Ignition Growth Capital Partners Invests in Spoken Communications

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Spoken Communications, the leading provider of proprietary speech recognition technologies for call centers and virtual call center systems, today announced that it has received a strategic investment of $4.0 million from Ignition Growth Capital, LLC. The funds will be used to expand Spoken's large-scale virtual call center implementations. As a company delivering hosted Avaya ACD and Conversational IVR solutions, the funding will enable Spoken to provide additional hosted capacity for call centers seeking to upgrade to virtual and work-from-home models.

Research firm Gartner has predicted a rise in hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in the call center industry, estimating that by 2012, 65% of customer support conversations will occur "in the Cloud." Likewise, by 2013, the prediction is that 75% or more of customer service centers will use some type of hosted software application.  "It used to be that there was a tremendous fear at the idea of not having direct control over hardware," said Esteban Kolsky, former Gartner analyst and Founder of ThinkJar, a customer strategy think tank, "But nowadays, the validation of not having to do a large capital investment for call center hardware is leading CIOs to find ways to leverage SaaS. We are seeing a lot of companies making commitments to do SaaS pilots for their next technology refresh."

Howard Lee, CEO of Spoken, commented, "Spoken Communications is excited to work with Ignition Growth Capital on our strategy to make virtual call center solutions available to call centers facing growing call volumes. Ignition's strategic investment allows us to enhance and market our virtualized Avaya switch solution to call centers while supporting further innovation in the field."

Spoken's virtual call center offerings include a hosted Avaya Automated Call Distributor (ACD), which gives call centers the opportunity for scalable growth without large capital expenditures, and Spoken's patented Conversational Interactive Voice Response (IVR), which reduces dropped calls by combining automation with a human safety net.

About Ignition Growth Capital

Ignition Capital, (www.igncap.com) is a premier private investment group based in Seattle, WA. With a focus on growth equity and specialized buyout investments, the team brings together a combination of domain focus, functional expertise and global operational experience with partners from leadership positions at Microsoft, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless, Cisco, Schlumberger, Starbucks and other industry leaders. Ignition Capital is part of an affiliated family of funds with over $2 billion under management.

About Spoken Communications

Spoken Communications, founded in 2005 and incorporated as Intellisist®, Inc., is a leading provider of proprietary speech recognition technologies for call centers and hosted virtual call center systems.  Currently supporting millions of calls per month in hybrid human-assisted speech recognition, call recording, and virtual phone switch and distribution systems, Spoken is a proven leader in the call center customer service, sales and support industry. For more information, please visit www.spoken.com, call 1-206-428-6044, Twitter @spokencomm or subscribe to our blog at http://blog.spoken.com.

SOURCE Spoken Communications