Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

“Immersive experiences cannot really happen without the cloud, just really because of the amount of computing power involved,” says Martin Taylor, Co-Founder & Deputy CEO, Content Guru. In this podcast, Taylor discusses how Content Guru is building out their immersive CX for their CCaaS platform.

Immersive CX is one of the most exciting technological advancements expected to grow in coming years as virtual spaces such as the Metaverse increase adoption. The opportunity for consumers to interact with brands within virtual worlds is huge and will drive a high level of personalisation. However, the backbone of the technology that will support this reality is still being developed in anticipation of adoption in the coming years. As we enter 2023, technology vendors and channel providers will continue to develop solutions and create a platform for next-generation solutions to thrive.

Visit www.contentguru.com/en-us

“If you don’t have happy employees on board…” says Jordi Torres Gómez, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Verbio, “… you’re draining the company. The labor shortage facing contact centers is not news.” According to Jordi, however, the repetitive tasks that agents face, only makes the problem worse. Voice AI can help. By doing the simplest tasks, Voice AI takes those repetitive tasks off the shoulders of the agents who are then free to focus their energy on higher functions and more complex problems. This leads to better agent experiences and to better customer experiences.

In this podcast we learn about the connection between Voice AI and cutting agent churn, and for that matter, customer churn too. Unlike chatbots, virtual voice assistants can understand, act and close the loop on a customer issue, such as them forgetting their password or handling payments. To maximize the customer experience, Voice AI can be used very effectively for large volume repetitive tasks and can help customers to self-serve 24/7, 365 days a year, removing long wait times. With customers demanding a better call center experience and the very current issue of recruiting and keeping quality agents, Voice AI can increase customer experience and reduce agent churn.

Verbio has been specializing in Voice AI for over 20 years, with many loyal telecommunications clients, providing both on-premise and cloud solutions. Verbio is known in the industry for their Voice AI solutions, which can be highly customized. All of their products are built in-house, and they offer incredible accuracy of over 90%. Of course, accuracy is so important in customer service, as how can you direct your customers to the right support if you can’t understand what your customer is saying? Also, there is nothing more frustrating for customers, if they are not understood by a human or a virtual voice assistant. Verbio are experts in many languages and particularly English, Spanish and Latin American languages, very helpful for the US market.

To find out more www.verbio.com or to get in touch please email [email protected].

During the middle of 2022, the FCC stopped regulating copper phone lines. If you are a business, high-rise building with elevators or a manufacturing facility with safety phones, alarms, building entry and/or speaker systems check for those old analog lines. They may be turned off and leave you liable for any resulting incidents.

Raj Shah

If you are a carrier or reseller, AirDial is a solid product to add to your portfolio. Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, speaks with Raj Shah, Enterprise Sales Manager with Ooma about the transition from copper to digital service. Businesses may be paying significantly increased rates to carriers who are no longer supporting POTS lines.

Listen in to Raj as he walks you through the process and describes how Ooma can assess your phone bill and provide you a better alternative.

A “Migration to Digital” article is one of the articles that should be included in carrier & resellers company newsletters as well as their monthly bills to their users – especially to those that they know still have copper lines.

Ooma AirDial is the hassle-free, all-in-one POTS replacement solution.

Reduce complexity by addressing all your POTS replacement needs with one provider. Ooma AirDial runs on a dedicated wireless network and each unit can support up to four life system safety devices. Migration is easy; Ooma AirDial can be self-installed or set up by our technicians. Existing phone numbers can be ported.

Built with regulatory compliance in mind, Ooma AirDial provides the hardware, data, and phone service at one low monthly rate and supports alarm and fire panels, essential phone lines, building entry systems, and more. Enjoy the confidence of being on a reliable platform trusted by more than two million users.

For more information, go to: https://www.ooma.com/business/airdial-pots-line-replacement/ or https://www.ooma.com/

What have we learned, and where do we see the industry going in 2023? McKay Bird, marketing director for TCN, a global provider of a comprehensive, cloud-based call center platform, believes it will come down to changes in the way call centers interact with their agents, increased usage of call center technology and keeping up with the ever-changing compliance landscape. Below are the three main trends that McKay believes call centers will need to focus on heading into the new year:

Call center agents will become even more of a valuable asset

The adoption of self-service models will grow

Updated and additional regulations around compliance will be present

In this podcast, McKay tells us that even as most people may not prefer increased adoption of self service, with 55% of consumers preferring chatbot interaction, 49% still want a live agent to work on the larger issues. Connecting consumers with agents and creating positive experiences for both agent and customer, will be the challenges of 2023. Brand loyalty is connected to agent performance, now perhaps, more than ever.

Visit www.tcn.com

“While many brands understand the value of an omnichannel messaging strategy, adopting one can be a big hurdle for them, and a headache for customer service teams,” said Jon Campbell, Director of Rich Messaging, Sinch. In this podcast, we’ll discuss how Sinch’s Conversation API was designed as a gateway to omnichannel customer engagement. Through a single API and one intuitive platform, brands can reach customers on their preferred channels — and even maintain a conversation while switching between channels. Campbell will also discuss two recent channel additions to the API: KakaoTalk, allowing brands to easily access and engage customers on the super-app used by 97% of the South Korean population, and LINE, a super-app key to reaching end users and customers in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. Listeners will learn how Sinch’s Conversation API impacts the customer experience, and help global brands strengthen customer relationships globally and now, in South Korea and throughout Asia.

Visit www.sinch.com

One size does not fit all: Why UcaaS is not the right approach for every business.

“It’s all about keeping all of those (Mitel) end users happy by being relative and innovative,” says Nick Riggott, Mitel’s UK Country Sales Director, “… but our entire model is about our partners.” In this podcast, Riggott describes a process that combines a focus on the needs of the customers while maintaining a strong channel community. Mitel is a name that almost everyone in telecom is familiar with, while the company’s products and services are installed or are being accessed, around the world. In contrast to some approaches, Mitel has carved out a diverse approach to economic and technological change. In this podcast we learn that Mitel’s one size does not fit all approach means that Mitel is supportive of channel partners whose customers are in the migration journey at their own speed and with their own unique needs. Riggott notes that the new demands of hybrid working might be best served by focusing on the outcomes of the solution. This leaves room for choice and allows the customer and their channel partner vendors, to choose just the right mix of products and services to deliver consistent worker, agent and customer experiences, security, mobility, and consistency. We learn that Mitel is committed to customers adopting Teams. “It’s not a one size fits all.”

Visit www.mitel.com

Viirtue Connect brings together Viirtue community of partners and vendors

Viirtue gathered their channel partner and vendor partner community in their first ever event, Connect, held December 6-7, in St. Petersburg, Florida. “We spent a lot of time on content,” says Dan Rosenrauch of Viirtue, noting that the event aimed at delivering both informational and education value for attendees. In this podcast we learn how the event not only served to help participants understand trends, confront issues and challenges, but also cemented the Viirtue community, creating new personal connections across platforms, products, and services. Dan tells us how Viirtue’s goal is to provide a frictionless buying experience for their partner’s end customer. “What Uber did for transportation and Airbnb did for hospitality were looking to do for our service partners.” In keeping with the goal, the company announced a launch date for their new mobile end user portal which seeks to deliver that type of experience in this market. Attendees were also given a glimpse of a new partnership with Zoom, the details of which will be discussed on our next podcast with Viirtue.

Visit www.viirtue.com

“I went from the product being a piece of software to the product being my employee base,” says newly appointed Televerde CEO, Chris McGugan. “And that is the beautiful thing about it.” In this podcast, readers and listeners may have known McGugan from previous high-ranking roles over at Avaya, a major contact center solution provider. Within the last month, McGugan has taken the key leadership post in a company that is on the other side of that technology world, in running an outbound customer outreach operation. Televerde develops leads and can also close sales on behalf of clients. One of the things that makes the company unique is the workforce. 70% of Televerde’s workforce is incarcerated. The company hires women who are incarcerated, offering people a fresh opportunity in sales. In this podcast we learn how Televerde stresses a development process in contrast to a washing out process in some other sales organizations. The firm delivers a ready workforce that has been previously overlooked, and we learn that employees can matriculate to jobs in the firms that have worked for, under contract for Televerde.

Visit https://televerde.com/

Building Own Social Media Community at CCA Event

“I’m seeing a tremendous appetite for digital content,” says Evan Kirstel. In this podcast, Kirstel, a very prominent social media influencer and observer of the telecommunications industry discusses social media in what he describes as “building a community of interest” around products, services, and brands. In an era where people are increasingly disdaining traditional sales approaches, Kirstel argues that companies should take a fresh approach to customer outreach. Kirstel offers a blend of approaches that combine the personal in person touch with the power of social media. Going to a customer and just simply learning about their business, hearing about their challenges, but refraining from selling them on such a visit, is part of the picture. But then Kirstel says, “… shine a spotlight on it.” Share the experience on social media. These are steps towards a different sales posture where one is a citing more like a trusted advisor, a technology partner than a vendor trying to push products. Such a visit might not only strengthen a relationship with a specific customer but become more visible in an entire local sector. “Do you know who’s who in your community,” challenges Kirstel, offering the insight that businesses need social media visibility, and targeted social media visibility.

Cloud Connections 2023: Building Own Social Media Community

In this podcast, we hear about the forthcoming Cloud Connections 2023 Conference coming up in January 2023 in Fort Lauderdale. “This is the place to be,” noting how cloud has shoved aside many competing technology platforms and that the Cloud Communications Alliance is the premier cloud communications group. Kirstel will be hosting a session on Building Your Own Social Media Community. It’s a must go to,” adds Kirstel. Kirstel also discusses his upcoming participation at ITEXPO and Enterprise Connect.

Visit https://www.evankirstel.com/

Recently announced Ribbon integration with Google SIP Link provides significant enhancement to Google VoIP Services. Ribbon SBCs have been certified to work with Google SIP link. Gordan Eddy discusses the enhancements to Google SIP Link with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.

Gordan Eddy

In addition to selecting their own telecom provider they are provided security, legacy connectivity for analog TDM lines, migration support from old PBX systems and continued support for those PBX systems that need to stay connected. Resiliency and failover are also provided.

For channel partners, this provides a new combined offering that opens up additional sales opportunities for the Ribbon Channel. Listen in to learn more about the channel details.

Google SIP Link requires a Google-certified SBC to act as a bridge between Google Voice and an organization’s telecom provider. The session border controller provides multiple functions:

Security – it acts as a voice-aware firewall, protecting the voice traffic itself and it prevents bad actors from entering the data network via the voice network

Interoperability – Ribbon’s SBCs can adjust key deployment parameters to best match your telecom provider’s requirements, making SIP Link setup easy and trouble-free

Legacy Connectivity – many organizations still have analog phones, elevator phones, door phones, and fax machines. Ribbon’s hardware-based SBCs have analog ports (FXS and FXO) to keep these assets connected and available.

Migration – organizations may have technical or business requirements that require the old PBX to stay connected for an extended period. Ribbon SBCs can provide SIP forking and simultaneous ringing so that both Google Voice and the legacy PBX share connectivity.

Resiliency or Failover – Ribbon SBCs have multiple options to manage disruptions in service depending on the deployment model. These tools can keep your organization connected even if the unexpected happens.

For more information, go to: https://ribboncommunications.com/solutions/enterprise-solutions/securing-communications-sip-trunks/google-voice-sip-link