Cloud Telephony: Extending Telecom Networks at Reduced Costs

With the smartphone market growing at a phenomenal rate and with the rise of the BYOD trend, where more employees are bringing their personal devices and apps to work, more businesses will start looking at cloud telephony not only as a mere cost saving option but as a business productivity tool going forward.

Ambarish Gupta

CEO and Founder,

Knowlarity Communications

To cater to SMBs’ online communication needs, cloud telephony service providers are helping businesses study call patterns and improve services accordingly. The modern communication services manage all types of business communication activities: telephony, IVR, fax, call conferencing.

Since Cloud telephony is built on a hosted platform, businesses can build new branch communications capabilities from scratch in less than a day’s time. This can be plugged into existing telephony networks through extensions providing uniform customer experience.

Unlike conventional telephony systems there is no need to build telephony capacity in anticipation of demand; cloud telephony resources can be scaled up automatically with the rise in demand and released when demand recedes. Besides building up communications capability cloud and business telephony helps in capturing leads, ensuring no leads are lost in the process, and nurturing leads for business development. It improves marketing ROI by targeting channels that are more productive for the business and also improves customer services.

Ambarish Gupta, CEO and Founder, Knowlarity Communications, shares his thoughts with us, "At present companies from industry verticals like e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, education, and media are the primary users of cloud telephony, but it seems more addition to this list will happen in the coming years".

Cloud telephony as a facilitator for digital transformation

SMBs and startups are using cloud telephony services and BYOD is facilitating digital transformation. These services are helping business to never miss a single order from any customer while all orders placed via website and Twitter can be tracked and fulfilled, entertaining every customer.

If all the agents are busy when a customer tries to call and calls are missed, then also a simple, yet ingenious solution, instead of getting a busy tone, redirects to a centralized call center. The call center agent takes down his the order along with other required details and passes the information. This way the customer has the great experience and business never misses a customer.

Ambarish Gupta talks about some rares scenario as well - "In a rare scenario, when all agents in the outlet as well as the centralized call center are busy, there are chances of a few missed calls". In such cases, all missed calls can be tracked easily and call backs arranged in a matter of seconds.

Depending on the business requirement, customers could instantly connect with the agent for order/booking purposes via Click-to-Call. Customers had to click on the ‘Call’ button and enter their phone number to receive a quick call from the agent. Once the call ends, the business will receive complete CDR (Call Data Record) data through its API.