Friday, 27 November 2015

From phone to cloud telephony

What are the common problems faced by businesses?

  • How to organize internal group discussions on call? (https://www.knowlarity.com/sc/; http://sabsebolo.com/)
  • How to handle large number of client calls, customer calls, vendor calls etc.? (Share one of the demo videos from youtube)
  • Many phone numbers get used by my business. How do I route all calls from a single number?
  • How to introduce my business/company to the callers automatically?
  • How to record phone calls for the business?

Solution: IVRS/IVR


What is IVR/IVRS?


IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is a technology to receive calls, gather information from the caller and route calls to the appropriate recipient. For example, if you setup an IVR for your business, you can expect this to happen (Company Name: ABC):
  1. Customer calls on a common number being used by ABC for its IVR, say 0111111111.
  2. Automatic response: 'Welcome to ABC, we provide best Indian clothes ... etc. Press 1 for connecting to our Sales representative, press 2 to talk to our customer support ... etc. Thank you for calling'
  3. Customer gets connected to 'Sales Executive' if he presses 1 and 'Customer Support Executive' if he presses 2


What is the latest IVR technology and how can I use it?

Latest technology being used widely for IVR is 'Cloud Telephony'. It integrates telecom network with internet through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), provides central hosting and user gets a dashboard to control how IVR works. You can also record all the calls, get missed call alerts and allot/modify executives as recipients in real time.

Additional Information: PBX (private branch exchange) is a telephone system within an enterprise that switches calls between enterprise users on local lines while allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines.


Who are good IVR service providers? How can I use this service in my city?

As cloud telephony enables IVR services to be installed and operated remotely, there is no need for a service provider to be physically present in the same city as user (SaaS model). Here are some good Indian cloud telephony service providers:


Knowlarityhttps://www.knowlarity.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kby7h3eFKRc
Exotelhttp://exotel.in/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NQd0VzOFs8
MyOperatorhttp://myoperator.co/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGkt0bI2gc
Ozonetelhttp://ozonetel.com/index.html


How much does an IVR service cost? How do I pay my service provider? What all features are important in IVR?

Basic IVR installation and operation for an SME costs around 20,000 INR per year (which is equivalent to the monthly cost of a good customer call manager).

Knowlarity vs Exotel?

There is a basic difference between the two products in terms of exact use cases. Knowlarity on one hand restricts the number of executives/phones that can be linked to IVRS (thus integrating well with SMEs with limited requirements), Exotel  on the other hand provides more customization opportunities and unlimited executives/phones can be linked to different 'recepient groups' (integrating well with businesses having large call center requiremnets).

SMEHow: Limited need of technical infrastructure makes Knowlarity an easier-to-use and less expensive pay-as-you-go SaaS product. Please share your case study, in order for us to revise our observations :).

What is SaaS?

What is SaaS?
  • SaaS or Software as a Service is a licensing and delivery model
  • SaaS is also referred to as "on demand software" that is centrally hosted
  • SaaS is typically: browser based, easy to use, less expensive as compared to traditional enterprise softwares (small first month payment and monthly/annual charges to follow)

What are the business applications available in SaaS?
  • CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
  • ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
  • Web Conferencing, Learning Platforms, Social Software Suites
  • Project and Portfolio Management
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Content Management
  • Business Intelligence

SaaS is giving a tough competition to the enterprise softwares. Top global SaaS providers' market share for CRM applications:

  • Salesforce: 18.4%
  • SAP: 12.1%
  • Oracle: 9.1%
  • Microsoft: 6.2%
  • IBM: 3.8%
  • Others: 50.4%

SaaS enables a business to 'automate the human efforts in business process management' and is expected to reduce the costs of doing business by 20%-50%.


New kinds of jobs are being created in bulk by the SaaS players due to their extremely fast paced global expansion, that include:

  • SaaS sales
  • SaaS training
  • SaaS user in a business, having domain knowledge and technical know-how
  • Data Analytics on SaaS data
  • Customer Support for SaaS users (BPO environment)