PhoneMarketingInsider » Cloud Telephony

Marketing Tip: Ask Your Developers about Telephony APIs

Rocky — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 06:27:26 +0000

One of the most valuable lessons that I learned in my MBA degree in Global Management was that managers don’t have to possess complete expertise in all of the technical skills required for a project that they are managing. What they do have to know are the right questions to ask. TechCrunch’s feature “Twilio Releases OpenVBX, An Open Source Google Voice for Businesses” captures this point to the tee. Twilio‘s new OpenVBX release functions with a drag and drop interface for creating advanced telephony services for businesses. Nonetheless, their primary target is still to enable developers to use their platform to build customized cloud telephony systems for their clients or businesses, by using Twilio’s telephony APIs, like text to speech, voice transcription, voicemail forwarding, and SMS messaging.

As a marketing manager, or an employee of a marketing agency, you don’t have to know how to write code in order to take advantage of the strides in the world of cloud telephony.

What you do have to know are your marketing goals, which target audience you are attempting to reach, and a basic understanding of different ways that marketing campaigns can take advantage of phone systems (such as voice broadcasts for product recalls, doctor’s visit reminder calls, and voting by phone. Then, when you read an article like TechCrunch’s coverage of Twilio’s OpenVBX, you can shoot an email over to your developers and discuss different ways that you could use this new platform, or comparable services, to implement your marketing goals.

You can include this quote from TechCrunch in your discussion with developers:

Twilio has always been focused on catering to developers, and OpenVBX isn’t any different. While the product will obviously appeal to businesses, Twilio is encouraging developers to take the technology and make it their own by integrating tweaks and plugins. For example, an enterprising developer could tweak OpenVBX so that it’s perfect for restaurants, and then resell it as their own service. Twilio still gets paid through their per-minute and phone line charges, and the developer can charge a hefty premium on top of it.

Blocking Caller ID? 3 Better Ways to Run Your Phone Marketing Campaign

Rocky — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:00:55 +0000

You’re about to start running a phone marketing campaign. You outline the following scenario:

Goal: to call potential customers.
Harmful side effect: unwanted callbacks.
Warning: Do Not Block Your Caller ID!

If you find yourself blocking the caller ID on your phone before placing business phone calls, then you should head over to Ringio’s blog and read their post about Why Blocking Your Caller ID is Harmful. The comparison of going to someone’s house with a mask on your face and knocking on their front door, really brings home the point (no pun intended) of how blocking your caller ID can be harmful to your end goal.

Here’s 3 ways better ways to block your identity in your phone marketing campaign without blocking your caller ID:

1) Put your number in the do not call registry to avoid getting callbacks or unwanted calls.

2) Use a masked business number. For example, Ringio offers company numbers, Ifbyphone offers dynamic and toll-free numbers and Google Voice provides free numbers. Today, businesses can use masked numbers to achieve the same purpose as blocking caller ID, without causing the same the negative associations.

3) Use a call routing system to route your incoming calls to the right place. Improving your business’s incoming call management can decrease your need to protect yourself from unwanted incoming calls.

3 Basic Steps to Boost Your Marketing and Advertising Results

Rocky — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:37:45 +0000

Thanks to the post Trackable Telephone Numbers for Franchise Direct Mail on Ifbyphone’s Cloud Telephony blog, I discovered a great article from Franchise World’s May 2010 Edition about how franchises, or really any business can use different marketing channels to boost their success in reaching target customers.

Why are franchises struggling?

The basic problem that the article addresses is that customers today do not usually leaf through the yellow pages when the time comes to seek a service or product to match their needs. Instead, franchises must reach the customers at the right place and the right time, and catch their attention while they are making the purchasing decision. The strategy behind locating the target and creating a real quality lead is quite complex.

Let’s go back to the basics and look at 3 steps to boost your marketing and advertising results:

1) Find Your Target’s Time-of-Need

John Jorgenson’s analogy here for optimizing the timing of your marketing message really hits home:

Imagine a two-year-old child in the back seat of the car who has done a great job with potty training, but sounds the cry of a need of facilities. The first business with facilities to put a marketing message in front of Dad, at his time-of-need, is getting his patronage. Take that rationale to real-life business applications and you will see that you have to have your message in front of a prospect at their time-of-need.

2) Analytics and Tracking

As powerful as the potty-training analogy might be, the reality is that it’s much harder for many franchises or businesses to determine their ideal audience when developing their marketing message. Analytics can provide the demographics necessary to reach your prime customers through the right media channels. Once you develop your marketing campaigns, you also need to track their success. They key word here is accountability.

No longer can the creative team blame poor campaign results on non-trackable pieces…

Now with automated marketing systems that track lead generation by media channel and by campaign, franchisors can prove to franchisees that programs and campaigns are successful by pointing to the reports on the automated system that disclose the lead flow to their store. It is very easy with pass-through trackable telephone numbers, PURLs, unique micro-sites, text-message cell phone numbers, and other technologies to determine how a customer was acquired.

Imagine that You’re a Retail Clothing Store

One good powerful example here is Hosted IVR. Ifbyphone’s Cloud Telephony Blog gives a great example of how this works. Franchises or retail chains can use the Store Locator tool together with their Hosted IVR to route customers to the retail chain closest to them. You could even combine this technology with a Voice Broadcast. Let’s say you’re a retail clothing store and you want to run a new promotion, where you offer customers to come into their local store for a private sale. You first call all of your customers in your database, and you then route to their nearest store (which the system recognizes through their zip code or area code) to talk to the salespeople about the specific event at their store. On the day of the event, you track the purchases of your cardholders, and compare these to the telephone analytics from the initial campaign.

3) Be Ready to Change

Accountability means more than the ability to demonstrate the success of your past marketing and advertising campaigns. It means that you constantly believe that you are adapting your advertising strategies in order to maximize your success within a given budget. The good news is that by tracking your advertising campaigns with the right analytics, you can determine where and how to change your strategy to boost your marketing and advertising results.

Good Luck!

What Do Iron Man 2, Phones and Marketing Have in Common?

Rocky — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:27:24 +0000

“Is it a smartphone or something better?” asks the new LG commercial for the LG Ally smartphone, as the commercial builds the phone’s anticipated release with Verizon Wireless on May 20th. Is a smartphone no longer viewed as the wave of the future? The story behind the LG phone in Iron Man 2 reveals that the phone’s actual composition was a simple slab of glass, with graphics imposed by the New York graphics firm Perception (according to Forbes). And yet, although we all know that the actual LG Ally will not look or act like the phone in the movie (hence all of the uncertainty about the phone’s features), the idea of owning a phone that’s actually better than a smartphone draws on the all too familiar psychological appeal of owning the latest technology. While the Iron Man 2′s depiction takes this concept to the extreme, with its unbelievable special effects, the underlying message remains true: especially when it comes to phones, which are relatively easy to replace, who wants to be a generation behind?

If you haven’t seen the LG commercial on TV, here’s a clip from YouTube:

How can marketing and ad agencies incorporate this concept in building marketing campaigns for their clients?

Whatever the product, whether supporting a cell phone company, a hi-tech business, or a local restaurant, take note that people today are obsessed with their phones, and especially with cool ways that the way they use their phone signifies a step into the future. By incorporating phones into your marketing or ad strategy, through voice broadcasts, mobile coupons, SMSs, click to call, etc. you signify to your clients that your agency is on the cutting edge of phone technology, and you enable your client to portray this image to the end customer.

PlumVoice (an IVR provider) reflects on Iron Man 2 in their IVR blog. Beyond the futuristic use of speech commands, which obviously interest an IVR provider, PlumVoice remarks about the movie’s missed opportunity for a voice broadcast:

During the final action sequence of the movie, where New York is under attack by the drones, I thought, “They could sure use an IVR system right about now to warn all these people to get out of this area.” Everyone pretty much has a cell phone nowadays and you send out an IVR outbound call to these people, I’m sure they’d pick up to listen to the message.

As a strong proponent of cloud based telephone systems, I have to admit that this comment did remind me that cloud telephony services still have a long way to go. While the Iron Man 2 movie and the LG smartphone commercial both feature all different apps, showing the way of cell phones in the future, they both glance over some missed opportunities of voice based phone services, such as PlumVoice’s mention of voice broadcasts. True, LG’s commercial was not free, and there’s no coincidence that the movie highlights what they do best. Yet noone paid LG to mention Facebook, Twitter, and an app for finding restaurants.

Nevertheless, this focus on smartphone apps could mean good news for the marketers who regularly read PMI. Instead of joining the race to employ the latest smartphone apps, try doing something different. Try differentiating your use of technology by implementing a voice-based marketing campaign. The use of telephones in marketing campaigns still signifies your position on the cutting edge, while differentiating your use of cloud telephony services and voice based phone apps, from that of the screen based phone apps. In this way, you can still run in the race, but you can map out your own track…

Why Ad Agencies Should Choose Telephones Over Interactive Displays

Rocky — Tue, 11 May 2010 10:49:50 +0000

Having recently joined the club of iphone addicts, I rarely venture for more than five minutes without looking at screens. My addiction shifts from my MacBook to my iPhone (and may one day include the iPad in between). Only when I walk into a retail store do the real life items of clothing on the hangers, groceries on the shelves, etc. grab my attention away from my virtual world. With the move towards interactive displays in retail stores, however, ad agencies are finding ways to use screens to further engage customers in the retail shopping experience. Interactive displays allow advertisers to incorporate the customer’s real and virtual worlds.

The question becomes: are all of these screens really adding to the sales bottom line? Are retail stores increasing their sales or marketing by incorporating digital interactive displays? Yesterday, PSFK’s blog featured an interesting post, “Future of Retail: Does the Mobile Phone Make the Interactive Display Unnecessary?”

The post argues that the mobile phone trumps the medium of interactive displays because the phone is personal, social, touchable, consumer-powerful, and sensitive (to technology like RFID tags). Also, the post argues that just because retail stores can use interactive displays doesn’t mean that they have to. (How refreshing to hear – maybe blasting ads in from of consumers everywhere they go isn’t always the most effective advertising method!) Of course, the post also mentions the flip side of the argument – interactive displays may be useful for quick fun, or in cases where you want to access the online version of a store (which is especially useful for customers without smartphones).

Yet, critics of Target’s move to mobile coupons highlighted that despite the tremendous growth in the number of smartphones users, a nice proportion of the population still lacks access to a web browser on their cell phone. The argument that the shift to mobile marketing divides the smartphone users from the non-smartphone users, actually powers the concept of what I would call mobile marketing via cloud telephony. By setting up a targeted advertising campaign that increases the interactivity of consumers all through a simple telephone, any telephone, all by voice, ad agencies can increase their variety of mediums of reaching customers. Instead of adding more and more screens for already inundated consumers to watch, marketing agencies can try implementing a voice based marketing campaign. Many of PSFK’s arguments still hold – but advertising via cloud telephony can also reach a wider, and perhaps less technological audience.

Are you a cloud telephony provider with ideas on how marketing and ad agencies can use telephones to increase the interactivity of campaigns? Contact us and we’ll feature your ideas on Phone Marketing Insider.

Nashville Flooding Reinforces Importance of IVR Emergency Notification

Rocky — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:06:08 +0000

In this week’s past news about the times square car bomb, oil spill in the gulf of mexico, and Nashville flooding, Americans have unfortunately confronted the fears of terrorism, environmental disaster, damage to the economy and personal property and loss of lives.

I just watched Michael Deppisch’s beautiful YouTube montage of the Nashville flooding, whose stunning photography and moving portrayal has basically made it viral. After watching the calm scenes as the flood begins to subside, one wonders – what should we do on the day after the storm. For those directly effected, the answers are quite complex. What about the Americans who sit in the comfort of their living room or office watching the YouTube videos of the Nashville flooding one after another?

When natural disasters occur, people like to take action. Donating to the American Red Cross is an obvious first step. But how can you internalize the message of the Tennessee flooding in the day to day business of your own SMB?

Emergency Notification

The Nashville Flooding reinforces the importance of implementing an emergency notification program for your SMB. Let’s take a look at some key features of emergency notification system providers, as seen on websites of emergency notification system providers.

In the Aftermath of Emergency

ReadyAlert’s Story tells the experience of its founders, who witnessed the importance of emergency notification first hand during 9/11. They recall:

“Several of their associates who had escaped before the second plane hit the first tower, and were able to send text messages to family, friends, and office associates to let people know they were safe.

Having lived through this disaster and having analyzed the aftermath of this tragedy, the founders of ReadyAlert decided that a text-based emergency response notification service was not just a good business opportunity but a critically needed service; and so ReadyAlert™ Services, LLC, was established to meet that need.”

Statistics and the Business Imperative

Everbridge, one of the leading providers of incident notification, brings us the statistics to convince businesses to get started, “Did you know that 62% of organizations experience between one and five interruptions in a year?* From power outages to network failures and winter storms to hurricanes, interruptions are as common as they are costly. An organization’s lack of preparation or poor response to an emergency can result in loss of life, property damage, thousands or even millions of dollars in lost revenue or reparation costs.” So what’s the business imperative? Everbridge states the logistical importance of incident notification, “When disaster strikes and every second counts, organizations need to focus on the mission-critical tasks of ensuring the safety of their people and continuing operations, not on managing the logistics of communications.”

Liability Protection and Business Efficiency

One Call Now’s automated phone message service highlights the liability element: “It pays to be prepared, not only for peace of mind but to protect you and your company from liability.” Many times small businesses have a hard time understanding the importance of investing financially in emergency notification (like paying an extra insurance plan before the emergency hits), but in this case businesses can actually benefit from the full range of services both in their day to day business and in the case of emergency. The One Call Now CEO’s blog post “Because You Never Know What Might Happen” tells some powerful examples that drive home the importance of investing in emergency notification. In addition, One Call Now’s website also highlights the fact that many emergency notification providers also offer outbound notifications to increase the day to day efficiency of businesses. One Call Now gives businesses the ability to utilize the services of one reliable provider, both for daily voice broadcasts and for cases of emergency.

Back to Cloud Telephony

Cloud telephony’s the low costs, easy implementation, and constant accessibility from anywhere, all draw an intuitive application of hosted IVR to the emergency communication space. As IVR becomes more accessible to small businesses, and outbound notifications become more reliable, businesses will discover increasing simplicity in setting up an emergency plan.
Some cloud telephony providers, such as Angel and Call Fire already offer emergency notification plans as part of their hosted IVR.

5 Ways to Use Phones For Do-It-Yourself Marketing

Rocky — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:56:36 +0000

While the question of whether to hire an ad agency or to begin a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) marketing campaign is quite interesting, it may not even surface in the marketing meetings of many small businesses, due to their limited budgets. Instead, the question may sound more like, “Since we can’t afford to hire an ad agency, how can we most effectively run our own independent marketing?” Given this formulation, DIY marketing sounds like a second rate option.

Yet, AdAge boosts the confidence of small business owners in this recent clip:

DIY marketing has been a huge trend lately, and I think it’s because of technology,” said Ivana Taylor, president and CMO of small-business marketing consultancy Third Force. “There are things available now that allow people to do so much marketing themselves … It’s almost like you have to wonder, why would you hire an ad agency?

In fact, although the AdAge article focuses on how social media enables small businesses to succeed in Do-It-Yourself Marketing, many of the the arguments hold true for automated phone systems. With the evolution of cloud telephony over the past few years, small businesses no longer need to invest in expensive equipment in order to compete with big businesses.

Here’s 5 ways to use phones in your SMB’s DIY marketing campaign:

Mobile marketing- the ability to reach potential and existing customers while on-the-go, in targeted locations, and on devices that they already own, is generating a big buzz surrounding the trend towards mobile marketing. Fortunately for small businesses, these marketing campaign costs are not out of the ballpark and many services don’t require any sophisticated technical knowledge. For example, check out Ez Texting’s great blog post “50 Fanatanstic Uses of SMS Text Messaging” for examples of simple mobile marketing campaigns in a variety of industries. Browse over to their Ez Guide to Mobile Marketing to learn about the first steps of a DIY mobile marketing campaign. And don’t forget to read PMI’s recent posts on mobile marketing, including: McDonald’s Interactive Billboard, Honor Earth Day with a Mobile Marketing Campaign, Draw in your Audience, Capture Your Customers, and Target Goes Mobile with Smartphone Coupons.
Voice broadcasts – boost your CRM and increase your customer interaction by sending out voice broadcasts to your customers. These voice broadcasts could be as simple as a thank you message for a recent purchase, an in-home delivery scheduling, or a follow up call about newly available services.
Hosted IVR – set up customer surveys without all the legwork, through a simple web interface. The new technologies of automated phone systems enable SMBs access to the marketing value of customer surveys without high costs or extensive agent phone calls.
Click-to-call – bring your online customers to your phone system, with a click-to-call button on your website.
Call Tracking – keep track of all of your leads from different ads so that you can intelligently plan your print, online and media advertising, all from a simple website. When launching a DIY marketing campaign, setting up the proper analytics, reports, and tracking procedures is arguably the most important step. Check out Ifbyphone’s blog post (and great video) about the importance of toll-free phone call tracking numbers.

More ideas about how SMBs can use phones in their DIY marketing? Please share your comments below.

SMBs Become Smarter with Ringio’s Cloud-Based Rich Calling

Rocky — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:30:53 +0000

The ability to become smarter, whether in business, marketing, sales or life, is not just about improving your IQ. It’s about using the right tools to channel the way that you think. Just imagine taking your recently hired sales person and placing them behind a desk to answer the phone without knowing anything about who’s calling. Even the smartest new hire would probably fail, or at least struggle for a while before creating the right customer service dynamic.

This is the ingenious about Ringio. How is Ringio trying to make SMBs smarter?

Ringio looked at SMBs and pinpointed 5 pivotal elements in a business’s ability to provide excellent customer satisfaction (at their presentation at eComm 2010):

Quality of the automated system
Reaching the right person
Efficiency of the conversation between the customer and the employee
Emotional connection developed during the conversation
Efficiency of the follow up

Ringio then figured out what tools they could provide for SMBs to improve their success in these key areas. Their new launch of a cloud-based ‘rich calling’ service works like this:

“We define ‘rich calling’ as bringing a telephone call and relevant information about the caller together at the same time to enrich communication and information sharing, and – most important — to accelerate speed-to-satisfaction,” said Ringio Co-founder and Chairman Michael Zirngibl.

“By tapping into the cloud for customer data, we bring everything that’s important about the caller to the top of your mind – in real time,” he said. “As you take or make a call, you can draw upon the collective notes of everyone in your organization who has dealt with this person. This helps you to connect with customers much more efficiently, professionally and meaningfully than SMBs typically are able to do.”

With the needs of the SMB market in mind, Ringio designed their Rich Calling Service with affordability, ease of setup and a clean presentation. SMBs can implement Ringio’s service on their desktops and mobile phones in less than 10 minutes, according to the eComm presentation.

Whether it’s Ringio or another cloud based telephony provider, think about how your SMB can become smarter by providing your salesforce with the right tools at their fingertips.

Find the Location of Any Phone Number with Cloudvox

Rocky — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:00:32 +0000

Despite or perhaps in light of the flattening of the world in global business, did you ever seek the connection between a phone number located on a browser and that phone number’s location? As of today, you can fulfill this curiosity, for FREE, with Cloudvox’s launch of their new Digits API (check it out at digits.cloudvox.com).

Today’s press release describes the details of the new phone API:

Cloudvox’s Digits API provides the city, state, telecom carrier, date of first use and neighborhood associated with a phone number – making it easy to display this data anywhere that a phone number is published online. The bookmarklet allows any Web user to highlight a phone number in their browser, click and learn where that number is located. Using the Web service, anyone can quickly access information about a phone number by appending it to the Web URL; for example, http://digits.cloudvox.com/2066831234 .

Troy Davis, the Director of Cloudvox for Ifbyphone, explained that the impetus for developing this API came in the form of Cloudvox’s customer requests for a simple way to include caller location in their phone apps. After developing this new Digits API, Cloudvox decided to offer the service to everyone – for free.

Why was it so important for Cloudvox’s customers to have access to these simple location tracking services? How can you use the Digits API? After all, why does the location of a phone number matter to you in your business?

If you’re a business…

You can route customer calls to your restaurant chain (or any chain store for that matter…) directly to their nearest location, without having to send them through an entire menu of options.
You can interact with your customers in your IVR menu intelligently, by understanding their location and time zone, and sending them through the appropriate call flow.
You can offer customers the ability to fill in the locations of phone numbers as part of a package of CRM or address book services.
Learn more about Ifbyphone’s phone apps, such as IVR, Voice Broadcasting, Virtual Call Center and Call Tracking. Ifbyphone recently acquired Cloudvox).

If you’re a developer…

You can develop iPhone or iPad apps to target location based advertising. Read PMI’s posts on targeted advertising and the NAI’s (Network Advertising Initiative) recent study that found targeted ads twice as valuable and effective as non-targeted ads.
You can use your imagination to build any located based apps you can think of, without the struggle of having to research the location of every phone number. Cloudvox’s platform is open source and Asterisk based. The Digists REST API can be used from any programming language.

How is the concept of customer location still important to your business, even in today’s era of international business? In the past week, all we needed to do was check out the news about the airports in Europe and volcano news to realize how much people’s live still depend on being in a certain place at a specific time. While we still live in cities, walk into restaurants, wake up and go to sleep in different time zones, and work in offices (some of us…), it’s somewhat refreshing to think in a positive light about the importance of location for us, our businesses and our customers. How can we leverage the importance of location in our marketing – one simple way is through Cloudvox’s new phone number API.

Following the Trends? Fonality’s Repositioning to Cloud Telephony

Rocky — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:16:20 +0000

When drafting your marketing message, how much do you try to follow popular trends? If you decide to rewrap the packaging around your message, do you change your activities as well?

In the VAR guy’s blog post “Fonality Repositions: Goodbye to Open-Source, Hello Cloud,” he makes a pretty strong statement about Fonality’s move from one trend to another:

Fonality is jumping off one bandwagon and leaping onto another. The company previously positioned itself as an open source IP PBX phone system provider. But going forward, Fonality is pitching itself as a leading provider of cloud-based phone systems and unified communications for small business.

After reading the rest of the VAR guy’s blog post, and then the press release of Fonality’s new partnership with SugarCRM announced at SugarCon 2010, I tend to agree with the analysis of Fonality’s repositioning. Even the new partnership announcement with SugarCRM reads, “Fonality and SugarCRM Partner to Provide Contact Center Solution: Fonality’s Phone System and SugarCRM Connecters Deliver Robust, Open Cloud-Based Solutions for Sales and Support.” The emphasis on contact centers and the move to the cloud is clear (despite the adjective use of the word “open”).

Still, I hope that the terminology of jumping between bandwagons does not deter you from considering the potential impact of repositioning your PR biolerplate, especially if you back it up with a consistent message throughout your marketing and PR campaigns. I would imagine that for many marketing companies, or small to mid sized businesses, the concepts of “cloud telephony” and “unified communications” seem much less intimidating than “open-source IP PBX phone systems.” Even Fonality’s slogan “communicate openly” sounds simpler than “open-source phone systems.” As a potential customer not directly involved in the world of telephone systems, I would find the new message more inviting to continue reading.

Is Fonality’s change all about terminology, and is it beneficial in and of itself? Time will tell whether and to what degree the company actually repositions its activities.the full post on VAR guy and check out Fonality’s website to share your take. Even if you don’t feel passionate about repositioning from open-source to cloud-telephony, what are your general thoughts on repositioning? When does you feel like companies are going party hopping, and when do you believe that following trends demonstrates smart marketing?

5 Reasons Why Teachers (and Other Non-Techies) Love Google Voice

Rocky — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:00:55 +0000

As a writer about phones and marketing, the challenge of conveying the benefits of technology to the broader public hits close to home. That’s one of the reasons that I admire Google. To my mind, one of Google’s greatest contributions is their ability to make a sophisticated technology easily accessible to the non-techie public.

Here’s a great example. Brian Wis, a music teacher and blog editor of “Teaching Music in the 21st Century,” wrote an excellent post about why Google Voice is great for teachers. In fact, the post’s practical tips relate to many professionals, not just teachers. I recommend reading the entire article “What is Google Voice and Why is it Great for Teachers?,” but I’d like to comment on five of his key points.

1) Having a number not attached to a phone

When your phone number exists independently of your actual phone device, you can define the rules without walking around with 3 cell phones attached to your belt. You decide which phone calls you want to route to your office, which to your cell phone, which to your home, and which to all numbers simultaneously. You can create multiple phone personas without opening multiple lines. As a teacher, you put the system into play by giving parents and co-teachers one number, while giving friends another, etc. With Google Voice, you can set up different voicemail greetings for different parties (e.g. friends vs. coworkers). Especially for teachers, whose profession can be quite personal, the need to clarify the boundaries between work and pleasure becomes all the more relevant.

I often find myself running to catch a call on my cell phone, only to wonder how the party ever obtained my cell phone number. Or, I could be on vacation abroad, and pick up my cell phone for a distant colleague that could have just as easily received a greeting saying that I’m on vacation. If one maintains greater control over call routing, through services like Google Voice, then these situations are easy to limit.

2) Call screening

Even if your call routing rules don’t solve every single situation, your Google Voice call screening stands as a second line of defense. The ability to listen to voicemail in real-time prevents classic teacher situations like picking up the phone for a parent’s call “just checking in” right as you’re about to go to bed.

3) Call Translation

OK, so now let’s look at the flip side. On some occasions you want to maintain communication lines for work or personal situations, but you can’t leave your phone on. Google Voice will translate voicemail messages to text messages and send then to you as email, including an audio attachment.

4) Number Permanence

The advantage of number permanence really relates to everyone, in both the professional and personal spheres. The extra step of distance between your phone number and your device helps you out both in terms of convenience and security. Google Voice frees you from worrying about having to update all of your contacts if you change a mobile, work or home number. Just reroute your GV calls, and you’re all taken care of. When it comes to security, the added distance of a GV number prevents you from having to think twice about whether it’s smart to give out your personal numbers.

5) Call Routing

We already discussed some benefits of call routing, but Brian Wis adds one point here that’s worth mentioning. Google Voice’s call routing also works for outgoing calls, so that people won’t always see what location you are dialing from.

My Concluding Thoughts

Call management systems, such as Google Voice, create a sense of order in the constant noise of the phone ringing. Distinguishing phone calls between the critical and mundane, personal and professional, family and friends, etc. can provide a feeling of organization, calm and responsibility even for the non-techie professionals out there.

3 Healthcare Companies Join the Telephony Clouds

Rocky — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:39:06 +0000

Employees, clients, colleagues, patients, buyers, service providers, pharmaceutical companies… how do you manage all of your internal and external communication lines?

Healthcare organizations don’t always have much time to spare when it comes to returning patient calls, contacting medical device suppliers, and consulting with other physicians. In emergency medical situations, the need for speedy contact is obvious. But even in less critical situations, the quality of a healthcare company depends heavily on the company’s rate of responsiveness.

So, what’s the solution?

Three different healthcare companies entered the telephony clouds with Avaya’s IP telephony-based unified communications solutions.

A recent press release highlights 3 healthcare SMEs:

IntrinsiQ – a healthcare information systems company that is the premier source for U.S. oncology data and analysis.
SPEAR Physical Therapy – a Manhattan-based physical therapy network.
Bay Shore Medical – the largest buyer and seller of previously owned diagnostic imaging equipment in the United States.

Whether dealing with the challenges of serving patients, physicians, internal communication or sales, they all need quick response time, clear lines of communication, and constant accessibility from any telephone.

For IntrinsicQ, Avaya’s IP Office helps to provide quick support to physicians and clients, prevent unanswered calls, and share research in a timely manner. Spear uses Avaya’s call routing to ensure that patient calls reach the relevant person working on the case, whether in the office or on the road. Bay Shore Medical leverages their Avaya services to increase the flexibility of their call centers and the quality of their customer interactions and call center operations.

For three very different healthcare SMEs, the bottom line is the same. By entering Avaya’s cloud, they can improve “efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness.” Healthcare serves as a great example of an industry where the benefits of the cloud can really change the nature of society.

For those of you in the healthcare industry, whose businesses use cloud telephony, what have your experiences been like? How have cloud services changed the nature of your communication and relationships with patients, physicians, and businesses?

Small Businesses – Choosing a Virtual PBX is Now in Your Hands

Rocky — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:58:08 +0000

After eight years of developing the market for Virtual PBXs, or virtual phone systems, “the market now finds itself in a perfect storm,” says Larry Lisser in his blog “On Monetizing Today’s Telephony.” Larry describes today’s situation as a “land grab” by virtual PBX providers vying for the business of installing inbound call management systems for small businesses.

Automated phone systems are on the rise. They initially aimed towards the general goal of giving small businesses a big business voice. Today, the differentiated offerings are beginning to focus on niches as specific as the development of entrepreneurs, mobile apps, presenting social information about incoming callers, improving CRM and more.

Who are the players in the storm?

Larry’s post (which also includes a tremendous image) details an excellent analysis of the market’s development and of the big players in the current storm, including PhoneBooth, eVoice, Grasshopper, Line2, Ribbit Mobile and FonGenie.

What is the take home marketing message from Larry’s virtual PBX analysis?

Larry sums up the market’s development with a great message. In a market with reduced barriers to entry and increasing competition, development of differentiation based competitive advantages is bound to follow. In Larry’s words:

Bottom Line: 18 months ago this market looked like a me-too one in every way. Now, with the land grab in full motion, we’re witnessing that even in a maturing market, there is room for creative positioning.

What about the virtual PBX market’s Spectators/Customers?

Here’s where the small businesses come in. The market of virtual PBX boxes is a two-way street between the telephony providers and the small business customers. The implications are quite positive for the small businesses. Larry says, “The 5+ millions prospects for these services should rejoice; these services can only get better, more productive – and cheaper.”

The intensified competition between the providers means that the power to choose the perfect fit is now in the hands of the small businesses. But along with this opportunity for choice comes the responsibility of finding the best fit. As the market for virtual PBXs continues to grow, the pressure for small businesses to adapt automated phone services will also intensify. Recent studies, by companies such as Nuance, are finding that customers prefer automated phone services. Simply installing a virtual PBX no longer provides a major cutting edge differentiation for small businesses. With today’s expanded options, small businesses need to think not just about automating their phone services, but about how to do so creatively.

How are you leveraging the opportunities of the developing virtual PBX market in your own business and marketing? Share your ideas with others in the comments below, or write to us at PMI.

The Winning Fruits of An Acquisition

Rocky — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:38:13 +0000

Just two days ago, we talked about analyzing the benefits of business partnerships and acquisitions. Today, Ifbyphone and Cloudvox put out a press release announcing the “first fruits of their combined platform.” We ended our last post about business partnerships saying, “Inevitably, press releases [about partnership or acquisition announcements] highlight the gains of each side of a partnership, yet time will tell if and how the three stakeholders truly win from the partnership.” Ifbyphone and Cloudvox clearly understand the value of reinforcing their clients’ victory, about two months after the acquisition.

How are they delivering added value from their new fruits? One – they offer worldwide phone numbers, so that people around the world can call in to access applications written on Cloudvox. Two – Cloudvox allows developers to host standard Asterisk based telephone applications built with the open source Asterisk AGI/AMI APIs. To my mind, the second statement is where the press release really gets interesting.

Troy Davis, the founder of Cloudvox, states in the press release, “Cloudvox uniquely supports standard Asterisk-compliant apps, allowing customers to change service providers or use their own infrastructure without getting locked in.” In simple terms, Davis is emphasizing the advantage of Cloudvox’s open source, Asterisk-based platform: clients can build phone apps on the Cloudvox/Ifbyphone platform and then move them anytime, either to another service provider or to an in-house system.

When I first read Davis’s statement, I thought, “Why would a company emphasize that its differentiated value is based on the ability of its clients to switch providers?” I followed up on this question in a phone interview this afternoon with Irv Shapiro, CEO of Ifbyphone.

Shapiro explained three major points to me.

First, he explained the importance of the added security that open-source platforms ensure customers over proprietary systems, such that APIs which they invest time in building can exist independently of the platform on which they were built.

Second, companies can build and test on their own Asterisk server and then move the application to Cloudvox for production. The advantage of migrating to Cloudvox is that it can provide hundreds of phone lines whereas your personal Asterisk server, running in your office, may only include a couple of phone lines. Cloudvox also offers companies multiple Asterisk instances (virtual servers), so they can handle much larger projects.

Third, Shapiro explained that the ability for a company to adapt to its changing phone system need, such as a growing business moving its hosting in-house, puts the company in the driver’s seat. But, Ifbyphone and Cloudvox believe that their customers should be able to decide what solution best fits their needs – at every stage – and adapt accordingly.

After hanging up the phone and rereading the press release, I asked myself the question once again, “What kind of a company emphasizes that its differentiated value is based on the ability of its clients to switch providers?” Now, the answer was obvious to me: a company with confidence that the fruits of its services deliver winning quality to its clients.

Engaging Your Customers with VoteByPhone

Rocky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:12:47 +0000

As a blogger, I often struggle to engage readers in my posts. Discovering creative ways to actively engage customers is not a goal unique to the blogging world. Any business that interacts regularly with its customers can relate to this sentiment. Even when the perfect solution surfaces, the required technical knowledge or the high expense of sophisticated technology often rule out its practicality.

Ifbyphone captures the essence of this market need in this morning’s beta release of VotebyPhone. Irv Shapiro, Ifbyphone’s CEO, comments on simplicity and effectiveness of this new feature:

VoteByPhone makes it easy for anyone to set up a real-time survey that audience members can respond to over the phone…Our customers tell us they value the ability to create interactive presentations, get audience feedback and display real-time results.

How exactly does VoteByPhone work?

Ifbyphone’s new live-audience polling application doesn’t require technical knowledge or a large budget. Today’s press release describes VoteByPhone as follows:

To launch a VoteByPhone poll, users create a new “VoteByPhone Polling Event” in their Ifbyphone accounts. They then set up a list of voting options, such as a list of performers, issues raised in the day’s news, or topics of current interest to vote on, and configure custom audio files to greet each caller.

The process is even easier for voters, who call in, listen to a recorded greeting message, and press a number on their keypads to vote. Results can be seen via any web browser in real-time.

For example, VoteByPhone premiered at the SingStrong A Cappella Festival, and enabled the audience to vote on the A Cappella Idol winner by simply calling in their vote over their phone. Your business can use VoteByPhone in any situation where you need to collect a survey of customer or participant opinions in real-time, whether it be a radio show, conference, advertising agency, political campaign, or more.

The voting participants need not be in the same place – they can be on the road, in their homes, or all across the globe. VoteByPhone’s ability to capture the customer/voter’s attention while they are engaged with your offering answers a critical need in today’s fast paced world.

I plan to set up an Ifbyphone account for PMI, so that you, my readers, can vote on your favorite blog posts. In which other industries or particular markets do you think that VoteByPhone’s solution will serve the greatest market need?

Phone Marketing Insider’s Greatest Highlights

Rocky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:00:19 +0000

New ways to leverage phones in marketing your business are constantly evolving, and you want to be on the cutting edge of these technologies. We tend to think of phone systems as an operational aspect of business, separate from the marketing department’s goals. But Phone Marketing Insider’s first 100 posts present the interconnectivity between the world of phones and the world of marketing/sales. Join in the connection between these world by reading PMI, sending us your comments, and thinking about ways to use phones in your marketing strategy.

Here’s some highlights from our first 100 posts…

Cloud Telephony Analysis

For beginners, learning to use Cloud Telephony tools can be intimidating. That’s why we connected you to Ifbyphone’s Cloud Telephony Screencasts, and Ifbyphone’s video on call tracking. You can learn about basic starting points through posts about Open Source Telephony Resources, Call Tracking as described on Searchengineland, basic call tracking tools that every marketer must know, and how to choose a business VoIP system.

At PMI, we’re excited about the evolution of cloud telephony, which is why we discussed analogies between cloud computing and cloud telephony, and wrapped up our thoughts about the clouds at the end of December. For the mathematicians out there, you’ll find our post Do Cloud Solutions Always Pay to be quite intriguing. With an eye on our readers’ needs, we opened dialogues about On-Demand Payment, Voice Quality of cloud telephony, trends in Cloud Contact Centers, the question of trusting cloud services, and whether companies should have to choose between hosted and on-premise VoIP. At times, case studies best illustrate how to increase business efficiency with phones, such as improving CRM through call centers and social media tracking, increasing phone leads by numbers as high as 42%, and cutting costs by as much as $240k.

Marketing Insights

Sometimes we convey our marketing message more implicitly and other times we use marketing strategy to drive the key lesson of a post, but it’s always there. PMI spices up all the talk about phones with trendy marketing tips related to social media (Facebook’s Game to Lose, Einstein Bros. Gives Away Bagels to Facebook Fans and Why Location Matters Again) and viral videos (Yale Musical Recruiting Video). If you’re working on branding, creating fans and rewarding your customers, check out our hits: Embrace Your Brand Bank Account, Find More Fans, Adidas Rewards Viewers for Views, How the Grammys have Redefined Fanship. When you’re just in the mood to read a new perspective on marketing, send us your thoughts about Marketing in Between the Frames: A Lesson from Seth Godin and Super Bowl 44 Ad Review. For our more intensive readers, we hope you enjoy our posts on pricing, such as Attention SMBs: Beware of Cost Plus Pricing.

Keeping Up with the Hype

For the techies out there, we followed the hype about Google and Apple. Who could have missed Apple’s “rejection” of Google Voice on the iphone, leading up to Google’s subsequent promise (in January) to enter the iphone, albeit through the web browser, and then Google’s release of multitouch on Nexus One in February (is Google now picking a fight)? The story continued to heat up at Mobile World Congress in February, when twenty-four mobile phone operators teamed up to challenge Apple, and PMI was always there following.

News with a Marketing Twist

At PMI, we’re not just reporting the latest news. Plenty of great blogs and news sites cover news about call tracking, voice broadcasts, call centers, VoIP, etc. But we’re doing something different. We’re analyzing ways that businesses can use the latest phone offerings in their marketing strategies.

News and product releases on PMI included the following companies: Ifbyphone (New Virtual Call Center), Twilio (Platform for Phone Call APIs), Twalkin (New Voice Broadcasts for Twitter), Cloudvox (Open Source API), Vivox (Voice Chat on Facebook), Angel (Notify NYC IVR Program), Google (TV ad tracking), Ifbyphone Acquires Cloudvox, Vocalocity (Voicemail Transcription, new CEOWain Kellum), CallFire (Cloud Call Center goes International), Windstream (New VoIP Service), Digium (Announcement ofAstricon, Phone Makeover Contest for SMBs), Snom (Expands VoIP for Open Source), Convergys (Interactive Voice Portal), Verizon (Partners with Skype), Google Voice (Real Time Translation), CallFire (Remote Control Voice Broadcasting) and Ribbit (VTT-sa™ Next-Generation Voice to Text Application).

Marketing Reports/ Studies about Phones

Marketing reports provide a broader perspective on one’s market, customers, competitors and general business environment.In our first 100 posts, we highlighted reports about phone services including: Ascent Group’s “IVR Improvement Strategies 2010″, Nuance’s study finding customers in favor of automated telephone services, VoiceNation’s survey reporting the low number of businesses with emergency voice plans and DMG Consulting’s report about the predicted rise in the outbound dialing market.

Phone Apps

With daily new releases of phone apps, we sort out our favorites when it comes to marketing, advertising and sales. That’s why we included posts on Five9′s new salesforce app, Skype’s click to cool toolbar for salesforce, icall- the first VoIP app that Apple approved over 3G, Socialibrium’s CRM Blackberry app,Pocket Dictate’s iphone app and Siri’s iphone Personal Assistant.

We hope you enjoyed our 100 post Review.

Spread the word and help us build a community of readers at the crossroad between phones, marketing, advertising and sales.

Ribbit Announces VTT-sa™, Next-Generation Voice-to-Text Application

Rocky — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:59:17 +0000

Yesterday, Ribbit announced a new scalable, next-generation voice-to-text application service for their carriers and Enterprise customers. Their new service, VTT-sa™, a cloud-based component in the Ribbit platform, enables customers to convert voice to text in business applications such as voicemail, traditional and IP based PBXs, conference calling and more.

Stephen Wu, general manager, Ribbit Voice-to-Text Services noted the value of this new release:

Network operators and enterprises understand the value of converting voice-to-text and making it searchable and actionable in a range of applications. With support for multiple speech recognition methods and providers, VTT-sa delivers unmatched flexibility, security, reliability and performance. Network operators and enterprises can finally have the best of both worlds – leading-edge voice-to-text application services backed by an experienced, global technology company and telephony provider.

VTT-sa™’s complex algorithms, advanced modeling and forecasting software provide real-time performance provide fascinating flexibility for a range of different enterprise customers. For example, customers that require strict sensitivity, such as government organizations can set their security on a high level, while businesses with lower security concerns can enjoy faster speed and accuracy through looser requirements.The press release describes the matching process as follows:

“VTT-sa continuously analyzes the voice-to-text performance of a qualified group of voice-to-text conversion providers and automatically selects in real-time, the one that has the highest performance and which most closely matches the requirements specified for each voice-to-text conversion.”

The flexibility of this application demonstrates Ribbit’s understanding of the tradeoffs that customers make when it comes to different products and services. By offering customers the ability to choose their tradeoff preferences, between security, quality and speed, Ribbit empowers their customers to find a next-generation solution to fit their specific needs.

What’s Your Emergency Plan for Voice Communication?

Rocky — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:50:46 +0000

With this past year’s hot topic of cloud computing and cloud telephony, security and backups are on everyone’s mind. Before migrating services to the clouds, businesses ask themselves what sort of risk they are taking in moving their hosting off of their own premises. In light of these discussions, one would imagine that VoiceNation’s survey of businesses would find a high proportion of businesses with emergency continuity plans for their voice communication. But this was not the case.

In fact, the PRweb press release notes, “the survey found that while 100% of companies agreed that there was a critical need for some sort of emergency plan if they lost their voice communication platform; only 38% of these businesses actually had some sort of plan in place.” While 100% of businesses recognized the need for disaster recovery solutions, stating that their “daily operations would be interrupted if phones were shut down for an extended period,” most of these businesses are not taking any actions to insure themselves against such an occurrence.

Want to learn more about emergency plans for voice communications? Read about VoiceNation’s survey on TMCnet, or check out VoiceNation’s website.

Ifbyphone Acquires Cloudvox, Changes the Game of Cloud Telephony

Rocky — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:01:37 +0000

Wow. The business power of a great acquisition depends on both its ability to add value to both parties, and its creation of a new entity where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here’s a great example, fresh off the press, of an acquisition that can change the game of cloud telephony.

Today, Ifbyphone, a provider of cloud telephony, announced their definitive agreement to acquire Cloudvox, a technology start-up offering open source telephony apps.

Let’s first take a look at the power of the new entity.

Ifbyphone + Cloudvox

According to the press release:

“The addition of Cloudvox positions Ifbyphone as the only cloud telephony provider that enables customers to rent a phone-based application, integrate with an existing Ifbyphone app, or build a custom app. Cloudvox lets developers automate phone calls using their own software – code they write and control.”

Shapiro explained these three levels to TMCnet’s blogger as follows:

With the Cloudvox acquisition Ifbyphone can now offer 3 scenarios for applications:
- Own the application(s)
- Rent the application(s)
- Have developers integrate or build application(s) from scratch

While many competitors offer one of the above three services, Ifbyphone will now be positioned as the only cloud telephony provider offering businesses all three alternatives. “By acquiring Cloudvox, we’re sending a message to businesses of every size: If you’re interested in using telephone applications to automate sales, marketing, business processes, and Web applications, we’re the place to start,” says Shapiro in the press release.

Saunderslog, in covering the story, explains the value of this new creation by quoting Shapiro as saying, “The combination of Cloudvox and Ifbyphone provide an Amazon EC2 style of environment to developers building telephone applications.”

In addition to the new differentiated competitive advantage in the scope of services offered, the marriage between these two companies combines Ifbyphone’s “proprietary” building blocks with Cloudvox’s open source Asterisk AGI and AMI applications platform, to capture the best of both worlds.

Now let’s take a look at the value of this acquisition for each of the parties.

Ifbyphone

Gigaom expands on this aspect of the deal:

“The move gives Ifbyphone a scalable back end for its voice applications that’s accessible via an open API. Cloudvox offers “phone building blocks” that provide basic telephony functions such as making and receiving calls and presenting interactive voice response menus as well as performing more advanced tasks. Ifbyphone, which automates traditional and Internet phone calls through pre-built apps, plans to use the acquisition to enable businesses to leverage their existing Asterisk apps and bring them to scale through Ifbyphone’s infrastructure.”

The acquisition of Cloudvox solves Ifbyphone’s previous need to release customized building blocks to meet their customers’ needs. With Cloudvox’s Asterisk open source API platform, much like “Asterisk in the cloud,” developers can easily build their own apps in a variety of languages and familiar code.

Cloudox

Troy Davis, a Cloudvox Co-Founder, explained, “Cloudvox is the most practical way to launch comprehensive phone services, and with Ifbyphone’s infrastructure and experience, we’ve created the best cloud model in the industry.”

Businesses Can Donate Through Charity800.com’s Phone Services

Rocky — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:12:26 +0000

Dynamic Interactive Corp., an 800 number service company, just announced their new company Charity800.com. The new service provides businesses with cloud telephony services such as toll free numbers, local numbers, call recording, call routing, voicemail, and call tracking features, and then donates a half of a cent for every minute of usage to the business’s charity of choice.

The logic behind this new service is to enable businesses to cut costs of traditional phone systems, through eliminating the expensive hardware and software. In addition to cutting costs, businesses can fulfill their social consciousness by choosing their favorite charity oriented service. Charity800.com also provides their business clients with banners, in order to encourage potential clients to call the business.

The concept behind this new program reminds me of the classic debate in business ethics, among Milton Friedman and other prominent thinkers, about the nature of corporate social responsibility. In fact, this press release echos the school of thought that in the end of the day engaging in high ethical standards and even charity will help to increase the bottom line.

Charity800.com appears to be trying to increase their own bottom line by attracting customers to their service through their new philanthropic activities. But, the question of how this program will impact the bottom line of the businesses who choose their service remains undetermined. In the end of the day, this charity program may provide companies with a differentiating edge, but this edge will only be sustainable if the phone services offered compete on the highest level of quality.