The co-founders of cloud-based phone system CircleLoop, Damian Hanson and David Hague, release an insight into their first 12 months of trading and the formal launch of a new Contact Centre product, SmartAgent.
Following a successful beta of CircleLoop in late 2017 and into early 2018 the company has seen revenues go from near zero 12 months ago to in excess of £1m in its first trading year, with staff numbers at its Rossendale head office rising from 12 to 30 in the process.
Forecasts for the next 12 months expect to see the business achieve sales in excess of £2.5m and headcount rising again to over 50 people.
CircleLoop is rapidly establishing itself as an alternative to the norm in the SME telecoms sector as businesses continue to shift to VoIP and cloud services. Key integration partnerships with complementary products such as HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive and Capsule have also helped underpin CircleLoop’s growth to date.
The company has also unveiled its latest product, SmartAgent, which helps contact centre operators maximise efficiency through contact reduction and deflection, service agent assistance and channel consolidation. SmartAgent has been in beta for a number of months with several enterprise customers, and co-founders Damian and David have big plans for it in 2019 and beyond having recently appointed James Wilson as Director of SmartAgent to spearhead the proposition.
Damian commented: “We founded the business to challenge the norm in the communications space through a number of digitally-led products. Our first, the SaaS-based phone system CircleLoop, has really started to establish itself as a product with thousands of paying customers already. We will continue to grow this in the UK and internationally in the coming years. And we believe with SmartAgent we have now created another world-class product which is also ready to scale”.
The early adopters of SmartAgent have been skewed towards the retail sector which is one the pair know well given their background in founding retail commerce platform provider One iota. However the SmartAgent proposition is now attracting interest from other industries including insurance, logistics, FinTech, travel and the public sector.
David added: “Digital customer experiences are a major headache for many businesses and with SmartAgent we have developed a streamlined way to bring voice, chat, email and social contact together with artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to improve customer experience and reduce contact centre operating costs. We are expanding several high profile partnerships to really establish the product this year and we’re delighted to have James on board to drive the vision forward!”
Both CircleLoop and SmartAgent are brands of Mission Labs Ltd., the business founded by Hanson and Hague in 2016 after selling One iota to Sanderson Group PLC in October 2013.
Mission Labs is headquartered in Rawtenstall, Rossendale.
