In life, saving money usually comes from giving up something, or reducing what you have.  The same applies in business, but here’s an exception…SIP trunking – the convergence of voice and data delivered over a single broadband connection that lowers costs and offers better service.  “Lowers costs and better service” sounds like an oxymoron, but in this case it is not, which is why SIP trunking is seeing explosive growth…

In my first of three blogs on Telecommunications in the Cloud, I discussed how the growth and importance of telecommunications combined with the continually growing reliability, security, and cost-efficiency of the hosted model (in the cloud) has created enterprise and residential services that can’t be ignored.  Specifically, I discussed Hosted IP PBX for enterprises, a Communications-as-a-Service (CaaS) that is a win-win for both the network operator to offer and the enterprise to subscribe to.

In this second blog, I would like to discuss how telecommunications in the cloud can benefit residential customers (including small office/home office) with high-quality, feature rich calling services, while once again being a profitable opportunity for network operators.

It is pretty obvious these days that both in our professional and personal lives, telecommunications is playing a much bigger and more vital role than it has in the past.  One doesn’t need to be an analyst to draw this conclusion, as the empirical evidence is pretty clear with all of the (mobile) devices (e.g. phone, tablet) everyone has one or more of.  Add to this the continually growing reliability, security, and cost-efficiency of the hosted model (in the cloud), and you have enterprise and residential services that can’t be ignored.

One such service is the Hosted IP PBX for the enterprise, which is the topic of this blog and the first in my three-blog series I am calling Telecommunications in the Cloud.

This is my third blog on Self-Service Optimization and the final one in this series.  In part one of my three-part blog, I discussed how in the Personalization Act, the strategy should focus on enhancing the customer experience by making the frequent customer feel known, welcome, and appreciated by personalizing their experience.  In part two, the Steering Act, I discussed how the strategy should aim at shortening the duration of the interaction, thereby leading to an increased potential for repeat business.  In this blog, the Post Contact Act, I will discuss the importance of measuring customer satisfaction (or loyalty or NPS), as well as how customer satisfaction can be measured and improved at the end of the call (performance and quality assurance).

 In part one of my three-part blog, the Personalization Act , I discussed how the strategy should be to focus on enhancing the customer experience by making the frequent customer feel known, welcome, and appreciated through personalization.  

For example, being greeted with “Good afternoon Mr. Vahdat (personal greeting), thank you for being our customer for over nine years (personal announcement), are you calling about your credit amount (call prediction)?”of course all in your preferred language (language control), it sets up a call for success.  

In this Steering Act, the strategy should be to shorten the duration of the interaction, thereby leading to an increased potential for repeat business. 

We all know that self-service is a win-win proposition.  Yet, self-service has become a catch-all buzzword used by enterprises and service providers alike to demonstrate outwardly that they value their customers’ time.  Unfortunately, most of these companies haven’t taken the time to understand self-service and that customers’ frustrations can stem during any one of the three stages of an interaction (an interaction is typically a voice or video call, SMS message, or USSD transaction). 

In my May 6^th blog titled Rich Communications Services (RCS) – SMS/MMS 2.0, I discussed how RCS is making a comeback with the February 22^nd GSMA press release. The press release named Google, along with 19 mobile network operators including América Móvil, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, KPN, Millicom, MTN, Orange, TeliaSonera, Telstra, Turkcell, VimpelCom, and Vodafone, aligning behind RCS.  In this blog, I would like to dig a little deeper into what RCS is and how it benefits network operators and subscribers.

SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, NaaS, MaaS, UCaaS are all examples of XaaS.  According to TechTarget, XaaS is a collective term said to stand for “anything as a service.”  The acronym refers to an increasing number of services that are delivered over the Internet, on-demand, and on a subscription basis. For the readers of this blog, especially network operators, UcaaS – Unified Communications as a Service – should be the acronym of interest, especially since it is forecasted to be a $37.85 billion dollar market by 2022 according to Transparency Market Research.

In my previous blog, I shared my thoughts on how Visual IVR, or Visual Interactive Voice Response, is an ideal service for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to run on their new LTE networks.  What makes Visual IVR ideal for LTE is the need for speed, since the visual content is web-based (unlike Video IVR where the content is streaming together with the audio).  In many cases, LTE also provides the added ability to simultaneously manage a voice call and data to a network.  In short, Visual IVR enables the caller to make choices both visually and audibly by syncing the audio and visual portions of the call and LTE’s rollout helps make this happen.

Services, Services, Services…  you can practically hear the cry of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) all over the world pleading for new (or even old) services that can run on their shiny new LTE networks.  Of course, this is nothing new, as this repeated cry for services is generated with the roll-out of every new generation of network (e.g. 2G, 3G), because MNOs are well aware that the serious payoff comes primarily from running  new services, which in turn can justify their investment.