Vonage is a company that recognises that the contact centre and communication space is ripe for both growth and disruption. Over the past year, Vonage has focused on expanding its participation in the contact centre space, and now offers a wide variety of solutions to fit every business, no matter the size, industry, or existing capabilities. True to the company’s roots as a technology disruptor, Vonage is also embracing programmable, intelligent technology designed to transform and innovate existing contact centre solutions.
I spoke to Alan Masarek, the CEO of Vonage, to learn more about the success that the company has seen recently and discuss where the organisation may be heading in the future.
Tell Us about Yourself, Vonage, and your Recent Success
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Alan Masarek, CEO, Vonage[/caption]
Vonage is a cloud communications company designed to help businesses thrive by transforming the way they connect. Because Vonage was born and built in the cloud, they can offer flexibility,scalability, versatility, and no excessive upfront costs.
Alan Masarek has been CEO since 2014. He came to the company from Google, as a bit of a 'serial entrepreneur.' "I actually built a company and sold it to Google in 2012, then I was recruited to Google after that. I've been in technology for about 25 years now, either running established tech solutions or building rollups and other companies. What intrigued me about Vonage, was the chance to work with a company that had a huge background in the consumer section and reposition it to work for the business segment."
Alan told me that Vonage took all the best assets of residential and used them to jump-start the brand into the business segment.
"We have relationships with all the peering companies in the U.S., and termination contracts with providers around the world. We jump-started our route to business through acquisitions and have continued to grow organically. Last year, business overtook the consumer segment in revenues for the first time, demonstrating the success of our transformation"
How Has Vonage Evolved as a Business?
On the surface, Vonage is a company that started in the small business market segment and gradually worked their way up. However, the truth is that the company is so much more than that. Alan noted that Vonage came from the consumer space - the classic "long tail" environment.
Our consumer segment is still a very important component of our business and has helped to fuel of transformation into a business communications leader, which is where we’ve been focused for the last five years. We've created our roadmap to success from day one by simply following customer demand. We started in SMB, with our first acquisition focused on SMB solutions - but that's where the action was in terms of companies comfortable with moving to the cloud."
Historically, larger enterprises had more trouble embracing a cloud solution, because they've been nervous about "ripping out the dial tone." Today, the market is increasingly embracing the cloud for larger companies, and Vonage has followed that demand as it has emerged.
A Complete Span of the Market Now - Including Consumer
Once known primarily as a residential provider of VoIP, Vonage has evolved significantly over the past five years through a series of strategic acquisitions, as well as organic growth through a robust omnichannel sales model, to be one of the largest and fastest-growing cloud communications providers for business. Its unique cloud communications platform brings together a robust unified communications solution with the agility of embedded, contextual communications APIs powered by Nexmo, the Vonage API Platform. Alan told me:
Vonage believes that the key to getting a strong value proposition in the UC space is focusing on both enhancing internal communications and collaborations for employees inside a company, as well as improving engagement with customers outside the company for deeper relationships and increased customer loyalty. Masarek told me that he often thinks about it like comparing Amazon to a brick and mortar company. Digital brands have more scalability and scope than a brick and mortar business. However, brick and mortar companies have the opportunity to connect with their customers on a deeper level.
