The Comeback of the Telephone

Mobile ubiquity is something we all take for granted. In a few years, virtually every human on the planet will be connected online, from their pocket. In the 1990s, roughly 100 million people went online. In the 2000s, over one billion people joined the Internet. In the next decade, by 2020, we'll not only see the number of connected devices go to over 20 billion, but we'll see a proliferation of channels of communication. Already over the top communication happens via a multitude of networks, from Facebook and Twitter, to communication-by-image platforms like Instagram or Snapchat, to communication-by-video startups like Edit on the Fly.

Because of the plurality of digital channels, because of the fragmentation of message, we will see a boomerang resurgence of the voice channel – the telephone. The telephone is not going away. Three billion phone calls are made every day in the United States alone, and this number is growing by 14 percent year over year. 

The telephone is making a come-back. 

Today, at the renowned DEMO conference in Santa Clara, California, Klink took the stage only hours after Peter Thiel, to unveil its big data platform. Klink is aiming to sort, structure, and display enterprise information in real time on every inbound or outbound business call. Despite 3 billion business phone calls made per day in the US, enterprise data and workflows are not brought to the voice channel. Rather, when you make or receive a business call –unless you're in a call center– you likely have to pull up your own data, account info, CRM, ticketing system, or spreadsheet. 

Klink has unveiled a big data enterprise solution for the voice channel.