IVR

In today’s down economy, organizations are seekingto reduce expenses while maintaining a competitive edge in the marketplace. One way some small to medium-sized businesses , or “SMBs,” are staying innovative is by leveraging cloud telephony, a new Web-based VoIP option.

 

Ifbyphone’s Cloud Telephony program offers carriers a scalable and reliable way to provide more features to existing customers in a pay-as-you-go, without upfront investments. Since the solutions are hosted in the cloud, organizations can expand services when needed, maintain control, and grow revenue at their own pace.

 

The platform provides a hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) environment for SMBs.  The solution lets carriers, CLECs, ILECs, hosted PBX (News - Alert) companies, and cable multi-system operators with softswitches connect to the service. Such features include Call Queuing, Call Tracking and “Find Me” Call Forwarding, and applications such as Voice Broadcasting, Store Locator, and Lead Distributor.

 

The technology is designed to help small businesses compete with larger counterparts and keep pace in the market, Ifbyhone said in a new white paper, “Cloud Telephony for Carriers and Service Providers.”

 

Telephony began as a cloud technology and mostly remained that way for many years. In the early 1960s, Local Exchange Carriers in the U.S. and Canada introduced Centrex, a regulated central office exchange-based telco solution that offered a number of popular Private Branch Exchange or “PBX” features on a central office platform. But by the 1990s, Centrex fell out of favor as it failed to compete with contemporary PBXs and Key Telephone Systems regarding content and flexibility.

 

By then, PBX manufacturers released Application Programming Interfaces for what later became known as Computer Telephony Integration. And soon, technology evolved to commercialize Voice over Internet Protocol, which involves forming digitized voice samples into the same packet data format developed for the Internet. VoIP, Ifbyphone (News - Alert) said, was considered as something of a hobbyist consumer-level technology largely confined to the Internet.

 

While VoIP was a vast improvements, but the nature of PBXs remains the same in that they are premise-based systems with the associated burdens and risks of ownership, ifbyphone said.

 

Fast forward to today, ifbyphone created a solution with Cloud Telephony that builds off the successes of its predecessors technologies. The option offers telephony applications that are designed to improve profitability, the company said.

 

For example, a small business that runs frequent marketing campaigns can route calls by time of day, day of week, geography, caller ID and responses to IVR menus, the company said. Meanwhile, customers can schedule appointments with repair companies through the firm’s Voice Broadcasting application.

 

A more in-depth explanation about Ifbyphone’s Cloud Telephony is available in the free, 10-page white paper here.