‘7 Minutes’ with Talkdesk VP of Channels Jon Heaps

**Editor’s Note: “7 Minutes” is a feature where we ask channel executives from startups – or companies that may be new to the Channel Partners audience – a series of quick questions about their businesses and channel programs.**

Talkdesk has some chatter going on. The cloud-based contact center startup has raised $25 million in funding from Salesforce Ventures, DFJ and Storm Ventures; been named a visionary in Gartner’s contact center as a service Magic Quadrant along with BroadSoft, which was recently snapped up by Cisco; and signed on reference customers including Dropbox, Shopify and Peets Coffee. And, in October, it named Jon Heaps VP of channels. Heaps is a longtime channel veteran who’s done stints with ShoreTel, Corvisa, inContact and Qwest Communications.

Talkdesk’s Jon Heaps

Hosted contact centers are a huge opportunity for the channel, with some major advances that partners should be stressing to customers. For example, Talkdesk’s contact center app store allows partners or customers to customize their contact centers with add-ons, such as voice analytics and workforce optimization, and it offers a number of one-click integrations with CRM and other enterprise applications. That ability to customize is a trend that Sheryl Kingstone, research director of customer experience and commerce for 451 Research, says will have a huge impact on how call centers operate.

Here’s our Q&A with Heaps touching on his goals for the program, deals with master agencies and more.

Channel Partners: Tell us what customers love about your product or service. What’s the secret selling sauce?

Jon Heaps: Talkdesk is an easy-to-use, cloud-based contact center solution that improves customer interactions while reducing costs. It really comes down to the ease of use and ease of doing business. Talkdesk is simple to use, simple to maintain and easy to evolve as needs change.

Historically, call center software has been on-premises, taking up to six months to install. Since Talkdesk is in the cloud and designed to be operated by business users, companies can set up a call center within minutes. All they need is Wi-Fi and our solution. Essentially, Talkdesk is the first company to innovate an outdated industry, with the most modern technology and design techniques. At Talkdesk, we think of ourselves as an engineering company, with 150+ engineers and growing, we are constantly evolving our solutions using technologies such as AI to empower businesses to have more impactful customer conversations.

Additionally, Talkdesk has developed and launched the first ever enterprise app store for the contact center, AppConnect, which offers customers key partner integrations. AppConnect makes sure all partners on the platform offer one-click installations, 30-day free trials and pay as you go. This is one of the reasons Gartner named Talkdesk a Visionary in the 2017 Contact Center as a Service Magic Quadrant. Talkdesk is also the youngest company to ever be included in …