, and there’s no seemingly endless back and forth with to solve even a single issue, like there can be with email.

Who are some of Quiq’s marquee clients?

Pier 1, Brink’s Home Security, Tailored Brands (Men’s Wearhouse, Joseph A. Bank), Overstock, Office Depot, Tile, Insikt, and about 80 other great companies.

If my readers want to see your technology in action, where can they look?

Here’s an example they can see for themselves. Go to http://officedepot.com on your mobile phone, you’ll see a Text Us link right next to the phone number at the bottom of the page, which is powered by Quiq. If you were to have a question about a product or order with Office Depot, all you have to do is use that link to get assistance.

There’s a lot of excitement (and apprehension) about AI and chatbots. Your solution takes a different tack. Is this a philosophical choice on your part, a practical one, or both? Tell me your thoughts here. 

The hype curve for AI and chatbots is nearing the apex. But I wouldn’t say that these technologies are much help by themselves to true customer service at the moment. Most consumers (me included) can’t point to a satisfying interaction they’ve had with a chatbot that has solved a true, actual customer service issue. Getting the weather from Alexa is perfectly suited for a chatbot. Checking payment status or getting account info is harder, but within chatbot capabilities. Getting an actual customer service issue that requires troubleshooting resolved is orders of magnitude harder.

Quiq is in a great place at a great time because our success isn’t dependent upon how fast AI research is able to solve the chatbot problem. There is a ton of ROI and customer satisfaction to be gained from just adding messaging into existing contact centers with human agents serving customers via text messaging.

This doesn’t mean that I’m opposed to AI and chatbots, when properly deployed  I think where they excite me most is in the realm of “bot fusion”: the fusion of chatbots and human agents. A lot of people think about chatbots as first handling the conversation and then passing it to a human if the bot can’t handle it. But we think that agents and bots can work together. There may be a specific dialog that a bot can handle during a conversation between the agent and customer. For instance, identity verification or return address confirmation. If the bot gets confused in its task, it can tap the agent for help. The fusion is the seamless transition of the conversation back and forth between the human agent and their bot assistant without the customer’s awareness.

What role will telephone and email support have in the contact center of the future?

In the future, I believe the majority of interactions in the contact center will be messaging, rather than phone or email. Frankly, I don’t see a need for email to continue to be offered for much longer as a channel in the contact center, since it is so prone to laggy, circular conversations. The phone will still have a place but only in a minority of interactions, and even these will likely start with messaging. Why will the phone still have value? Because there are, and will continue to be, situations in which the consumer wants to be solely focused on troubleshooting a problem. In these cases, speaking is likely to continue to be more efficient than typing. But, the voice conversation will be multimedia, meaning that the agent and customer will be able to text back and forth and view images and video at the same time that they’re on the phone call.

Any advice  you can share for other entrepreneurs?   

The biggest challenge for entrepreneurs is finding and hiring the right people who can stand side-by-side to build a business from the ground up. It isn’t easy work. My advice for entrepreneurs is 1) find a great market opportunity, 2) hire amazing people, and 3) set the direction. Then, get out of the way and let the magic happen!

What about working with investors and partners?

When working with investors and partners, you need to make sure you keep your focus. While investors and partners are important, they’re not building your product and they are not the ones buying it, so be sure to allocate focus to them in the appropriate proportion.

What is the competitive landscape for Quiq?

We think about our competitive landscape in three broad buckets: 1) legacy chat vendors, 2) CRM vendors with a messaging option, and 3) social vendors adding messaging. Quiq is the first messaging platform built from scratch for asynchronous messaging, as opposed to adding messaging onto their synchronous systems.

[Author"s Note: LivePerson"s messaging solution, LiveEngage, was also built from the ground up for asynchronous communications, to the best of my knowledge. Read about LiveEngage in my previous article.]

Our goal isn’t to displace existing CRM or customer support systems.  Quiq integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, Zendesk, Oracle and internal systems.  So, we’re only competing against other messaging solutions, not the incumbent systems.

Live Content: Keynote Speaker Micah Solomon on Customer Service, Customer Experience, Company CultureMicah Solomon

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An Especially Diverse Audience Lifted ‘Black Panther’ to Record Box Office Heights

Black Panther sprung into the record books with a massive opening weekend that came at the hands of a mostly non-white audience—not to mention with more women than your typical superhero flick.

The trailblazing superhero movie from Walt Disney’s Marvel Studios easily topped Hollywood’s box office with one of the biggest theatrical debuts ever, grossing more than $ 426 million worldwide over the President’s Day holiday weekend. Millions of people around the world lined up at their local movie theater to watch Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther battle for the throne in the fictional African country of Wakanda.

In the U.S., 37% of the movie’s overall audience was African-American, which is well above the norm as the average movie audience is about 15% African-American, according to box office tracking company ComScore. White moviegoers made up just 35% of Black Panther‘s audience over its opening weekend. That an exceptional percentage of African-American viewers turned out for the highly-anticipated movie’s debut is not so surprising, considering that the movie had generated considerable buzz, thanks to its overall critical acclaim and the fact that it boasts an African-American director (a first for a Marvel superhero movie) and a mostly black cast led by Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, and Angela Bassett.

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The real surprise from Black Panther‘s huge arrival was just how high its box-office totals have climbed in only a few days. The movie is the latest and largest rejoinder to outdated and extremely misguided Hollywood concerns over the ability of movies featuring black-led casts and storylines to become legitimate blockbusters. Following recent strong box-office showings from movies like last year’s Get Out and Girls Trip, along with 2015’s Straight Outta Compton (all three of which were distributed by Universal Pictures), Black Panther‘s roaring success serves as yet another lesson that increased diversity on the big screen can also provide a boost at the box office.

Paul Dergarabedian, ComScore’s senior media analyst, raised the idea of Black Panther as “a game changer in terms of its ability to erase outdated perceptions of what can constitute a blockbuster/superhero movie,” in an e-mail to Fortune. “The across the board appeal of the film reflects that there are no apparent cultural limitations on the interest and love that people have for Black Panther,” he added.

Meanwhile, a higher percentage of women also showed up for Black Panther‘s opening weekend. Women represented 45% of the movie’s audience, which is less than the average moviegoing population but more than the typical female turnout for a superhero movie. The average superhero movie (many of which are led by mostly male characters) draws a 62% male audience, though Black Panther and last year’s Wonder Woman have bucked that trend.

Warner Bros.’s Wonder Woman scored box-office success with a majority female audience when it opened last summer. While Black Panther‘s main character is male, the movie features several lead female characters—including Nyong’o, as well as T’Challa’s sister, Shuri, played by Letitia Wright. And, like Wonder Woman‘s island of female warriors, Black Panther‘s fictional Wakanda features the Dora Milaje, an elite squad of women fighters sworn to protect the country’s king.

Whether the issue is finding more screen time for minorities and women in Hollywood, Black Panther is the latest example that diversity and inclusion can be sound investments in the movie business.

Tech

When #MeToo and Sexual Harassment Revelations Trigger PTSD at the Office, What Do You Do?

Yesterday, another two public officials resigned due to sex scandals and their resignations seem a bit backward. The first, Al Franken (D-Minn) had photos of him inappropriately touching women. He, however, denied that he"d really done anything really wrong, saying,

"I also think it gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that in fact I haven"t done. Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently."

The second, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) resigned after "discussing surrogacy" with some female staff members. While that doesn"t seem like actual sexual harassment or discrimination to me, he felt that in the current climate he needed to resign. And, of course, we do not know the whole story. We don"t know anyone"s whole story.

While you can"t shake a stick in Washington or Hollywood without hitting someone sleazy, sexual harassment isn"t limited to the rich and famous. And while some of the victims of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, and Louis C.K. were, themselves, pretty famous, most victims are normal humans. And normal humans have regular jobs. And normal humans with regular jobs may be feeling a bit more stressed with all this focus on sexual assault and harassment. Some may be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Dr. Joel L. Young wrote about the mental health effects of sexual assault in Psychology Today. He says:

[R]ape and sexual assault might actually be the most common cause of PTSD. Data suggests that anywhere from 30 to 80 percent of sexual assault survivors develop PTSD. With so many women exposed to sexual assault, it becomes clear that the disparity between men and women in mental health issues might be closely related to the trauma many women face.

So, there may well be someone suffering from PTSD in your office who is feeling worse in today"s climate. What do you do?

Don"t pry.

You"re not your employees" best friend, and you shouldn"t try to act like it. Don"t have big sharing sessions or talk about how some guy smiled at you on the bus and made you feel violated. It"s insensitive and dumb. #MeToo isn"t a competition.

Remind your whole staff about your EAP.

You should have an employee assistance program, and if you don"t consider implementing one today. They are inexpensive and can be life-saving for employees. EAPs are experienced in helping people find mental health support and depending on your plan, visits may be free or at a reduced cost, at least for an initial therapy session. 

Make reasonable accommodations.

The Americans with Disabilities Act covers many cases of PTSD, which means that (as long as you have 15 or more employees), you are required to provide reasonable accommodations for an employee who qualifies. Encourage someone who brings up any stress from these recent events to see their physician and have the paperwork filled out.

Then, be willing to make accommodations for your employee. What is reasonable depends on the job and the company. Work with your employee to come to a solution. (This is called an interactive process and is required by law.) For instance, if you work in an office, it might be reasonable to move someone"s desk so that her back is against the wall, which means no one can sneak up on her. If the same employee is a cashier at the grocery store, it may not be reasonable to have her in a location where no one can come up behind her. 

Never excuse bad behavior.

One thing we"ve found out during this time of sexual harassment revelations is that perpetrators need accomplices. The Harvey Weinsteins and Matt Lauers of the world wouldn"t have been successful in their longtime harassment had many people, men and women, not allowed it. 

There is no employee so valuable that you should tolerate bad behavior. If you want your employees to feel safe at work, investigate every claim, and fire anyone who deserves to be fired. Period. Even if that person is your top salesperson. Shut that behavior down.

Chances are, you know someone who is dealing with raw feelings, so remember, above all, be kind.

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