The Cloud Telephony - The Ultimate Solution for all Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every aspect of our lives. It has brought a sudden and massive change in the way we interact with people, remote work & work from home scenarios. The pandemic has also accelerated the pace of technology adoption and has left people wondering about the new normal. The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed all our assumptions. It has shown us how rapidly disruption can alter our lives, livelihood, and businesses. It demonstrated the actual value of cloud solutions in a global crisis and why business continuity planning is so critical.

Nowadays severe disruptions and challenges instigated by lockdowns, fear, and social distancing protocols, companies made significant progress in the adoption of cloud infrastructure and hosted services in the past several weeks to support their business applications, workflows, and processes, optimized for secure and reliable remote operations. This paradigm shift has triggered massive demand for smarter, quicker, and cheaper cloud-based communication solutions like CPaaS, video conferencing, VPNs, and Cloud telephony for calling meetings, and collaboration solutions. And it is not just large organizations, KPO & BPO call centers, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) customers going after cloud transformation today.

Be it a large business or a small one, hiring people just to answer phone calls all day becomes a bit of a burden for any company. Handling business calls can be a large undertaking for a business. But just spending on hiring employees to route calls to a different department or answer a simple question isn’t going to be economical. Cloud telephony fundamentally replaces conventional on-premise hardware and phone systems like EPBAX, PBX, etc. It enables the users to receive and make voice and video calls over the internet and offers a perfect solution for businesses to stay alive and connected with their customers during these critical times. It requires no additional software, installation, or maintenance.

Cloud telephony simply says a phone system that runs through your internet connection simply known as a VoIP-based hosted PBX solution. It helps you move your business phone service to the cloud. Cloud telephony will make growth seamlessly i.e more specifically, a VoIP solution will allow you to add more users in just a few clicks. Cloud telephony enables companies to store their entire warehouse of data on the cloud, for quicker access and ease of data control and management. Companies can access the information at any time, and leverage a range of advanced solutions such as virtual numbers, IVR, click-to-call, missed call service, outbound calling, Live call status, CDR report analysis, CRM Integration, etc many features coming near to the future.

The primary function of any cloud-based telephony platform is to provide you with the resources to make an outbound call, transfer a call to an agent and record messages, for example, negating the need to buy specialist technology. Cloud telephony streamlines your business communications and grows with your business. Whether you’re opening new offices, hiring remote workers, or expanding your in-house teams, cloud telephony will make the expansion effortless and cost-effective. Cloud telephony implementation requires no on-site infrastructure. This advantage means you can get up and running within a few days, potentially even within a day.

The traditional telephone system is installed locally on the company’s premises which involves giant equipment Whereas, cloud telephony system is hosted on the vendor’s data center and accessed through a web portal. The telephony application is going to add telephony functionality to your workflow processes and, in telephony terms, the equivalent is call flow. That is achieved by means of your application controlling the telephony resources via a menu of structured commands "an API".

Businesses are now looking into?Interactive Voice Response IVR Providers, to make this process much simpler. Although there are a large number of IVR Providers in India like Fonebell, Ameyo, Genesys, Microtel, Exotel, Ozonetel, Servetel, IVR Guru, etc. selecting the right one for your business can be a confusing and time-consuming process. Cloud telephony works through VoIP service providers in India like Tata Teleservices (TTBS), Vodafone Idea, Reliance Jio etc. Businesses are constantly re-imagining operating models and working environments leveraging technology at the core. Cloud telephony is a type of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). UCaaS is a unified communications model, meaning it brings various communication systems and collaboration tools together. With cloud telephony, you won’t just move your phone calls to the cloud, but also connect them with your video meetings, instant messaging, CRM, and business processes across the company, organizations.

Nowadays Enterprise Businesses and customers are multi-tasking and engaging in multiple activities via multiple smart devices. The devices and modes through which interactions occur are no longer linear i.e multiple platforms, multiple devices, and multiple channels available in the technology market. Connectivity with the ecosystem is assumed to be “always ON” 24/7*365 during such a pandemic critical situation. When you dial the phone number you want to call, your service provider handles the call routing. It converts analog voice signals into data packets and transmits them over your internet connection. That’s how it connects your phone to the person you’re calling. You can also manage incoming call volume ef?ciently by minimizing calls from bots, pesky vendors, or spam callers.

An ideal solution for multi-location businesses and workers on the go, cloud telephony can be moved to any remote location with a working Internet connection, with suitable public internet connectivity. This allows us to manage communications remotely during a crisis, like COVID-19. The managers and supervisors can easily connect with their teams through voice calls, video calls, and instant messaging. With cloud telephony, supported by features like instant call recording, integration with CRM, emails, and other business apps, many manual processes can be automated, making it easy to communicate crucial information to patients. Besides, cloud telephony is highly scalable, flexible, and customizable for businesses of all sizes, from a single small office up to an international contact center.?

Cloud telephony removes your need for physical equipment. Your staff can communicate with each other and with your customers using any internet-connected device. They can do so wherever they can use Wi-Fi or 4G internet connection.

Here are some of the most valuable call management features of cloud telephony as below

1. ?Auto-attendant, which allows your caller to reach the right team.
2. Call forwarding, which directs inbound calls based on predefined criteria.
3. Advanced Interactive Voice Response (IVR), a more conversational approach to automated customer service.
4. Intelligent Customer Call Routing, Do not worry about off-hours, different time zones, or gazette holidays. Route calls to available agents, the reception, or play a pre-recorded message to keep your clients up to date.
5. Call forwarding, so that you can forward calls to any desk phone or mobile phone.
6. Video conferencing and screen sharing for productive remote meetings.
7. Toll-free numbers TFN, which lets customers reach you from landlines without extra toll charges.
8. Local numbers LNS, so you can establish a local presence wherever you want.
9. Call recording securely and reliably, so you can maintain quality service.
10. Manage incoming call volume ef?ciently by minimizing calls from bots or spam callers. Add numbers to the blacklist in real-time scenarios.

Cloud telephony products’ simple, flexible design greatly streamlines phone system management. Cloud telephony products are typically less expensive than on-premise business phone systems over the long term, as well. Cloud phone service enables you to focus on what really matters: satisfying customers and increasing sales. By empowering you to adjust your phone system quickly and easily, without being tied down to outmoded systems or processes, cloud phone systems can make your business work better with greater flexibility, greater control, and a lower total cost of operation... Sounds pretty good...!

# Ganesh Kadam_Solutions Specialist_Cloud & UCC domain