Vendor Profile: Szeto Technologies

As business owners, we understand the fear of uncertainty. We want to make the right choices for our personal as well as business decisions. We do our research, we ask questions, we crunch numbers, we weigh the pros and cons, and most importantly, we listen to that little voice inside our head that is more often right than wrong.

Purchasing a call center system is a business decision that is not to be taken lightly. A key factor is finding a vendor who is reputable, knowledgeable, and reliable. That little voice inside your head should tell you that the supplier is worthy of your trust and business.

Szeto Technologies is an equipment vendor specialized in communication systems. For over twenty-six years, it has been designing telephone answering equipment as well as developing solutions in voice + data processing and telephone switching.

Szeto products offer turnkey solutions. Users of its equipment include telephone answering services, call centers, radio-paging services, airlines, and the U.S. military.

What differentiates Szeto Technologies from other TAS equipment vendors can be summed up in one word: customization.

A Little History: Szeto Technologies was founded by Charles Szeto. Fondly referred to as Charlie by his friends and associates, he is an electrical and electronics engineer by profession. He started his career in 1971, “aspiring to be part of the electronic radio-paging industry,” as he puts it. He worked jointly with Motorola, Bell & Howell, and the British Multitone paging divisions in the development of various paging schemes, and he designed paging terminals to work with their pagers. Numerous of those paging terminals were installed at RCC and telephone companies all over North America.

Prior to founding Szeto Technologies, Charlie was the technical founder of VoiceTek, a Boston company that supplied digitized voice storage and retrieval systems. He was a pioneer in developing Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems via touch-tone phones. In 1981 he designed the first installation of pay-per-call IVR “Dial-A-Stock-Quote” system in Los Angeles. During the course of developing voice-processing products, Charlie was granted several patents in this field of technology in the United States, Canada, and many overseas countries.

In 1986, Charlie was offered grants from the Canadian government to start a technology company in Canada. He relocated from Boston to Montreal with his family, and Szeto Technologies opened for business. Charlie is now a proud father of three married children and the proud director of the Szeto engineering team.

Szeto Box: MADVS was Szeto’s first product, an OEM voice-processing piece of equipment that is still active in training simulators all over the world, including the U.S. military.

Utilizing the same reliable hardware platform, the Szeto engineering team diversified to build second-generation products in voicemail, IVR voice response, digital telephone switching, and paging systems that cater to telephone answering service providers.

Szeto’s first involvement in the cellular business was in 1991 with Bell Mobility, a division of BCE, Inc., which also owned Nortel. Bell Mobility engineers referred to Szeto equipment as “the Szeto Box on wheels that keeps on working.” The Szeto Box was instrumental in the success of their CT2 Plus technology.

Szeto and Linux: It was not until 2001 that Charlie decided the Linux operating system could carry a stable and cost-effective communication system. Linux is open-source and license-free. It has strong network capabilities and solid network security protections. Its multi-level architecture, ease of troubleshooting, and capability in fault isolations make it the ideal choice.

Powered by Linux, Szeto’s Call Linx TAS system is built to be reliable, flexible, and user-friendly. Its call answer screen is window-based and graphical. All functions are easy to navigate. There are no command keys to remember, and typing is minimal.

Through the years, Call Linx has expanded with add-on features to complement its traditional telephone answering service applications. Most popular are Linx Scripting, Linx OnCall, and Linx Appointment, which are all fully system-integrated. The advantage is that they can be programmed with Call Linx message delivery functionalities (recipients, methods, schedules, sequences, instructions, etc.).

Inbound email, message retrieval, on-call scheduling, appointment-booking, and voice-logger retrieval are examples of Call Linx Web-based features. The latest wireless feature is SMS text messaging. Email encryption and secured text messaging ensure HIPAA compliance.

The story of Call Linx and Linux is still evolving. The call center industry is striding into the future in full force, and so is Call Linx.

Automatic Employee Safety Monitoring: The Automatic Employee Safety Monitoring system was a spinoff of the Szeto Box. This was first developed in 1999 to the specifications of a specific customer. The application was designed to help protect employees working alone or unsupervised. Further development produced a second-generation version in 2006. This has now been enhanced to include Web-based and wireless functions. A third generation is already in the works.

The Renewed Szeto Box: As technology advances, the industry is able to offer more sophisticated and advanced services to satisfy its customers. In anticipation of the demands from customers’ service subscribers, Charlie and his engineering team are constantly experimenting and innovating with new technologies.

The digital communications and Internet world is continuously developing new technologies and protocols for bandwidth and increased speed. The engineering team at Szeto Technologies is committed to keeping their clients a step ahead in this ever-changing industry. Now Szeto Technologies is ready to introduce its renewed Szeto Box, the Asterisk-based Szeto Switch.

Szeto firmly believes that every piece of equipment its customers use should be oriented to their unique business needs. All Szeto products are customizable and flexible. They are designed to be simple to use, smart in functions, and cost-effective.

For additional information, contact Szeto at info@szeto.ca or 877-697-9368.

[From Connection Magazine May 2013]

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