Meet the Boss: Oo Nwoye, Co-founder Callbase

You meet Oo Nwoye; you meet a pleasant mystery. Young and passionate, Oo Nwoye is an inspiration to young entrepreneurs in technology and in other sectors. CN recently spoke to Oo Nwoye about himself and about his recent start up, Callbase. CN: Who is Oo Nwoye? Oo: I am Nigerian born and brought up in Benin. Academically, I have an engineering background. I gained an interest in technology a while ago and focused on internet technology in 2007. I have done a couple of start-ups in the consumer space. I have made mistakes as well as learnt alot and now I am focused on making it a business instead of having fun doing cool stuff. I am working on my latest start up and I hope i will be working on it for a while, called Callbase. CN: Why did you get interested in technology? Oo: Sometimes, you are naturally inclined to certain things so you cannot say why you like the color blue. Some things are just more interesting to you. First of all, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur after hanging out with my cousin and seeing the freedom associated with it. So my senior cousin, Nnamdi is an architect and does construction and immediately after NYSC, set up his own business. I saw in him and his business the freedom entrepreneurs have compared to people who had day jobs and I knew I wanted to be free. On deciding what type of business I would like to do, I wasn’t really sure, so earlier on, I did different types of businesses – exam registration, selling phones but I knew I was naturally inclined towards technology. About 2006 or 2007, I started reading tech crunch while I was in Benin, finished school, and I also chronicled the life and work of those in the technology space and I felt affinity towards that. I read more, gravitated and that was how I got in. CN: What level is Nigeria in when it comes to technology? Oo: It depends on the type of technology and I think I would say, to be positive, we are in a good place. There is insane growth and it is ever changing so whatever I say today will not be accurate tomorrow because we would have grown beyond it. But on the other hand, we are still behind, but it means that there are opportunities to take advantage of such as the gaps technology can fill in Nigeria and most of Africa.

CN: Tell us a little about your start-up, Callbase Oo: Callbase makes it possible for businesses to set up call centers in five minutes or less and all they need is internet access. Previously, someone that had a small business, let’s say an e-commerce business, would receive a lot of calls therefore would have needed to set up a call center to meet customers’ needs. Traditionally, setting up a call center requires you buying infrastructure, setting up servers, and doing a lot of computing work, so it is expensive to set up and to run because you need experts to make sure the servers are maintained. With Callbase, we put all that business in the cloud – on the internet so all a business needs to do is to set up a call center on Callbase. We remove the need for setting up infrastructure by giving you a website where you sign up and you get a number. You give people the number and when your customers call it, your computer rings. In this case, you don’t need infrastructure or cables, all you need is a computer, a number and an internet connection and you have a call center set up. Calls are recorded and you can take notes too. CN: Why would any business need a call center? Oo: There are statistics that show that when businesses can talk to their customers, sales wise, they convert up to 10 times more than those who just let them buy it online. So businesses need to talk to people to clarify issues. This is why businesses need call centers because businesses that talk to their customers before or during or after the sale tend to sell more and do well in the long run. So, businesses that want to support people sell more by talking to their customers and we have made this part easy by setting up Callbase. CN: Give us an example of how call centers can be used in a business? Oo: A friend of mine called Detola sells hair products for natural hair and she is in the UK. She has found out that when people are not really sure about the hair product to use, they postpone buying but when she can talk to them and clarify certain things, they buy more. Of course she goes to work so she needs people to answer the calls on her behalf. This is why with our agents on your call center, business is made easier. It is also important for businesses to monitor such calls for example, Detola’s business might have been called during the day by thirty people but to make sure your call center agents meet the needs of their customers adequately and properly, she can record the calls and follow it up later in the day. CN: Is this a must have for every SME? Oo: My assumption and I am most probably right, is that businesses want to have more customers so businesses that are interested in growing big and making more sales will definitely need call centers to be successful. It is a must have for any business that wants to be successful to have a way to communicate with their customers. CN: What are the features of Callbase? Oo: We haven’t launched all the features yet. Call centers make more sense when you have more than one person answering a call so you have to coordinate communication between callers. Calls need to be received across multiple agents, notes taken, and conversations recorded to ensure quality control. You need to transfer a call from one agent to another for example if a sales agent picks up a call for a customer needing technical support, the person needs to transfer such calls to someone in the technical department. In this case, each call that comes in is a ticket. A call can be solved or can be pending by changing the status of each call made so that multiple agents can know the status of each call that comes in. CN: Any other features? Oo: Our focus for now is on audio, voice. We are replicating the call centers as it is, eventually we will look into other features like SMS but our focus is audio. CN: What is the pricing model for Callbase? We have a simple pricing model unlike typical call centers where you have to buy infrastructure. With N2,500, you can set up a call center on Callbase. You pay as you use on Callbase. For instance, let’s assume you only need a call center when there is a peak, you can buy your number for two months and use it. Callbase is affordable asides from the fact that monthly you pay a little money, it is very affordable. CN: Which customers are you targeting for Call Base? Oo: We target SMEs. One of the things that excite me about Callbase is that it is a global thing. I like the idea of being able to solve local problems, but we should also be able to solve global problems. Our target market, although we will be starting in Africa because we are domiciled here presently, is any business around the world. You can buy any number from any part of the world. CN: What is this unique factor Call Base have that any other type of service call center application does not have? Oo: For this type of software as a service call center application, it is a new business because the technology that enabled it just came out so it is like riding a wave. One of the advantages we have is that we are the only ones in Africa and globally and we have a different type of design sense. It would be disingenuous for me to claim that we know everything but we have an advantage in our design sense, in our location, and we are building for a tough market; a place with poor bandwidth. We are in a race to capture the market. It is free for all. The wave is on a rise. CN: You are saying you are fitting for Nigeria, for Africa? Oo: We are saying that if we can make it work in Africa, we are best positioned to make it work around the globe. CN: What advice would you give young aspiring tech people? Oo: First of all, based on my lessons and mistakes, I am still learning so I am not speaking as an authority yet but I will suggest that people start focusing on solving problems and focus on solutions that will get you money from day one. My focus was first on consumer stuff, very cool stuff like music applications, but the revenue money was not really anything so I would advise that you focus on products that will bring money from day one CN: What about Innovation? Is it all about money? Oo: (Laughs) You have to survive because money is important. Who runs the world? Money. You have to survive first before you innovate. You can find out more about Callbase at; Website: www.callbase.co Mail: hello@callbase.co Twitter: @callbase Facebook: facebook.com/callbase