Talkative have announced a long-term partnership with Formula 1® using customer contact technology to manage interactions with over 500 million fans, improving support and user experience through Formula1.com and F1TV.
Talkative enables Formula 1® to handle all customer interaction types in a truly omnichannel environment. The solution delivers chats, calls, and emails natively into the Formula 1® CRM, providing a single view of the fan for agents. The CRM integration lets agents see all fan activity at an account level, reducing interaction times by two minutes. Agents can escalate to voice and cobrowse with fans to resolve issues, with instant visibility into fan account details and previous interaction history.
Formula 1® can now streamline contact handling through omnichannel and account-based handling rather than siloed channels, allowing efficient responses and avoidance of multiple responses to the same issue. To help manage spikes in contacts on race weekends, supervisors are able to update chat and voice channels in real-time with incident messaging, giving fans live updates and reducing strain on the contact centre.
With localised support for multiple languages across contact channels, with instant, real-time translation to support over 100 languages, global F1 fans share the same high-quality online experience regardless of their geographic location.
Formula 1® selected Talkative after a thorough vendor review process, with security, resilience and 24/7 support all offering key aspects of the solution. The service will be visibly ‘Powered by Talkative’ across Formula1.com with the Talkative logo displayed in the chat widget.
Talkative was founded to give organisations the tools to cope with the changing shifts in consumer behaviour, without having to rip out or replace existing workflows. Headquartered in Newport, the business has received development support through the Development Bank of Wales and Welsh Government-supported Alacrity Foundation.
An educational charity, the Alacrity Foundation helps create the next generation of hi-tech Welsh companies with a 15 month programme that provides graduates with practical business training, software skills and mentoring. It is funded by Welsh Government, Wesley Clover – whose Founder and Chairman is Sir Terry Matthews – and the Waterloo Foundation. It is part of an Alacrity global ecosystem with offices from Istanbul to Shanghai.
Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales, Ken Skates, said:
“Formula 1 is one of the world’s most recognisable sports brands and one that is renowned for cutting-edge tech and peak performance. They could have chosen any company from any part of the world for this exciting partnership opportunity.
“The fact they chose a Newport-based business speaks volumes not just for the market-leading excellence of Talkative, but for the thriving digital industry we have fostered here in Wales through pioneering programmes like the Alacrity Foundation.
“Our vision was to nurture a new generation of Welsh-based hi-tech companies, and the success of Talkative with this deal is proof we are succeeding in making that a reality.”
Matt Kemp, Head of CRM & Customer Operations, of Formula 1, said:
“Talkative understood the opportunity we presented to them, which was to provide a true onmi-channel experience working natively within our CRM environment for our F1TV fans. Talkative enables choice and flexibility across communication channels where fans decide how they want to connect, even switching between channels mid conversation. We are excited to work with Talkative and hope this will be the first of many innovations as we further develop our world class fan experience.”
Felix Winstone, Managing Director at Talkative, said:
“We are delighted to partner with Formula 1, a global brand that represents the pinnacle of technology innovation. The F1 customer care team has a forward-thinking approach to customer engagement with the highest bar for quality. Even with ambitious delivery timelines, our team has delivered a game-changing customer service solution that helps F1 agents to support millions of fans around the world on the channel of their choice. We’re looking forward to iterating the solution to find greater efficiencies and improved fan experience. Ongoing enhancements will also benefit our other clients and technology partners, such as Salesforce and Mitel, who are using Talkative for digital customer contact.”
“Starting a technology business in Wales has been a great decision. I met my brilliant co-founder Jakub at the Alacrity Entrepreneurship programme, an incubator for startup tech companies. When I arrived at Alacrity, I had no business plan, teammates, or access to capital. Over the last few years, thanks to the supportive business environment in the nation we’ve raised equity funding from Sir Terry Matthews, Welsh Government and local angel investors. We’ve also received ongoing advice and support from our investors and other mentors which have helped to accelerate our business growth. It’s a strong ecosystem to be a part of, and we’ve benefited greatly from working closely with Cardiff University and hiring top-tier graduates for our growing engineering team.”
About Talkative
Talkative is a technology company founded in Newport that builds website-driven contact centre solutions. Organisations of all sizes use the Talkative solution to drive digital sales and service by embedding contact centre interactions into website journeys. Through live chat, voice, video calling and cobrowse,businesses can enable more meaningful conversations with their online customers.