Aug 31, 2023

Quiq is a leading technology company based in Bozeman, Montana, that makes it easy for people to have a conversation with a company. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Quiq CEO and founder Mike Myer to learn more. Mike Myer’s Background Before launching Quiq, Myer was Chief Product Officer & VP of Engineering at Dataminr, a startup that analyzes all of the world’s tweets in real time and detects breaking information ahead of any other source. Myer said: “I have deep expertise in customer service software, having previously built the RightNow Customer Experience solution used by many of the world’s largest consumer brands to deliver exceptional interactions.” “RightNow went public in 2004 and was acquired by Oracle for $1.5B in 2011. I led Engineering the entire time RightNow was a standalone company and later managed a team of nearly 500 at Oracle responsible for Service Cloud. Before RightNow, I held various software development and architect roles at AT&T, Lucent, and Bell Labs Research. I hold a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University.” “More than 200 companies, including IHG Hotels, Spirit Airlines, Terminix, and Blue Nile, trust Quiq to connect them with their customers via messaging.” Formation Of Quiq How did the idea for Quiq come together? Myer shared: “While it seems fairly obvious now that customers want to text message with their favorite companies when we started Quiq in 2015, it wasn’t nearly as obvious. When we started Quiq, SMS only existed for business use. Today, Quick supports about a dozen messaging channels.” “Because of my background working in customer experience software, I had a good understanding of how enterprise contact centers worked. And in my personal life, if I wanted to get something done with family and friends, a text message was the most effective way to do that. So Quiq started with the realization that text messaging would fit into the contact center and people would prefer it.” Favorite Memory What has been Myer’s favorite memory working for Quiq so far? Myer reflected: “I have a lot of fond memories of fun times with the team and of the remarkable results we have helped our customers achieve. However, if I had to pick just one memory, it would be how the company pulled together to cross all the unexpected hurdles at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. With lockdowns, consumers moved to digital channels very quickly, and messaging volume on the platform went through the roof, way beyond the organic growth that our engineering team’s plans were based upon. Simultaneously, many of our clients needed our help implementing automation to handle the sudden spike of customer issues related to product shortages and shipping delays. I remember one of our clients having 4,000 customers waiting in queue to text with a human agent. The Quiq team pulled together. We didn’t have one minute of downtime, and we went the extra mile to help our clients meet their unprecedented demands on digital channels. I’m proud of how the team met this challenge.” Challenges Faced What are some of the challenges you face in building the company, and has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company? Myer acknowledged: “The economic climate has companies looking for ways to do more with less, which has opened the door to AI solutions that they might have taken longer to embrace under normal economic conditions. The timing of the market conditions ran in parallel with a huge revolution in AI technology. Together, these events have created an exceptional opportunity for Quiq.” Core Products What are Quiq’s core products and features? Myer explained: “Quiq equips businesses with digital communications channels that modernize customer service offerings using the latest/contemporary technologies. More specifically, it provides: An AI Assistant that is powered by the latest AI technologies (think of a company-specific version of ChatGPT, just for customer service) that handles the majority of inquiries upfront and triages the remaining conversations to agents working in Quiq’s next-generation digital contact center. A consolidated messaging platform that supports a dozen messaging channels where customers can be serviced in an omnichannel fashion by both AI Assistants and human agents. A digital contact center for human agents where one agent serves multiple customers at the same time, and AI is used to make every agent as good as the best agent. Business analytics are very important to running an efficient contact center and Quiq’s Insights platform is designed to give operational leaders the information they need in real-time to make wise business decisions.” Evolution Of Quiq’s Technology How has Quiq’s technology evolved since launching? Myer noted: “One of the most significant evolutions in the company has occurred in the past year as a result of the incredible new breed of AI that has become available. In the past, we did a good job of answering customer questions, but there was no doubt in a customer’s mind that they were interacting with a computer. With Large Language Models powering our AI Assistants, our ability to answer customer questions is 10X better than ever before and the answers are remarkably human-like.” Significant Milestones What have been some of Quiq’s most significant milestones? Myer cited: “Here are a few milestones from the past year or two. First, we raised our Series C, a $25 million investment led by Baird Capital. This was a testament to the market opportunity, the momentum that we’ve built so far, and the strength of the team. One of the uses of the additional investment was to grow Quiq’s geographic reach. In January of this year, we started our EMEA team, and we are excited about the opportunity we are finding in that market. Finally, I’ll call out that Quiq is the first vendor that I know of to release a customer-facing AI Assistant powered by the latest AI, the same technology underlying ChatGPT. This was for LOOP Insurance.” Customer Success Story Upon asking Myer about a customer success story, Myer highlighted: “Daily Harvest is a meal kit delivery company that prioritizes customer care and is always looking for ways to enhance their customer experience. To improve self-service options for customers, they wanted to implement Apple Messages for Business, but their primary CRM didn’t support it. They turned to Quiq, a conversational commerce partner, to help them implement Apple Messages for Business as another entry point for customer care.” “Together, Daily Harvest and Quiq focused on three primary business objectives: high visibility, high usage, and high impact. Quiq handled the technical aspects of building the integration, and Daily Harvest redirected all conversations originating from their app to Apple Messages for Business.” “The implementation was an instant success, with a vast majority of messaging volume shifting to Apple Messages for Business. As a result, survey responses have been exceptionally high, with a 98% CSAT score immediately following launch and a 40% survey response rate. Apple Messages for Business has become Daily Harvest’s highest-performing channel on CES (4.9), and the company plans to shift even more volume to that channel.” “Daily Harvest’s ultimate goal is to find innovative ways to give customers a beautiful experience from the beginning to the end of their conversations, contributing to their overall satisfaction and loyalty.” Revenue Model When I asked Myer about the company’s revenue model, he replied: “I’ve tried very hard to align Quiq’s value with the value that our clients receive from our solution. For that reason, our pricing model is based on the number of interactions that a company has with its customers. Traditionally, most contact center software applications were priced based on agent seats. There’s no value in having an agent logged in, and the value comes from helping customers. Quiq only makes money when customers are being served, and that aligns perfectly with the value our clients receive.” Total Addressable Market What total addressable market (TAM) size is Quiq pursuing? Myer assessed: “It’s big, really big. Think of it this way – every person is a consumer who buys things from lots of different companies. Every now and then, consumers need to contact a company. Large companies interact with thousands, even hundreds of thousands of customers per day. Automating even a small portion of those interactions has incredible ROI. We are working on a big opportunity.” Differentiation From The Competition What differentiates Quiq from its competition? Myer affirmed: “Quiq is the only enterprise-class solution that incorporates best-in-breed AI automation and a next-generation digital contact center for agents. As our name implies, we are innovative and fast-moving, which means that our platform is always cutting-edge. But while that’s good, our strongest point of differentiation is our team and our dedication to our client’s success. Our clients often tell us we are their favorite vendor.” Future Company Goals What are some of Quiq’s future company goals? Myer concluded: “While I don’t ever expect that automation will replace humans in customer service, I think that recent AI advances will change the game. We’re in the first inning of a 9-inning game that is part of a 7-game series! I think about how the internet completely changed the world, and I expect that in 10 years, we will look back at this time as the beginning of another incredible transformation. Quiq’s future company goal is to be at the center of that!” Trending on Pulse 2.0