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CafeX Brews Up Real-Time Engagement App for SMBsCafeX Brews Up Real-Time Engagement App for SMBs

Cloud-based Quisbee lets smaller businesses interact with Web and mobile customers as if they had an enterprise-scale contact center behind them.

Beth Schultz

November 26, 2014

3 Min Read
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Cloud-based Quisbee lets smaller businesses interact with Web and mobile customers as if they had an enterprise-scale contact center behind them.

One of the much-touted benefits of the cloud model is a leveling of the playing field. The latest example comes from CafeX Communications, which is bringing enterprise-like customer engagement options to small and medium-sized companies via a new cloud-based platform it calls Quisbee.

Quisbee is for that neighborhood cake shop or small law firm that has a website but not the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that comes part and parcel with a large enterprise's contact center operation. Customers or clients will have questions no matter the size of the company with which they're dealing, so why shouldn't any SMB be able to leverage a high-end engagement opportunity?

That's the rationale CafeX applied in creating Quisbee, which essentially provides the communications capabilities of the company's enterprise-scale, award-winning Live Assist real-time customer engagement application to smaller businesses via the cloud, says Sajeel Husain, CMO for CafeX. Quisbee enables one-click voice and video chat with a sales clerk, paralegal or whoever might be on hand to provide guidance. While in that session, as shown below, the business contact can facilitate co-browsing or take temporary control of the browsing, draw on a shared screen using a free-form annotation tool, push out catalogs or share other files with users on the Web or mobile endpoints, Hussain says.

portable
Capabilities available from the Quisbee agent console

"The session is bidirectional -- there's no passing of the ball," he adds.

Getting started is easy, too -- so easy, Hussain says, that the 14-year-old son of a CafeX developer hooked up a club website with Quisbee in a half hour. "All you have to do is drop two lines of code into your website and you get all this stuff. Literally, kids can do this -- anybody can do this," he says. "It's low-touch, no-touch."

Companies interested in adding the live-assistance capability to their websites need to register at Quisbee.com to get an API key. They then add those two lines of code to their sites and the call the Quisbee library - both done via easy-to-follow directions found in this online quick start guide.

Behind the scenes, the Quisbee code reaches out to CafeX servers running in the Amazon cloud. CafeX leverages the WebRTC protocol in order to support the multiple channels of communication offered up through Quisbee, Hussain says.

Quisbee is available in a pay-as-you-go pricing model typical of cloud-based offerings. CafeX offers three monthly pricing options: $25 for 2,500 minutes (recommended for one to three users), $70 for 7,500 minutes (for four to eight users), and $130 for 15,000 minutes (nine to 12 users). CafeX will alert customers when they've hit the 80% mark, at which point they can add more minutes for the month or upgrade to a new plan, Hussain said.

"It's two lines of code, then they're off to the races."

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About the Author

Beth Schultz

In her role at Metrigy, Beth Schultz manages research operations, conducts primary research and analysis to provide metrics-based guidance for IT, customer experience, and business decision makers. Additionally, Beth manages the firm’s multimedia thought leadership content.

With more than 30 years in the IT media and events business, Beth is a well-known industry influencer, speaker, and creator of compelling content. She brings to Metrigy a wealth of industry knowledge from her more than three decades of coverage of the rapidly changing areas of digital transformation and the digital workplace.

Most recently, Beth was with Informa Tech, where for seven years she served as program co-chair for Enterprise Connect, the leading independent conference and exhibition for the unified communications and customer experience industries, and editor in chief of the companion No Jitter media site. While with Informa Tech, Beth also oversaw the development and launch of WorkSpace Connect, a multidisciplinary media site providing thought leadership for IT, HR, and facilities/real estate managers responsible for creating collaborative, connected workplaces.

Over the years, Beth has worked at a number of other technology news organizations, including All Analytics, Network World, CommunicationsWeek, and Telephony Magazine. In these positions, she has earned more than a dozen national and regional editorial excellence awards from American Business Media, American Society of Business Press Editors, Folio.net, and others.

Beth has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and lives in Chicago.