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January 6, 2023

An innovative billing system for broadband providers

Pete Pizzutillo:

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. This is Pete Pizzutillo. I am live at the Calix ConneXions 2022, and I’m joined by Amir Heydarkhan from Camv.io

Amir, thanks for joining us.

Amir Heydarkhan:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. Amir is the CTO and co-founder of Camv.io before we get into the show and the reactions, I want to congratulate you on your Partner Impact Award.

Amir Heydarkhan:

Thank you.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Maybe just before we get into that, just help us understand what Camv.io is and how you’re working with Calix.

Amir Heydarkhan:

Okay. Camv.io is the next-evolution billing system. We bring billing, which is a really complex process, to something really simple. We focus on our UX and our processes. Our user experience is the most important for us. Our relationship with Calix is they see us as an innovative company, and we bring new ideas and we can move fast. That’s our relationship. They know that we can act really fast on some of those releases they have, API releases they have.

Pete Pizzutillo:

How many years have you guys been around now?

Amir Heydarkhan:

We have been around for three years and 10 months.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Okay. It’s exciting. You’re in that startup growth mode. Being nimble and agile is really a great differentiator for you guys, so congratulations on that. Help us understand how you’re helping the Calix community leverage their investment in the equipment and the solutions that Calix is providing.

Amir Heydarkhan:

We are sitting between the broadband companies and the subscribers. We have a billing system, which means that we have a customer portal. We handle the service provisioning. We are sitting between service providers and the subscribers, so we do help broadband companies to leverage Calix’s services, Calix’s technology. For instance, we provide services in the network in EMS. If it’s an SMX or if it’s a CMS, we make it possible for broadband companies to automate that provisioning process and activation process. It doesn’t stop there. We handle late fees, suspension, restore IVR integration, and all that as well, so we leverage technology on behalf of broadband companies to the end subscribers.

Pete Pizzutillo:

At the conference, there’s been a lot of talk about the Marketing Cloud, Support Cloud and Ops Cloud solutions for Calix. How might you be enhancing those offerings for their customers?

Amir Heydarkhan:

We work with a Calix team really closely. Marketing Cloud has been one of our focuses. We are getting an autonomous process in place that Calix Marketing Cloud can communicate through our channel, through our Camv.io channel to the end subscribers, meaning, for instance, if Marketing Cloud could detect risky customers, they’re not having a great experience, they’re hitting the max speed, they are checking their speed all the time or trying to move away from the service provider, Marketing Cloud can actually detect those and push it to us and, through our channel, we can communicate that to the subscriber and offer maybe an upsell, how can we improve your experience.

We do have workflows. We have text messaging technologies that we can automate the entire process, so from Marketing Cloud going through our channel, and communicating directly to the subscriber, all automated. Yeah, that’s something that Calix is seeing, and we love working with them.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. That’s really interesting, being able to predict churn and then being able to, rather than worrying about human intervention, having the automated workflows and intelligence to say, hey, maybe we need to upgrade or offer a discount or a similar kind of… reach out to… You have a CSR technician reach out proactively, which would be kind of Big Brother-y, but I think that’s the kind of service that we all need to evolve to. That’s really interesting.

Amir Heydarkhan:

Yep, and it’s all automated through us.

Pete Pizzutillo:

You spent some sessions, sometime in these sessions in the last few days. What strikes you most about what you’re seeing, the dialogue between the Calix customers and yourself?

Amir Heydarkhan:

Building up communities and working on the success team, that’s been amazing for us. We see that. We want to bring it to our team as well to implement it. We have some of those insights that Calix has, which we love to implement in our site so we’re learning those things. Yeah.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. I think they talk a lot about customer engagement, and what I think is really interesting is being able to take a pretty sophisticated capability and democratize it, and we overuse that word anyway but making it available to the folks that we’re talking to. We have a couple of thousand subscribers. These are not tier two and tier one folks. That I think is pretty interesting, to watch that type of sophistication be readily available. We come back a year from now. What are some of the things that you think you’ll be working on with the Calix team that we should be looking forward to?

Amir Heydarkhan:

I would say tighter integration and the products that are coming out in 2023. We want to be a forerunner. That’s our focus for 2023, next year this time.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Yeah. Well, looking forward to having you back. Congratulations on your award, and keep up the good work. I know this is a great event, and this organization’s definitely got some momentum, so I’m glad to see you guys be a part of that.

Amir Heydarkhan:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Pete Pizzutillo:

That’ll wrap up our conversation with Amir from Camv.io Thanks a lot.