Cloud Telephony Experiments

Google has launched Google business messages without much fanfare. It's just a small button that pops up when someone searches for your business on Google. But from the conversation industry perspective this is HUGE .   Do you know that the small call button drives millions of calls i n a year for pizza joints and other retailers in the US. Businesses spend more than a trillion dollars supporting billions of customer service calls each year. Now imagine how many chat conversations the "Message" button can drive.  Think of how customers interact with business. 1. Search on Google. 2. Click on web site link. 3. Web site shows chat pop up and tries to force the user to chat.(Annoying. I know :)) 4. User clicks on chat and starts conversing with a bot or an agent. This flow can now be completely changed. The new flow can be: 1. Search on Google. 2. User clicks on Message and starts conversing with a bot or an agent. What if you could design a customer experience that helps...

Contact centers have been using social media as a channel for a while now. They use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Google+ to connect with leads and customers. But, have you ever thought of using WhatsApp? I get it – WhatsApp is a simple messaging app and it does not have the same functionality that other social networks have.  But, that shouldn’t stop you from exploring this channel. WhatsApp has more than1 billion active users. This is more than any other messaging app in the world. Plus, WhatsApp is the fastest growing social network. It is the number one messaging app in India, Brazil, and South Africa.  I know that WhatsApp is not a social network, but when you start a conversation with a prospect, the prospect will see your company’s name and contact details right under your contact details. This is a great way to start a conversation with your prospect and to set the tone for future interactions.  Plus, since WhatsApp is a messaging app, sales reps can send ...

WhatsApp is slowly opening up the business API. Even now its not a straight forward process and you need to go through hoops or work with a partner to get the business API access. But lets say you are one of the lucky ones and have got access to the business API.(or you can talk to us and we will get you started). You now want to start providing support to your customers on the WhatsApp channel. What are some important points to remember? Do you need to do anything special? What are its advantages? What are its disadvantages? In this blogpost I will try to answer these questions. Its just another channel: WhatsApp maybe the most used messaging platform in the world, but for your business, its just another channel. Deal with it like you would any other channel. It has the advantages of a chat channel(asynchronous, multiple chats can be handled by a single agent, share photos etc) with the added advantage that your customers need not install any new chat widgets or get used to a...

Ever since we introduced cloud telephony to India in 2009, Ozonetel has always been known as the go to startup for cloud telephony requirements like cloud call centers and virtual numbers. Voice has been our mainstay for a long time and it will continue to be so in the future too. But starting this month, we at Ozonetel have decided to have an increased focus on text based communication channels in addition to voice channels. It's not that we did not support these channels earlier. We already supported, chat and some email functionality. But it has been in bits and pieces only. But starting this month text channels, including email, chat and social media will become First Class Citizens in our stack. They will get the same love that our voice channels get. Unsplash           To achieve this we have planned several upgrades to our platform which will unfold over the coming weeks. Here is a sneak peak of what we are planning. Built in Contact Manager: This has bee...

Well, its been 11 years since Twilio launched their voice API in November 2008. I would say that was a major turning point in the cloud telephony industry. Before that, for people to build telephony applications, you either had to depend on proprietary platforms like Avaya dialog designer or build on arcane technologies like VXML which again was supported at varying degrees by the incumbents. Enter Twilio with their voice API and the industry changed for the better. Since it's been almost 11 years now I thought now might be a good time to do a comprehensive review of the cloud telephony industry as a whole in general and in India in particular. The Beginning Twilio was undoubtedly the startup which ushered in the era of cloud telephony. They started in November 2008. At that time in India, we at Ozonetel had launched a hosted VXML platform. There were no takers. After all who coded in VXML :) So when Twilio launched and we saw them take off, we immediately realized tha...

Ever since WhatsApp launched their business API last year, businesses have been waiting to enable the WhatsApp support channel. WhatsApp has slowly been rolling out API support to select businesses. Though most use cases have been around chat bots, there is a good use case for human agent support on the WhatsApp channel. We at Ozonetel were one of the first companies which enabled agent support for the WhatsApp channel as soon as the business API released. You can read more about it at https://blog.kookoo.in/2018/08/kookoo-contact-center-integration-with.html. Today we have improved the integration by connecting with Zendesk. So if you are serving your customers using Zendesk, you can easily enable WhatsApp channel for your customers. Your customers can chat with your agents directly on WhatsApp. We already have one of the best CTI integrations with Zendesk which you can install from the Zendesk marketplace, https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/kookoo/ The same app can now be ...

Well, it's finally here. The number masking API. To be fair, KOOKOO has supported number masking since when we launched the <dial> tag and already a lot of our customers use our number masking services. But this launch makes it easier for new developers to use the virtual number services. Instead of building a full KOOKOO app and hosting it, you can just call the API. Flickr What is it? Number mask API allows you to create conversation sessions between your customers and your mobile workforce without revealing their personal phone numbers. Create virtual phone numbers instantly with this API. Who can use this? Any business which needs to protect the privacy of its customers and it's employees will find this API useful. For example, ride hailing services a-la Uber, Ola etc can use this API to create virtual number sessions per ride. Delivery services like Zomato, Foodpanda, Swiggy etc can use this API to create virtual numbers on demand per delivery. How can...