Month: March 2024

Cloud calling—also known as telephony—might just be the best phone system set-up for your business for a long list of reasons. It’s flexible, inexpensive, and it doesn’t require a lot of equipment or technical knowledge.

But cloud calling isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Rather, it’s an option that can work well for a lot of people in the world of call centers.

Read on and find out why cloud calling might just be the phone system you need for your call center.

Cloud vs VoIP vs UCaaS vs PBX

Cloud calling is a technology that allows you to make and receive phone calls over the internet. Instead of using traditional phone lines, all calls are routed through a cloud network.

Telephony is frequently mistaken with other terms, like VoIP, UCaaS, and even PBX. Here’s how to distinguish all of these terms.

• VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. It’s a technology that uses the internet to make phone calls, but it needs a physical switch to be installed in an office. All calls are routed through that switch using a broadband internet connection. Cloud calling, on the other hand, does not need that physical switch. The calls are routed through cloud servers instead.
• UCaaS stands for Unified Communications as a Service. It’s an entire platform with technologies and services that allows businesses to conduct all sorts of communication like cloud calling, voicemail, and more over the internet.
• PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange. It’s the traditional call center technology used prior to the internet. It consists of a physical switchboard that routes incoming calls to the correct extension.

6 Reasons to Choose Cloud Calling for Your Business

Some of the most important reasons to go with cloud calling include:

Cost Efficiency

Cloud telephony is one…

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When running a call center, it behooves you to check your CDRs (Call Detail Records) from time to time. 

These are not full scripts of entire conversations, but rather, a stored log of information about every phone interaction between your call center agents and your customers. Typically, the details include details like the dates and times of each call, its duration, the cost, the phone numbers involved, and whether it was an inbound or outbound call. 

Keeping such logs is considered an industry standard practice for many reasons, though the one reason that might interest you the most is that your CDRs contain critical performance metrics that can measure how well your business is doing and show you where it can improve. 

5 Surprising Things You Can Manage With Call Detail Records

At their most fundamental level, CDRs can help you understand your monthly phone usage statistics for billing purposes. They also serve to illustrate aspects related to your system capacity (such as your average call volume), and you can even take a look at your various customer segments to gain basic marketing insights.

Still, savvy managers understand that this data can be used in a variety of other creative ways. For instance, digging into your call logs can provide you with a wealth of real-time information that can directly impact vital growth metrics like agent productivity, system efficiency, and service quality. Likewise, CDRs can even offer insight into the performance trends that support better staffing decisions and the adoption of next-generation technological tools. 

Efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to growth and improvement, and CDRs can be a gold mine of information for making every interaction count—as long as you know where to look and how to use it. 

Below, we’ve identified five…

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Caller ID has been helping us screen calls from telemarketers, ex-partners, and overly chatty relatives since the late 1980s.

Nevertheless, spam callers keep finding new ways to get around it.

In fact, it’s gotten so bad that a prevailing opinion these days is to avoid picking up any call that doesn’t come from one of your contacts—and even new phones are coming out with stock features that can send unknown callers directly to voicemail.

But what if you miss an emergency call from someone at your kid’s school, or an important call from your doctor’s new office number?

For unpredictable reasons like these, many people continue to rely on traditional caller ID and its available alternatives to help keep unwanted calls at bay. 

Using Your Carrier’s Caller ID

Despite its shortcomings, traditional caller ID is still included in most modern phones and service plans these days.

Meanwhile, lower-tier plans from major providers and smaller or regional providers tend to offer base-level caller ID services that only show the number that’s calling. 

In an attempt to address the pitfalls of traditional caller ID, large cell providers are now offering enhanced caller ID services as part of their higher-tiered plans.

These services vary between carriers, but they generally offer a better caller ID database and more features to combat spam. Here’s an overview of what some of the major U.S. carriers offer:

Verizon: Verizon’s Call Filter is a service that identifies incoming callers by name and provides spam warnings. It also lets customers block unwanted calls.

AT&T: AT&T’s ActiveArmor service offers automatic fraud blocking and suspected spam warnings. Customers can also customize call-blocking settings based on their preferences.

T-Mobile: T-Mobile’s Scam Shield includes Scam ID and Scam Block features, which help customers identify and block potential scam calls.

Sprint: Sprint’s Premium Caller…

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