Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

by Gary Audin

Some organizations are terminating traditional voicemail support. Others expect to keep voicemail for the foreseeable future. But can you get rid of vocal communications? Probably not. Consider speech-to-text of a voicemail. What if you could append vocal communications to e-mails, instant messages, or SMS, making it easier for user management to support vocal communications?

Scott Brown, VP of Sales and Marketing at Mutare www.mutare.com and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the International Avaya User Group conference. Scott focuses on the changes evolving with traditional voicemail support. Mutare announced the launch of a revolutionary new application that replaces traditional voicemail systems with an answering assistant. This allows callers to leave a voice message while eliminating the time and frustration of voicemail management for the call recipient. SAM (Smart Assist by Mutare) is a cloud-based application that completes the missed call, records a voice memo, and delivers the message with caller ID to the call recipient’s email, IM or as an SMS text notice.

Mutare www.mutare.com has made information access easier and faster for businesses and partners. No one knows more about unified messaging; smart notification and technologies that help contact centers improve performance. Mutare produces software solutions that make businesses work smarter, so the business can streamline information access, speed transactions, and encourage collaboration, resulting in increased sales, regulatory compliance and decreased costs.

With Mutare, you can read voicemails in your email so you never miss a call. Broadcast an important message to a massive group. Allow physicians to securely transmit sensitive patient information. Empower call center agents to assist people across multiple channels.

by Gary Audin

You have cloud bills. You have telecom bills. How many bills are correct? Are there rogue users that you don’t know about but you are paying for them? Is there user abuse? Unused licenses? Do you overpay? Do you have credits due? Is your staff experienced in bill auditing and processing?

Richard Bruyere, Director of Sales and Business Development at Comview and Gary Audin discuss controlling cloud and telecom expenses in this podcast recorded at the International Avaya User Group conference. Did you know that a resolved billing problem can resurface 3 months later? That 20% of telecom bills are wrong. Bill management and resolutions according to Richard are a continuous, not temporary problem.

Comview provides fully integrated Telecom Expense Management (TEM), Mobility Management and Call Accounting solutions backed by industry-leading customer service. The company’s cloud-based, unified software suite allows companies to easily manage all telecom usage and assets, throughout the communications lifecycle, from a single intuitive interface, including: Invoice Management, Wireless Management (with BYOD and MDM integration), Audit & Optimization, Call Accounting, IT Asset Management, Procurement and more. The ROI for this service is 150% in the first 12 months. A managed service/BPO approach and “customer for life” philosophy provides customers with the highest level of service and support and sustainable ROI

For additional information, visit Comview at http://www.comviewcorp.com.

Dr. Benjamin Malphrus, Department Chair of Earth and Space Sciences at Morehead State University discusses the start of the Telecommunications and Aerospace program at Morehead State University with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News from Telecom Reseller. Dr. Malphrus continues, Morehead State is one of only 5 universities offering an undergraduate program in Space Sciences.

Currently they have several space craft in orbit and will now partner with Rajant to provide interns for Rajant as well as use Rajant technology in their own space program. This is a great partnership which will allow vastly improved Telecommunication between space craft as well as improve spacecraft location calculations based on the Rajant wireless Mesh technology for interspace communications.

http://www.moreheadstate.edu/futurestudents/

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by Gary Audin

Once your system is successfully operating, you move into the position of keeping it running properly. You need a website that not only offers information but also provides real time data on problems and their solutions. Wouldn’t be great if the website had the answer to your problem over 90% of the time without talking to a person? You fix it faster. You expend less labor. You have happier users.

Mike Runda, SVP and President of Avaya Client Services and Gary Audin discuss the evolution of support and maintenance in this podcast recorded at the International Avaya User Group conference. Mike’s organization delivers 91% of the problem resolution on their website, typically within 30 minutes. Mike noted that about 4 years ago 15% of their work was break/fix. It is now about 2 to 3% with the website automating most of the problem resolution. He also points out that the website collects and reports the problems so product management can focus on the main issues rapidly, many the same day.

Mike will be hosting a webinar on June 23 “Maximize Your ROI with Avaya Support & Maintenance”  https://news.avaya.com/us-cp-value-of-support-services-reg?PC=MM-FY16Q3-SRVCS-PS&CMP=MM-FY16Q3-SRVCS

Avaya is a provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity, and enhanced financial performance. Its contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premises and cloud deployment options that integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. The Avaya fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services.

For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

by Gary Audin

The enterprise journey needs to be matched by the vendor’s journey. The vendor has to anticipate the changing requirements and market to keep ahead of the customer. This leads away from pure hardware to software driven solutions. Software driven solutions take advantage of virtualization and deliver more efficient resource usage, faster time-to-market, and superior business continuity.

Gary E. Barnett, SVP and GM, Avaya Engagement Solutions and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the International Avaya User Group Conference. The podcast covers software defined solutions and their inherent ability to deliver user defined experiences. It can reduce or eliminate the traditional silo approach. Mr. Barnett also discussed the Avaya Vantage all glass endpoint device that is customizable by the customer.

Mr. Barnett stated “For too long, technology has dictated what the enterprise can do to serve their customers with increasing complexity and limitations between systems. Avaya is eliminating many of those traditional restrictions. Instead, companies can first define the use cases that fit their strategies and goals, then create them using Avaya’s simple yet powerful solution.”

Avaya is a provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity, and enhanced financial performance. Its contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premises and cloud deployment options that integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. The Avaya fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services.

There are two press releases that help to understand Avaya’s market approaches, http://www.avaya.com/usa/about-avaya/newsroom/news-releases/2016/pr-160606a/ and http://www.avaya.com/usa/about-avaya/newsroom/news-releases/2016/pr-160606b/.

For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

by Gary Audin

Without the customer you have nothing. Customer loyalty is the key to success. Customer churn is a cost and re-marketing the customer back is more expensive than working to retain that customer. If you want to grow your business, you need to increase the number of loyal customers. You need an integrated set of tools to ensure revenue growth, continued profits, and prevent reputation damage.

In this EDUcast, recorded with Stephen Wingfield, Telecom Sales Expert at Bicom Systems www.bicomsystems.com and Gary Audin, they discuss the problems and solutions encountered when selling and supporting customers. Stephen points out that the customer relationship is a long term and continuous effort. Listening to your customers and positively responding goes a long way towards customer retention.

What you will learn in this EDUcast:

The Importance of Customer Loyalty

Consequences of Customer Churn

How to Increase Customer Loyalty

Bicom Systems www.bicomsystems.com has been researching and integrating innovative Open Source Telephony Projects to commercialize by unifying with its suite of Telecoms Management Software. Bicom Systems launched its PBXware software in 2004 and became the first company to deliver an Open Standards Turnkey Telephony System. The concept of “Professional Open Standards Telephony” was born.

By unifying the best of open standards telephony and its own proprietary software, Bicom Systems provides SMBs, Enterprises, and Governments worldwide with turnkey solutions that respond to clients’ exact needs within a very cost-effective framework.

This mix takes the best of royalty-free software, vibrant open source communities, available custom development backed up by accountable, professional support services brought together with commercially coded management tools.

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In the new cloud and federated rich world of communication, E9-1-1 and related services are more important than ever. West Safety Services, a division built on the innovative work of 911 Enable. In this podcast Lev Deich, VP of Service Delivery and Operations at West discusses the shape of the E9-1-1 today, Kari’s Law, West’s partnership and specialization for Avaya users, and migration. Lev discusses his presentation: “Upgrading your Legacy Systems without Breaking 9-1-1.”

Visit www.west.com/safety-services/

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by Gary Audin

Most organizations have a premises based set of hardware and software for their contact centers. In some cases it is old and needs to be replaced. In other cases, the seasonal variations in traffic demand a full sized center that is underutilized most of the year. In another case, the solutions they own does not have social media, chat, messaging, or video. In any of these cases, migrating to the cloud has to be on the organization’s radar.

Mayur Anadkat, VP Product Marketing at Five9 and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the SpeechTek conference. They discuss the sales, service, and support that is part of the contact center. Mayur thinks that cloud solutions for the contact center have moved beyond an idea to an accepted reality. The contact center was the purview of the CIO and sometimes the CFO. It is now an important tool for the CMO. The contact center is part of the marketing strategy.

Five9 www.five9.com is a provider of cloud contact center software. They transform contact centers into customer engagement centers of excellence, coupled with a deep understanding of the cost and complexity involved in running a contact center.

Five9 software creates more successful customer interactions while increasing contact center productivity, without the capital expense and maintenance costs of premise-based systems. They are focused on building, implementing, and supporting an easy-to-use, complete cloud contact center solution with a flexible architecture that adapts to the customer’s changing needs. Customers can enhance the Five9 cloud contact center platform with customer relationship management (CRM), analytics, workforce management, performance management solutions, and telephony providers.

by Gary Audin

Stress testing can highlight problems that do not occur when performing function and feature testing. Stress testing goes beyond component level testing to verify the performance of production systems and environments. When testing IVR and contact center systems, even your SIP trunks, from the outside-in, stress testing reveals the system performance from the customer’s perspective under real-world conditions. You also need to test call scenarios that most effectively monitor the end-to-end performance of your contact center customer interactions from an outside-in perspective. Testing can stop the finger pointing and help resolve issues.

Russ Zilles VP, Testing Solutions at IR www.ir.com and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the SpeechTek conference. They discuss the value and benefits of testing the call center systems BEFORE they go live. System stress must be produced to ensure that the systems perform as expected under heavy traffic conditions.

IR www.ir.com is the corporate brand name of Integrated Research Limited, a provider of proactive performance management software for critical IT infrastructure, payments, and communications ecosystems.

More than 1,000 organizations in over 60 countries rely on IR Prognosis to provide business critical insights and ensure continuity-critical systems deliver high availability and performance for millions of their customers across the globe. Every second, thousands of teams work tirelessly to maintain order but the threat of a problem is never far away.

IR makes sure these systems run at their best and predict vulnerabilities before they arise.

Today IR Prognosis solutions for payment hubs, unified communications ecosystems, and contact centers are trusted by Fortune 500 companies to keep their business running. IR continues to be an industry pioneer with innovations in predictive and prescriptive analytics as well as advances in automation, allowing IT to stop a problem even before it happens.

by Gary Audin

You need to unlock the vast amount of data within all, not just a sample, of your call recordings. Listening to a sample of the recordings can miss important information about the call. Are all the agents following the script? Are all the agents compliant? Are there changes occurring with the customer’s traffic that needs to be flagged and resolved? Recording a call is the start. Analyzing the call is the finish.

Nick Bandy CEO of iQventures www.iqventures.com and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the SpeechTek conference. Nick covers the emergence of speech analytics and its value to the contact center. He points out that at minimum, call recordings can be analyzed after the call is recorded. He foresees real time speech analytics becoming common once the cost of the processing decreases. He has discovered that different verticals use speech analytics differently so the analytics tools have to respond to these requirements.

iQventures mission is to revolutionize communications technology by creating intelligent, easy-to-use solutions for their customers. It has decades of experience in technology-driven service organization. Their ultimate goal is to create a seamless, intuitive ecosystem for business communications that helps you better communicate, and better operate. The SpeechIQ™ product http://iqventures.com/speechiq/ makes it easy to analyze sales effectiveness, quality assurance, and compliance. It is a cost effective solution that is available on-premises or in the cloud.