The Tao of CSI: three core philosophies drive success

Three core business philosophies drive our success in the call recording and quality monitoring markets.

Many of our blog readers might not be familiar with the history of CSI. If you are not yet a customer or partner, you may not understand what we're all about. I'm hoping this helps to explain what drives us.

Since beginning as energy consultants in 1972, we've experienced all of the highs and lows of a thirty-five plus year business. Quickly becoming a custom computer programming house, we soon moved on to become a developer of a custom job shop manufacturing control system. Several years later, we've emerged as a strong call center solution provider.

We developed Virtual Observer (VO) as a robust, scalable call recording and quality monitoring system. We saw a hole in the marketplace once occupied by several bloated suites of bells and whistles. Many small and mid-sized call centers could not afford the benefit of a feature-rich call recording and quality monitoring implementation. Larger companies were forced to pay high upgrade fees because they were lacking choices. With the launch of Virtual Observer, CSI changed all of that.

How've we done it?

We have three core philosophies that make up our business mantra and combine to enable us to deliver the lowest cost of ownership in the industry.

The first is to “Build Great Customer Experiences”.

Our customer service philosophy drives everything in our organization, from the usability of our systems to our implementation and training teams. Perhaps the most evident result of this long-term customer strategy is in the aggressively low pricing of our upgrades – software is free for customers with active support agreements. This is practically unheard of in our industry. The largest percentage of your investment will come with the initial purchase, as opposed to upgrade offerings from our competition which essentially translates into a re-buy.

The second is our ability to allow customers to “Start Small and Think Big”.

Our sales philosophy starts with pricing structured so that a new customer can “Start Small and Think Big” -- implementing the right amount of functionality at the right time, and adding on new features as needed, as opposed to our competition’s methodology of forcing purchases of extra features that you’ll never really use, simply to justify the high price tag.”

Dan McGrail, Director of Product Development, added the third philosophy: “Don’t forget about “Simple, Effective, Affordable”.

Our operating philosophy dictates that every process, every product and every decision is based on it being simple, effective and affordable. We are able to manage operating costs by avoiding what some in the industry tout as “cutting edge”. Eventually “cutting edge” functionality becomes commodity, and then is made more affordable for our customer base. This is a huge component in allowing Virtual Observer to deliver a rapid return on investment.