Company: Five9
Headquarters: San Ramon, CA

Five9 is a provider of cloud-based contact center software that helps companies increase call center efficiency and productivity. The company’s software provides a multi-channel approach to inbound and outbound call management, social channels, and applications to increase workforce optimization.

The cloud-based solutions offered by the company allow contact centers to operate with greater flexibility but at a lower cost than traditional contact center solutions.

Founder: John Sung Kim

Five9 was founded by software entrepreneur John Sung Kim. As the company’s founder and CEO, John grew the company to over $10 million in annual revenue and venture capital funding from a $30,000 loan before moving on. John Sung Kim is also the founder of healthcare based mobile messaging service DoctorBase.

President & Chief Executive Officer: Mike Burkland

Mike Burkland is the current President and CEO of Five9, having joined the company in 2008. With his background in working for cloud or enterprise software companies, Five9 has flourished under his leadership. Mr Burkland has grown the company into one of the largest and fastest growing cloud contact centre software providers.

Five9 started off in 2003 with the release of the Five9 Virtual Contact Center, or VCC. More advanced capabilities were added to the platform and its customers grew to over 500 with over 1.5 billion in processed calls. The company opened up a Southeast Asia headquarters based in the Philippines as well as a Russian based software development center.

By 2007, Five9 was among the 12 fastest growing private software companies in the United States, and now leads the cloud-based services sector.

Five9’s cloud based contact centre management applications include the following:

Inbound Contact Centre

Five9’s cloud-based inbound contact centre software helps small businesses and enterprises provide efficient customer services. The system utilises sophisticated routing algorithms to ensure that callers can quickly find the information or customer care representatives they need.

The inbound contact centre software is designed to scale up or down as call volumes grow or fall. Features include a cloud ACD that routes callers to the right agent, and a Five9 IVR that automates responses. In addition, screen capabilities give agents relevant customer information at the tip of their fingers during customer calls.

Cloud-Based Outbound Contact Centre

The outbound contact centre service from Five9 can be used to help businesses grow their customer base while also up-selling to their existing customers. The system is capable of automating campaign and lead management that helps with prospecting and converting customers. Other advantages include better agent performance, as well as  increased contacts per hour.

Five9 outbound contact centre features include:

• Predictive dialer: Five9’s predictive dialer sets the amount of calls to be made using connection rates and historical stats in real time.
• Five9 Power Dialer: This feature makes continuous calls relative to the number of contact centre reps available.
• Progressive Dialer: As a support for the predictive dialler, the progressive dialler system sets a ratio of how many calls are made at any given moment depending on how many agents are available.
• TCPA: An important part of Five9’s outbound contact centre service, this feature ensures that all automated dialing carried out by the system meet Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) rules and regulations.
• Preview Dialer: With the ability to pre-determine the amount of time required, the preview dialer allows contact centre staff to preview client records before a call is made.

Other Five9 outbound contact centre features include call recording, real-time or historical reports, at-home agents, and list management.

Multi Channel Contact Centre

The Five9 multi-channel software service allows contact centre agents to seamlessly respond to customer queries across voice calls, email, social media, and live chat.

Powered by a unique technology called Five9 Connect, the multi-channel option ensures customer issues are responded to, and resolved in a timely manner regardless of the channel used.

Blended Call Centre

The blended call centre service is designed to enable follow-up calls during down times for inbound contact centres. Outbound contact centres can  use the feature to  prioritise any incoming calls as agents work on their daily calling lists.

Blended call centre features include agent scripting, priority routing, text-to-speech recognition, all the above mentioned applications, and much more.

Workforce Optimisation

Five9’s applications allow contact centre agents to be more efficient and productive. The company’s workforce optimisation solutions allows team leaders to optimise these benefits to ensure the best balance between cost and service provision.

Workforce optimisation tools include the ability to plan staffing levels by forecasting call volumes, and ensuring schedules are met.

As Five9 has grown to be one of the leading contact centre platforms, the company has added many useful features to its offering. These include contact centre agent training, professional services, and always-on support for clients using the platform.

For support, customers can either email [email protected], or call Five9 customer support agents in the United States on 1-866-553-1459,  (+1-925-218-2325 for international callers).

In addition, the company provides a Customer Support Portal where clients using the platform can find a detailed knowledge base that provides solutions to common issues. The customer support portal can also be used to view, create, and update any support cases online.

Five9 also has a comprehensive collection of demos, whitepapers and datasheets available to view online or download as a support for their software. The company also provides daily contact centre webinars to help clients make the most of the system. Additionally, there are also videos, briefs, and infographics about the contact centre software available to users.