Why wouldn’t you entrust your call solutions to a single provider Voice and IVR specialist?
To answer this, it’s important you know a bit about us as well as the journey we’ve taken to be at the forefront of our field. For nearly 20 years we’ve been one of a handful of companies designing and developing, supplying and supporting our own products.
Provenance pays
BCH is an engineer-led company which was started by techies in 2001. We have a repeat and loyal client base ranging from SMEs to Blue Chip companies. As engineers, we understand how our systems work and know-how to deliver the right solutions. We use our in-depth product knowledge to make our services easy to use and maintain, removing the technical mystery of the complex systems which underlie our products.
As a single provider, in charge of our own costs and development pipelines, we’ve been in the enviable position of being able to offer our clients affordable and accessible prices. We’ve resolutely stuck to this policy since 2001.
Affordability = Accessibility:
Making automated telephony accessible in 2001
The technology behind automated telephony in 2001 was prohibitively expensive. With technologies such as ISDN or SS7, there was an insurmountable barrier to entry. What’s more, although the systems weren’t generally as complex as they are today, the hardware and software tools available made each system’s facilities very complex. Suppliers conveniently used this entry barrier as a way of maintaining high prices, putting the full range of their systems’ capabilities beyond the reach of many businesses. The mystery behind automated telephony was certainly a way to maintain unreasonable pricing structures.
BCH didn’t hide behind any cloud of mystery. We simply took on the challenge of making automated telephony more accessible. We were at the vanguard of demystifying ‘value-added telephony services’ and reducing their costs. How did we achieve this?
The solution:
In-house design, development, supply and support.
As techies, we naturally gravitated towards developing our own dedicated systems to run our own products. We were determined not to house our product offerings on other systems or to buy anyone else’s software.
Why?
The simple answer was that as well as being too expensive, we simply couldn’t find anything good enough. By building our own systems and writing our own services exactly how we wanted to with our own tools, we could improve performance, improve outcomes and improve deliverables, and always maintain our competitive pricing mantra: affordability = accessibility.
Introducing the Portal:
Recognition that ‘one size fits all’ doesn’t always work
Our systems can be bespoke or packaged, and as feature-rich and flexible as required. However, sometimes they were proving just a little bit too flexible. You might say that as techies we just got carried away with development! It soon became apparent that our clients were using just a few key services and that we didn’t need to customise each and every product. Customisation was becoming too expensive and threatening to interfere with our pricing policy. So, we decided to introduce a configurable portal along with a sophisticated range of reporting tools. These empower clients to configure and control their own services – to do the things that really matter to them. The Portal and its associated tools have consistently increased the efficiency and repeatability of our services and help us to keep prices low.
Online portal promoted further growth from direct sales channels as well as through reseller partners
As soon as the portal was introduced, specialist resellers, focusing on a particular market area, added their skills and knowledge to the mix. This benefitted clients who required a particular service for a particular business model. We continue to value our specialist resellers’ expertise in niche business areas.
BCH’s policy of ongoing development continues to benefit the Portal with a more modern look, new facilities and even more responsiveness.
PCI security and system resilience – always at the forefront of design
We’ve been PCI level 1 compliant since 2012.
When we designed and developed our own PCI compliant system we decided to use no ‘compensatory controls’. This means our system is effectively future-proofed against ongoing changes in PCI-DSS regulations. Each year we’re subject to the most rigorous levels of external inspection and audit, and as you may have read in our earlier blog, our 2019 audit judged BCH as “outstanding”.
Numerous clients now run the full gamut of PCI and other security-focused calls, such as multi-factor authentication, to a broad swathe of end-user and reseller clients from UK Data Centres.
PCI Level 1 approval has led to the further growth of our direct sales channel. This is simply because PCI is a more ‘end client’ focused technology.
PCI is essentially a process, not a target. This means that year on year, as the PCI regulations are tightened or changed, more clients realise that their businesses are falling into scope.
The result is that the security side of BCH continues to grow as we consistently ensure our platform and services stay well abreast of any changes.
Our philosophy is a testament to our success as we hope our products will be to yours.
We’ve stuck to our roots which remain firm and which serve our clients the best. We continue to offer innovation through new and exciting product development at the most reasonable prices. Even though the security and regulatory landscape has changed and customer demands have grown even greater, our philosophy remains intact: to offer innovative products at reasonable prices – affordability = accessibility.
To find out more about us, follow the link. Or to enquire about a service, simply call the team on 0161 537 7707. We look forward to hearing from you.