At Manchester Digital we like to interview our members to find out a bit more about what they do and their work in the Greater Manchester digital and technology sphere. This week we're speaking with Mark Chamberlin, CTO/COO of Lokulus.
What does your organisation do?
Lokulus is a 20 year old technology company that has developed a configurable software platform for optimising the interactions for an outward facing organisation, such as a retailer would have with their customers. Simply put, we improve how an organisation engages with their customers across a broad spectrum of interaction channels such as email, web chat, social media or text whilst in parallel improving the consistency and reducing the cost to make this communication. These positive interactions enable our client’s to build strong brand equity and good customer relations, resulting in repeat business and happy employees.
Whilst engineering is our core DNA, we compliment this with a team of experienced consultants who configure our software platform to meet the varied and exacting demands of our customers across several industry sectors. This tailormade support has enabled us to have long term relationships with our clients as not only do we create technology to fit their business our team is on hand to support them as their business needs change.
What do you think is currently the biggest issue facing the digital and tech industry?
Promoting the use of hype and jargon, resulting in a reduction of trust.
Let’s face it, many of us in the technology industry have been guilty of bamboozling customers with jargon for decades or more, often with the aim of creating a sense of urgency or uniqueness. So not a new phenomenon but more recently we have seen an increasing use of attaching premodifiers to almost any technology in order to ‘sex it up’, from hyper to bot to AI.
We are now starting to encounter customers who have latched onto snippets of sales presentations or online research seeking these jargon laden technologies to cure all business problems. This requires us as part of our initial engagement returning the customer back to their original problem statement, i.e. what is the challenge or problem they are looking to solve.
When we bring onboard a new customer who has been sold inappropriate technology, it is hard to resolve their original customer experience problems as their budget has been spent and they are out of time to rectify it. But worst of all is their lack of trust in technology vendors, that we have to rebuild.
What is your organisation’s biggest achievement?
Longevity.
We are equally proud of the length of time the business has been operating, the duration of our client relationships and finally our employee retention, many of whom are now into double digit years of tenure with us. Our business has grown with their businesses and it reflects in their success.
Due to the change in consumer habits, accelerated by the COVID pandemic, positive customer experience is now regarded as the single most important issue for online businesses. It creates repeat business, customer loyalty, stronger brand equity and ultimately more revenue! So as we approach 20 years in business we‘re proud to enable our clients to stay ahead in customer interaction technology.
What would you consider to be your organisation’s biggest challenge?
Considering the current global pandemic, our business objective to expand into other territories such as the Americas and Australasia is probably one of the main challenges that immediately springs to mind. As a business we had previously enjoyed success in the Americas on a direct basis and our plans were to develop partner networks to support this expansion.
Zoom and Teams maybe be both fulfilling and changing attitudes to remote meetings, but when you are looking to develop long term relationships the intimacy and commitment of face to face meetings can never be underestimated.
What do you think the future looks like for Manchester’s digital and tech sector?
Judging by the significant influx of major tech brands to the region I would say that it is definitely buoyant, especially when you consider the likely wave of secondary organisations to support these tech giants.
We have taken the conscious decision to relocate from the city centre to the leafy surrounds of Cheshire, into the Glasshouse at Alderley Park. With good communication links and a fast-developing community of like minded technology businesses, it proves that the Manchester Tech sector can successfully expand into the suburbs and cope with extra growth.
Tell us something we might not know about your company?
The name Lokulus and our logo are derived from ‘loculus Archimedius’ or Archimedes Box when translated from the original Latin.
The Greek mathematician developed a 14-piece dissection puzzle forming a square of which there are 536 distinct solutions. Our software platform is also made up of a number of components which in turn can be arranged to create unique solutions for our clients.
Also! We’re expanding our team by 30%, check out https://www.lokulus.com/careers/ for a full list of roles.
Thanks Mark!
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