(Photo of Swampfox Technologies' Columbia headquarters by Robert Oswald of Oswald Creative+Design)

When someone calls a customer service number and finds the experience surprisingly efficient with a quick resolution, chances are they've experienced the AI-assisted, customer-friendly technology of Swampfox Technologies, a Columbia-based startup.

The four technology whizzes who formed Swampfox in 2009 focused on improving processes that they also find frustrating as consumers. These are common experiences for everyone who has ever called a company, seeking help for a problem: Having an automated voice asking you to select one of nine options; waiting five minutes or more on hold; being routed to one number and rerouted again and again; and repeatedly reporting the problem and the account number.

"If you design these systems poorly, people hate them," said Bob Cooper, Swampfox chief executive officer. 

"Our whole goal is to make our caller experience delightful and convenient – not frustrating," Cooper said. "If we can make it so you do not wait on hold, get you to the right agent at the right time – that's the business mission, along with creating an awesome place to work."

Cooper, along with Derek Sanders, Rick Ulmer, and Katie Howe, started the technology company 15 years ago when the company that employed them, Avaya, told them to move to California.

The four partners had already started and sold one startup, Conita, to phone equipment company Avaya early in 2002. 

"The Swampfox team has a long list of patents in the area of self-service and Personal Virtual Assistants – think Apple Siri – going back over 20 years," said Sergey Razin, Ph.D., chief technology officer at Swampfox.

"People had Motorola flip phones and pagers, so our vision was anyone who is remote can connect by voice," Cooper said. "It was during the dot-com days."

The founders stayed on as employees of Avaya, helping to develop technology experienced by about every caller to a business in the U.S.

"If you call most big businesses today, the equipment that answers the phone was built on Lady Street in Columbia, South Carolina, while we were with Avaya," he said. "If you call Delta, Comcast, other cable companies, the technology was all designed by this team."

But around 2009, Avaya wanted them to move away from their beloved Palmetto state. "When I got the news that they wanted us to move to California, I turned to Rick (Ulmer) and said, 'That's not going to happen, Rick. I think we need to start a company,'" Cooper recalled.

And that's what they did in 2009. Only this time, they had a different goal than they did with their first start-up where success and financial gain were the chief goals. This time, their goal was to create a great place to work and a service that works for their customers.

"We think Columbia is the place to do that. In order to make our core values, my goal was to make this the No. 1 sought-after place for a software developer to work in South Carolina," Cooper said.

The founders invested $3 million into renovating a 120-year-old downtown brick building. They emphasized culture and a work environment that would attract the brightest engineering graduates – even the ones who might receive offers from Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.

Staff retention is important, so there is a big focus on teamwork and team fun. The Swampfox team shares a catered lunch every Friday. Staff also has access to a rooftop kitchen and bar.

During the company's weeklong 15-year anniversary celebration in June 2024, they had a dinner and game night at Swampfox; the staff enjoyed at murder mystery dinner theater experience at Blue Marlin; they enjoyed a Fireflies baseball game; and they rented the Nickelodeon, a local theater, for all employees to enjoy drinks, movie snacks, and the original "Die Hard" film.

"For our 10th anniversary, we flew employees and their families to Charleston for a three-day weekend at the Isle of Palms," Cooper said.

It's equally challenging to attract the right employees as it is to attract new customers, so Swampfox relies on staff bonding experiences and geographic flexibility to keep employees engaged and enthusiastic, said Tom Hanson, vice president of Product, Marketing and Strategy for Swampfox. Hanson had worked with Cooper and the other Swampfox founders at Avaya before joining their team.

Hanson is based in Boulder, Colorado, and reports to work virtually. There are Swampfox employees in 10 other states, including California, Arizona, New York, and Georgia.

"When Bob asked me to come over in 2014, I was like, 'Bob, I love you guys but like you guys like Columbia, I like Colorado. Let's figure this out,'" Hanson recalled.

It was partially because of Hanson and other remote employees that Swampfox was an early adopter of having virtual employees. There were no Zoom calls in those pre-pandemic years, but they found ways to engage and work together despite the distance and technology limitations.

Having this experience also helped the company quickly adapt when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, shutting down most in-person gatherings and resulting in millions of professionals working out of home offices.

"When the pandemic hit, it was a shock to everybody, but from a work perspective we were able to quickly change into that virtual mode," Hanson said.

The pandemic also proved to be a big opportunity for the small start-up to grow: "One of the largest cable companies in the U.S. called us and said they had just lost their overseas call center because of the pandemic," Hanson said. "We stepped in and helped them solve their problems in about a week."

The one staffing experience that is difficult to duplicate virtually is bonding. So, Swampfox holds some events for all of their 50-75 employees to meet together, such as their 15th anniversary celebration.

Hanson and other out-of-state employees flew into Columbia for a week of getting to know each other face-to-face.

"We had social events in the evening for bonding and had great hands-on work during the week," Hanson said. "This is the best place I've ever worked for, and I've worked at many larger companies like Oracle and AT&T."

Based on the Net Promoter rating that clients give Swampfox, it's also successful in attracting and keeping satisfied customers. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how enthusiastic clients are with a particular company and service. The highest ratings of nine or 10 suggest they are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying the product and keep referring others to buy, as well.

While the industry's average is in the five or six NPS range, Swampfox consistently has an NPR of over nine, Hanson says. "That is one of our secret weapons."

The company is also evolving to be a fun place for the four founders, who have rarely taken time off over the decades of starting two companies and interrupting family time to answer emergency calls – such as computer crashes – any day, night, or weekend.

They found out the hard way that you can't put off having fun and spending time with your best friends, which was the chief reason the four have worked well together all these years. Katie Howe's husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer five years ago, and it looked like they had waited too long to keep their promise that one day the founders and spouses would take a trip together, Cooper recalled.

"We said, 'If we don't start doing this now, we'll never do it.' We created a great place to work but we also needed to enjoy the journey," he said.

They started to keep that long-time promise and go on a founder's trip together each year. These have included a biking trip and a tour in France and Spain.

The founder's comradery continues with their new company, Swampfox Aviation. They plan to purchase a 10-year-old, four-seater plane, and they'll each take flight lessons and become certified. They can use the plane for business trips and for founder retreats. "It's always been on our bucket list," Cooper said.

Tech Innovations Make Columbia Startup's Products and Services Future-Focused, Caller-Friendly

Swampfox engineers work to create a customer and business experience that eliminates some of the major headaches most experience when dealing with call centers: voicemail jail, zeroing out, and long waits, or endless rerouting.

Their customers, which include some cable companies, utility companies, health care insurers, and other large businesses, need to save time and money on incoming calls. Simply hiring enough staff to handle them is extremely costly. It's also inconvenient to use awkward phone decision trees that have trouble routing callers to the right person and end up wasting the company's time and angering clients, said Bob Cooper, Swampfox chief executive officer.

Here's how it works:

* Eliminating voicemail jail: 

What frustrates callers most is being stuck in menu trees, Cooper said. 

"They're only given a handful of choices, which never are what they're calling about," he said. "If you build a touchtone app, there are nine choices, so it's already painful. Then you check one choice, and there are nine more choices."

After listening to choices for several minutes, a caller will select a number and then find themselves in someone's voicemail. Or they may give up and push zero, hoping to reach a live person.

None of this frustration is necessary with technology that can quickly solve the caller's issue without having to route and reroute them. With the best technology, the program can identify who would be the best agent for them to speak with and transfer them when the phone line is available. This avoids voicemail jail and caller's anger.

* Ending 'zeroing out': 

When callers become frustrated with an automatic routing system, they often will press "zero," hoping to speak with a living person. Zeroing out can be very expensive to large companies, and it's an inefficient way to use customer service representatives because most of these zeroed-out calls could have been handled by a virtual assistant.

"If we're able to collect a little bit of information from a caller to route them to the right agent and save the agent some time, it saves the company a lot of money," Cooper said.

Any call center technology that is unable to quickly learn why a customer is calling will create a situation where the caller is routed to the wrong specialist and has to be transferred again. "That's painful for the caller and painful for the business because it takes so much time," he said.

The solution is to use virtual assistants that use natural language when speaking with callers and can predict why they're calling.

"One of our more recent patents is what we call 'intelligent greetings,'" said Sergey Razin, Ph.D., chief technology officer at Swampfox. "The concept is to make the IVR/Self-Service experience much more convenient and personalized when someone calls a business."

The technology leverages what is known about a caller, such as, their power is out or they have a bill that's due the next day. Then it greets them in a personalized manner that focuses on that information rather than offering them a long list of options, Razin explained.

"If your power is out and you're calling your power company, there's a high probability that you're calling for that reason, and it makes sense to say, 'Are you calling because your power is out?'" Cooper said. "It's a simple question, and you're likely to say, 'Yes,' and then I can say, 'We have this on file, and your estimated time of restoration is between 3 and 3:30 p.m. Do you need anything else?' It's very quick and convenient."

Customers who call for an unanticipated reason are asked how they can be helped and they're routed to the right department.

Cooper played a demonstration of the technology, and the conversation went like this:

Personal virtual assistant (PVA): "What can I do for you?"

Cooper: "Ah, I know that I need to pay my bill, but I do not have enough money. I'm not sure what to do."

PVA: "We understand that from time to time, it can be difficult to pay your entire utility bill. Based on your account standing, we can let you defer a portion of your current balance."

This higher level of conversation in most call centers would typically involve a live agent, but it can be handled by the virtual assistant with the new technology.

If a caller insists on a live agent, despite the virtual assistant's help, the response from the PVA would be something like, "Hey Jane, I'd love to get you to an agent. I'll transfer you to an agent. For me to get you to the right agent, tell me why you're calling."

After hearing the caller's answer, the PVA can route the call to the correct agent and also send that agent the caller's account information so the agent does not have to ask them to repeat their account number or repeat the reason for their call.

"Our patent involves examining all the various inputs and leveraging our own AI models to derive the optimal simple yes/no question from the data," Razin said. "The entire goal is to give you a delightful experience."

* Long waits and endless rerouting: 

If callers will experience a long wait time to speak with someone, then the technology offers them a convenient callback option. This can work especially well when callers try to reach the company during hours when they're closed, such as weekends.

For example, if someone calls a company on Sunday, the PVA will tell them that it can call them back when the company is open and then ask which day of the week is best for them. If the caller says, "Monday," the PVA knows that call centers receive their heaviest volume of calls between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Mondays, so it will suggest a call at 3 p.m. on Monday, when call volume is less intense, Cooper explained.

This is more convenient for the caller, who knows when the callback will occur, and it saves the business money because it avoids peak calling hours.

Another convenience is how the technology transfers a caller's information from the first agent to the next so the person does not have to repeat their account number and why they are calling, Cooper said.

"We put a unique key with that call, and with that key the agent's software on the desktop will find all the data in the call record," he explained. "Even if you go from agent one to two to three to four, that information will be passed from agent to agent."

One of the business strategies that has made Swampfox attractive to companies wanting to improve their call center technology is that they do not have to scrap their legacy call center systems in order to adopt Swampfox's natural language technology.

Competitors offer natural language technology, as well, but companies may have to scrap their existing systems and start over with a hosted or cloud-based system, Cooper said.

"A lot of businesses say, 'We don't feel comfortable from a security perspective or business model perspective having it on the cloud,'" he said.

Swampfox can use the cloud if a customer wants to go that route, but it's not required.

"We have our own intellectual property, and because of that we can employ it in their business or on the cloud, whereas most of our competitors can only deploy it in the cloud at an expensive per-minute price," Cooper explained.

The company's next direction is to provide more packaged products for certain verticals, especially those in the utility space, he said.

"Typically, when a big utility customer wants to offer self-service they put out an RFP and put requirements in place, and they say, 'We want a self-service application that does these features,'" he said.

This usually requires a website and other systems built from scratch. 

Swampfox has a different approach: "We're working on a packaged product that has all the natural language capabilities, outbound notifications, when power will be restored, and it's all prebuilt for the utility industry," Cooper said.