Cloud Telephony Experiments

Using KooKoo, group buying sites can build simple telephony applications opening up another channel to reach their customers. We can have an application which does the following: 1. When users call, if it is a first time caller, ask the user to select his preferences and link his phone number on the website (which is anyway being done in most group buying websites) 2. The next time the user calls, fetch his preferences from the database and play back the deal to him in his preferred language. 3. If necessary, you can connect the caller to the business directly or process payment over the IVR system . The advantages with this approach are: 1. No more spam as callers call to know the deals 2. Play back the deals in multiple languages. 3. Reach more customers. This can be achieved in 10 lines of code as shown below. <?php require_once('response.php');// this is kookoo library. You can download it from KooKoo website. $r= new Response(); if($_REQUEST['e...

You have just started up a new venture and things are looking good. You have been able to get a good domain name and you have established your presence in the web world. But what about the telecom world. How are people able to reach you. You would have published your mobile number on the website. But this leads to a lot of problems as people tend to call you at odd hours and you would lose all your privacy. Also you may not be able to attend a call at all times and you may lose business. To solve this and other problems why don't you build a virtual receptionist using KooKoo . Just follow the steps to get a virtual receptionist: 1. Register for KooKoo 2. Upgrade your account to get a phone number. Plans start as low as Rs.500/month. You can also use the development number of KooKoo with a pin to get free access. 3. Download the code from here 4. Host the code on your web server. 5. Login to KooKoo and update your application URL to point to vr.php Thats it. Now you have...

Use Case: Customers can call to register with a website. Websites publish a phone number which users can call to register. Solution: 1.Publish phone number for the website. 2.When the customer calls the KooKoo number, KooKoo passes the caller id in the "cid" parameter. 3.Check if it is a first time caller. If yes, generate a random password and send it as an SMS to the user. 4.User can immediately login and change his settings like updating password, adding email id etc. Advantages: Automatic verification of users happens as they provide the phone number.  Faster registration as users just make a call rather than going through captchas, registration forms etc Disadvantages: Obviously, as this is a new process there can be an unexpected loophole. This is just an idea and still has to be validated. Who is it useful for: Almost all eCommerce sites who need a registration for order tracking etc or for one time registrations, this might be a ...

Use Case: Customers order items on websites. To know the status of their order, customers have to visit the website, login and select the order. Suggestion: Provide order details over phone Advantages: Users need not be connected to the Internet to know the status of the order. Solution: 1.Ask the user to enter his phone number while placing the order. 2.Store the phone details along with the order. 3.When the customer calls the KooKoo number, KooKoo passes the caller id in the "cid" parameter. 4.Query your database for the order details based on the caller phone number. 5.Play the order details using <playtext> tag. [Update] Code: $link = mysql_connect ( 'hostname' , 'username' , 'yourPassword' ); mysql_select_db ( 'database_name' , $link ); $sql = " select * from orders where phone_number=$_REQUEST['cid'] " ; $result = mysql_query ( $sql , $link ) or die ( mysql_error ()); $row = mysql_f...

After the wonderful startup weekend conducted in Delhi, the scene now shifts to Bangalore. I actually wanted to do this blog before the Delhi event, but I got a little busy and could not do it. So here we go. In this blog post I will try to mention as many ideas as possible which can built using the KooKoo platform. So, in no particular order, the ideas: Appointment reminder service. Call attendees and remind them. This could be useful for event management websites etc Group voice messaging. Create groups on the website. Call a number and record your message, choose the group.The people in the group will be called and the message will be played back.This could be useful for managers to send a message to the team or CEOs to send a message to the employees etc. On the fly conferencing solutions Birthday reminder. Store all your friend's birthdays. When the birthday comes, you will get a call first and KooKoo will inform you  whose birthday it is and then it will call your fr...

Back in November, Techcrunch published an article, The Phone Call Is Dead . That really set the alarm bells ringing as we had just started working on our startup, KooKoo , whose main purpose was to allow people to make and receive phone calls programatically. A leading blog like Techcrunch writing an obituary about the main feature of your startup is really not the best way to start :). Then I saw another article, Phone Numbers Are Dead ,by SayNow (This was actually an earlier article, but I saw it later). Ok, so phone numbers are dead and the phone call is also dead. Shit. Did I choose a wrong startup idea? Then I thought, But what about 911(or 108 or other emergency numbers). Is that number dead too? What about birthday wishes and new year wishes? Will I not get a call for those anymore? What about the 123 different ways in which people are using calls? What if someone wants to communicate with me immediately?Well, they can email me.Or maybe, they could tweet me or post on...

The short way: Register for an Issueburner account Register for a KooKoo account Download support.zip and unzip it in your web server root. Update your KooKoo URL in the settings page after you login. The URL should point to support.php on your web server. So if your webserver is at http://www.mycompany.com and you have unzipped support.php in the web server root directory, then your URL should be http://www.mycompany.com/support.php Publish the KooKoo phone number and your pin and your support email id to start interacting with your customers. If you do not want the pin number, just upgrade your KooKoo account to get a phone number for your business. Login to Issueburner to start monitoring your support calls and emails.  The Shortest way: Send an email to support@kookoo.in and we will set it up for you :) The long way: You have setup a business and you have acquired your first customers. They start using your product/service and most of them are happy....