Why Call Centers are Making the Switch to SIP

Save money & simplify IT management

Many call and contact centers have chosen to make the switch from TDM to SIP trunking to not only cut costs and simplify IT management, but for its flexibility. Regardless of size, every call center will experience peak periods, or occasionally have spikes in call volume (especially those with outbound calling campaigns). SIP trunking accommodates these bursts in voice traffic quickly and easily.

Why SIP for Call Centers

Flexibility - With a T1/PRI, the number of simultaneous calls that can be made/had is limited to the number of lines you have. With SIP, you can add/remove lines as needed easily and quickly (in a matter of minutes) by calling your provider and purchasing additional SIP trunks, or in some cases just increasing your data connection. 

SIP offers a better utilization of the Internet because it combines voice and data traffic on a single network. Calls are routed through the Internet rather than the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), eliminating the need for costly dedicated voice T-1/PRI circuits and the expensive telecom services that go along with them. SIP technology enables locations to share unused call capacity. Companies can manage costs by merging multi-location businesses behind a single SIP trunk group
TouchTone’s IP platform intelligently assigns bandwidth based on call volume or Internet usage ensuring optimal use of available bandwidth at all times. When phones are not in use, additional bandwidth is assigned to Internet browsing and data applications.

Failover - SIP trunks can be configured with call queuing rules and can re-route inbound calls (automatically) in case of power failure or Internet outage.

Advanced features - Because SIP uses standard protocol, third parties applications, like call recording, call analytics and automatic call-backs, can be easily integrated. 

Why Carriers Hate Call Center Traffic 

It takes a lot of time, energy, and resources to ensure that a service provider’s network can handle short duration and dialer long distance. Because of this, service providers tend to stay away from call centers with short duration needs simply because they don’t make any money on these types of calls. 
TouchTone has invested a great deal of time and money in its technology and network, and has cultivated strong relationships with Tier 1 carriers to offer quality, reliable and scalable dialer and short duration termination solutions. 

Terminating over a billon call center calls each year, TouchTone provides on-demand, premium short duration and dialer termination to call centers with short duration needs, specifically those using predictive dialers, auto dialers, voice broadcasting or robocalls. 

The company’s high-performing switch and redundancy capabilities can handle a massive amount of concurrent calls without sacrificing quality. With pay-as-you-go pricing and no short duration penalties, customers can count on TouchTone Communications to deliver consistent, quality voice termination to support demanding call center needs.

To learn more about call center SIP trunking, visit http://www.touchtone.net/enterprise-voip.htmlor call 800-900-3668.

Maintaining Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity with SIP Trunking

Business as usual, no matter what the weather

The National Hurricane Center released separate storm surge warnings for the 2015 storm season – this is in addition to warnings about tropical storm and hurricane-force winds.

As the number of natural disasters and cases of extreme weather rise, it becomes increasingly important for businesses, small and large, to have a clear and detailed business continuity and disaster recovery plan in place to help alleviate risk after a service disruption.

Severe weather can strike at any time, leaving permanent and long term loss. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that more than 40 percent of businesses never reopen following a natural disaster. Of the remaining companies, at least 25 percent will close within two years of the disaster occurring.

A properly designed business continuity plan is intended to help reduce the overall impact of an unexpected event (natural or man-made) and return a company to pre-disaster operation as quickly as possible. 

Why a Business Continuity Plan

- Protect employees
- Minimize rash decision making in a time of crisis
- Minimize loss of data
- Facilitate timely recovery of business functions
- Minimize loss of revenue/customers
- Maintain public image, brand, and reputation

Having the Right Technology

One of the most important components of an effective business continuity plan is making sure that your business is equipped with the right technology.

Compared to traditional circuits, SIP trunking doesn’t only provide cost savings and simplifies IT management, but also delivers an incredible amount of flexibility. 

Trunks can be provisioned in minutes rather than weeks, and phone lines can be added and removed quickly and easily. 

But not all service providers offer the same features. When looking for a SIP trunking provider it is important to look for one that offers automatic failure in the unfortunate event of service disruption.

Businesses need to be to be available 24/7 regardless of the weather outside. SIP trunks can be pre-configured with call queuing rules, and can re-route inbound calls (automatically) in case of power failure or Internet outage. For example, if your Los Angeles office encounters a service disruption, calls can be forwarded to your San Francisco office, your home or an auto attendant.

And because SIP Trunking numbers aren’t fixed to a geographical location, outbound calls can be made using the same numbers and phone system features from another location as if you were in the office.

SIP trunking provides businesses with a powerful, highly adaptable and scalable communication solution to ensure that no matter what the weather outside, they are up and running. 

To learn more about TouchTone’s SIP trunking solution, including automatic failover, please contact your sales manager or call 800-900-3668. 

Need to get the word out fast? An IVR solution can help!

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions are increasingly being implemented by both small and large businesses to improve overall customer experience and to cut costs.

An outbound IVR solution allows companies to deliver automated, personalized messages to hundreds of people quickly and inexpensively. Messages can be pre-recorded or event triggered. Event triggered messages can offer a wide range of options and/or require further action to be taken by the person answering the phone (for example, “Your appointment is scheduled for Monday, July 21. To keep this appointment, press 1. To reschedule, press 2.”). Responses can be collected through the phone’s keypad or though spoken words with voice recognition.

Common applications for outbound IVR applications include:

• Appointment reminders
• Payment reminders
• Order statuses
• Shipment notifications
• Appointment confirmations
• Account alerts
• Shipment notifications
• Surveys
• Refills/reorders
• Fundraising requests
• Notifications and closings

Industries benefiting from IVR technology:

• Financial
• Airlines
• Banks
• Pharmacies
• Political
• Travel and tourism
• Polling and surveys
• City and state governments
• Non-profit organizations
• Schools 
• Churches 
• Healthcare organizations
• Customer service and call centers
• Collections agencies

Benefits of outbound IVR solutions:

• Cost advantages – leveraging VoIP technology, large volumes of outbound messages can be sent quickly, reliably, and inexpensively.
• Frees up office personnel and call center employees to work on more valuable tasks.
• Calls can be made off business hours when customers are more readily available.
• Flexible and scalable – IVR technology allows different events to trigger different responses allowing for a better overall customer experience.
• Proactively reach customers – avoid high volumes of inbound calls during business hours.

IVR service and software provider reputations depend on who they choose as their voice termination provider. An IVR solution is only as good as its ability to complete calls.

TouchTone Communications works with Tier 1 carriers to deliver reliable, quality voice termination to IVR service and software providers. TouchTone's high-performing switch and redundancy capabilities can handle a massive amount of concurrent calls without sacrificing quality. With pay-as-you-go pricing and no short duration penalties, customers can count on TouchTone Communications to deliver consistent, quality voice termination to support demanding needs.

Looking for IVR voice termination? Call 1-888-TOUCHTONE, or e-mail sales@touchtone.net.

Expand Your Customer Base to Include IVR Solution Providers

If you haven't already included IVR service and software providers to your customer demographic, it's time you expanded into this very lucrative market. Depending on their size, IVRs can average thousands, if not millions, of minutes in traffic each month. If you know of any IVR companies in your area, call or e-mail them to see if they need a (new) long distance service provider. And if you don't know of any, the Internet is a good place to find some.
 
So what's an IVR?
An IVR (Interactive Voice Response) allows a computer to automate interactions with telephone callers through the use of voice and touch-tone telephone keypad entry. Many business and enterprise customers (such as credit card companies, pharmacies, call centers and political campaigns) are using IVR applications to help cut costs and help improve customer sales and support. They provide the technology, but require a reliable service provider to deliver quality, low-cost voice services.

TouchTone Communications customer, New York-based Dial Global, is a full-service radio network that produces and distributes radio programming to more than 6,000 stations in the U.S. One of their services, Radio Voodoo (an IVR system), answers phones for radio stations and makes it possible to use caller recordings in station programming. Dial Global provides the technology, and TouchTone provides the toll-free and DID termination.

"Radio Voodoo is a service that specializes in allowing radio stations to have their phones answered by an IVR. Stations then use the audio left by listeners during radio shows or in promotional announcements. Radio Voodoo has partnered with TouchTone as a provider of toll free origination and DID termination. As you can imagine, radio station traffic has great highs during contesting and sometimes great lows depending on market size. TouchTone has been able to balance the sometimes huge spikes from stations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles while servicing the smaller stations in Lubbock, TX, Massena NY and St. Joseph, MO. The best part about working with TouchTone has to be the customer service. At Radio Voodoo, so much of our success has been the team at TouchTone coming up with creative ways to find solutions to our problems. They are energized, engaged, and do not rest until we arrive at a solution. TouchTone is very much a part of the team that has made Radio Voodoo a must have for radio stations across the country."

~ Dee Perkins, Distribution Sales Manager
   Dial Global

TouchTone provides quality, low-cost in-bound (local and toll-free) and outbound calling to IVR service and software providers. To learn more email business.support@touchtone.net.

What's Trending In Telecom

In this day in age, it is technology that stimulates our senses and gives us a feeling of innovation and creativity. In the world of telecom, innovation increases year-by-year.

Over the past 25 years, technology, especially in the world of telecom, has changed the way we work and play almost beyond recognition. We want, and expect, more powerful devices and applications to help us do things faster, better and with more ease. 

But keeping up with technology trends can be overwhelming, and you may find yourself asking, "which technology trends are for me."

The obvious answers are to determine your needs, read and research (we've helped you with that one, read below!), try it out (many companies offer free trials), and if you don't understand it, don't be afraid to ask questions. 

Here's a list of some of today's trending topics in telecom and technology. 

Telecom Trends

1. IP services- More and more companies are moving away from TDM and switching to IP services, such as SIP. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) provides many benefits for businesses including lower calling costs and a large capacity to serve an entire organization regardless of its size.    
2. Mobile Device Management (MDM)- As the use of personal devices in the workforce increases, the need for businesses to incorporate mobile device management becomes a necessity in order to protect corporate information and reduce security risks. If you’re looking for a MDM vendor, here is a list of the 10 leading vendors in the market today, drawn from the leaders and visionaries in Gartner's 2013. Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management Software.
3. Apps, apps and more apps- Chances are that you have a smartphone, a tablet or maybe even both. These devices have transformed the way we communicate, especially in businesses. Mobile apps prove to be especially useful in businesses because they can help manage day-to-day activities (schedule meetings, manage contacts, set reminders, money/account-managing, etc.). If you haven’t done so already check out these great apps: Brewster (personal address book), Contactually (contact management), Asana (plan, organize and stay in sync with your team), and Basecamp (project management). There is an app for almost anything nowadays!
4. The Cloud- With today’s dynamic office environments, cloud services are proving to be a surefire way to reduce costs and streamline operations. So what does it mean exactly ‘to move to the cloud’? 

For some, the cloud means a storage locker in the sky; a place to save documents, pictures and videos online so that they can be stored, accessed and even shared whenever and from where ever there is Internet connection.

Not only has this made our personal lives easier (we no longer need to e-mail documents to ourselves or burn a CD of vacation pictures for family and friends), but businesses are looking into cloud-based data storage in support of protection efforts such as replication, backup, archiving, and disaster recovery. 

For others, the cloud serves as a way to provide cost effective and scalable voice and data services. Commonly known as hosted communications or business VoIP, voice is provided over an IP backbone (the cloud) – the PBX and service is fully managed offsite by the provider. Cloud-based phone service provides more robust functionality beginning with crisp, clear voice quality and an abundance of features not available with traditional phone service. Since the service is completely outsourced and the PBX does not reside at the customer’s premises, upgrades are automatically provided by the provider in the background so there aren't any costs to upgrade. Learn more about cloud-based phone service.

Work Smarter, Not Harder with Business VoIP

Thanks to VoIP technology, customers have more options now than ever before when it comes to choosing a powerful and cost efficient phone service. Business VoIP offers a wide range of powerful calling features that can even make the smallest business look bigger and sound more professional overnight.

Your needs, budget, and company size will dictate which business VoIP service is best suited for your unique needs. In the end, it comes down to either hosted PBX or an on-premises SIP compliant IP phone system with SIP service.

An effective phone system will meet both your current and future needs, and grow as you grow. Before deciding on a business VoIP service, be sure to ask yourself a few important questions.

1. Which best describes your phone system project?

A. Installing a new phone system
B. Replacing an existing phone system
C. Upgrading an existing phone system
D. I like my phone system, but not my phone and/or Internet/data bills

2. What features do you want in your phone system?

Read more (download entire e-book instantly)

Traditional Telecom Clouds SIP’s Simplicity

With traditional offices, you have to navigate the costly and time-consuming  process of setting up 30-60 days before you can configure and use your phone system.  With SIP trunking, setting up phone service is easy and only takes 1-3 days. 

Why SIP makes sense.

With SIP, you can provision customer trunks in minutes rather than weeks.  You don’t have to deal with a local exchange telephone company, extraordinary lead times, poor customer service and lack of flexibility and responsiveness.

However, for those folks who have been in the telecom and IT sector for a long time and who are used to a traditional way of setting up phone service/system, SIP can be a scary little word. It actually seems to repulse the most established telecom aficionados. But, I assure you, SIP is MUCH easier than you think, and I will prove it.

It’s simple, it works! It saves time, money and it’s easy.  
 

People just starting in telecom have the home court advantage when it comes toSIP.That is because their brains haven’t been hard- wired to think in terms of traditional telecom (POTS lines/PRIs), which can be rather complex and time consuming.   So having 10 years+ experience in the telecom industry actually puts you at a disadvantage. You have to re-train the way your brain thinks when it comes to SIP. But once you do, you and your customers will be grateful. Trust me! 

Think about the steps needed to set-up a traditional land line with long distance (POTS).  

• First, you are limited to what local providers you can use
• And then once you determine the local provider to work with, you need to schedule installation of the local POTS line(where someone has to physically connect on-site / activate phone lines)
• Then you must coordinate with the LEC to change the PICC to a 4 digit carrier code for thelong distance carrier, while at the same time making sure that all PICC freezes have been removed. 
• To determine pricing, you have to incorporate line charges, usage rates, PICC, and EUCL fees.

If you can understand all of that, than you are a seasoned telecom professional and you are probably frustrated with SIP. 

Okay, let’s start with the basics. 

An IP address is the backbone of SIP. And don’t worry what the IP address technically does, just understand that it’s an address that represents you, or in this case, your phone system within the Internet.  If it’s a public IP address, it’s where you can be reached over the public Internet.  If it’s private, then it can only be reached over a private network, like MPLS or private LAN.  To setup a SIP connection between two parties, each party loads the other’s phones system’s IP address in to each other’s phone system and plugs it into their Internet connection (if public) and then, well, that’s it. To setup service with a carrier, a customer will exchange IP addresses with the carrier, plug in their Internet and test.   The SIP trunk is now born…

A SIP trunk is a virtual circuit.  What the heck is that??  Since there is no physical connection that represents the SIP trunk other than the Ethernet cord plugged into the phone system, it’s hard for us to get past the “what the heck is it” stage.   The best way to explain it is to tell you how it’s bound. Well, to compare to traditional services, standard PRIs are physical trunks made up of 23 call paths or DS0s or B channels (ugh).  Consider SIP trunks as that same type of connection made up of a preset number of call paths that you can make calls out and receive calls via DIDs.  The difference is that SIP trunks can allow thousands or tens of thousands of calls simultaneously.   What binds a SIP trunk is not the physical nature like that which limits PRIs, but instead is bound by Internet availability, phone system capacity, and carrier set predetermined limits.   Since each active call sucks up Internet (40-80 KBPS per active call), you can only have as many calls active as you have bandwidth available.  Your phone system also may have limits for various reasons that would only allow a certain amount of active calls. But the most important defining characteristic of a SIP trunk is the preset number of call paths the carrier assigns to the trunk group.  If a carrier only allows for 10 concurrent calls, the 11^th simultaneous call is going to fail.

What is needed to make SIP trunking work?  You need a SIP compatible phone system, or a gateway that converts SIP into traditional services, bandwidth and a proven carrier?

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please contact me, Max, at mcaponegro@touchtone.net.

What is VoIP?

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, and is commonly referred to as Internet phone service. VoIP technology allows users to make and receive calls using a high-speed Internet connection instead of a standard landline. The technology converts voice into little packets of data so that it can be sent over the Internet. Hosted PBX and SIP trunking are two forms of  VoIP solutions.

What is Hosted PBX?
A PBX (Private Branch Exchange) includes both the hardware and software that directs calls between a company’s phones and the PSTN (public switched telephone network). Instead of using traditional landlines to make and receive calls, hosted PBX uses the Internet to transmit calls. 

Hosted PBX business phone service provides business customers with a complete telephone system (phones and service) without requiring them to install and manage complicated and costly equipment. Both the service and PBX are fully managed off-site by the service provider.  

What is SIP Trunking?
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a VoIP service that connects a company's PBX telephone system to the PSTN via an IP connection (the Internet) to the service provider. This IP connection can be used to carry both voice and data traffic (i.e., Web and e-mail), and as a result, eliminating the need for costly T-1s and PRIs.  

If you are considering buying a business phone service and/or business phone system, here are some questions to ask yourself before starting your search. 

 Have questions about Business VoIP, SIP trunking or Hosted PBX, connect with a TouchTone representative at 1-800-900-5474. 

SIP Trunking or Hosted PBX?

5 important questions to ask before buying a business phone service/system

Having reliable Internet and voice is important to the everyday operations and growth of a company. Fortunately, with the introduction of VoIP (Voice over IP) technology, customers have more options now than ever before when it comes to choosing a dependable and cost efficient communications solution.  But with so many VoIP service options on the market, choosing the right business phone service and system can be overwhelming. 

In the end, it comes down to either hosted PBX or an on-premises SIP compliant IP phone system with SIP service. Your needs, budget, and company size will help dictate what VoIP service you should consider.

If you are considering buying a business phone service and/or system, here are some questions to ask yourself before starting your search. 

Have questions about SIP trunking or Hosted PBX, connect with a TouchTone representative at 1-800-900-5474.