The Evolution of Call Management

Adding margin-rich solutions to the offering not only adds value to the sale and differentiates one reseller over another, but most importantly increases revenue.  Simon Whatley from Tollring believes that “resellers are missing out on a huge opportunity by selling call management only when requested.  Our most successful resellers are those that sell 100% of systems integrated with call management and sell the solution before they sell the PBX.”  He continues “Selling call management using the cost-justification model gives solution partners the advantage, differentiating them from those strictly meeting a list of requirements within a specific budget.“

Call management has become a significant contributor of business critical information.  Managers are becoming increasingly accountable for company expenditure so integrating call management products not only enables clients to deliver a quantifiable return on any telecoms investment, but is also proven to drive excellence in customer service.

Unreturned missed calls is an area that delivers fast returns on investment and is at the heart of any customer service strategy.  Tollring recently won a software excellence award for innovative management of missed calls that resulted in improved customer satisfaction and retention, delivering significant financial returns.

Calls can be tracked in real-time to understand how long it takes to resolve a call, how long the caller had to wait to be answered and how the call was resolved (by the customer calling in again or the customer being called).  KPIs are set to ensure calls are resolved within a certain time each day.

To achieve competitive advantage and deliver new levels of sophistication in the missed calls arena, Tollring solutions deliver accuracy even when a call is answered by an Auto Attendant.  A call which is terminated after being answered by an Auto Attendant should be considered as an unresolved missed call, although many solutions are unable to distinguish between a call that is answered by a person and one that is answered by an IVR or Auto Attendant system.

Integrating call analytics with call recording enables the process to be completed; track how long a caller waits to be answered or called back, then assess how the call progresses by listening to the recording. From this you can identify whether the outcome was negatively affected by the wait time.  Live statistics on contact centres such as call queues, coupled with historical trends enables staff modelling, helping businesses to gain efficiencies.  In selling integrated call management solutions, resellers gain competitive advantage over those not solution selling and customers gain competitive advantage through improved customer service.  Although customer requirements vary from simple but accurate business communications data to extensive analytics of ‘informal’ customer facing teams, improving customer interactions is essential to every business.

There is market demand for call management applications for hosted telephony that are easy to deploy and offer the same level of analytics and overall functionality as on premise solutions.  Tollring is launching its hosted version of icall suite in partnership with hosted telephony partners this quarter.  There is also big demand for call management apps on mobile devices so Tollring is launching the next generation of browser-based call management including real-time analytics on mobile devices in the Autumn.  Tony Martino, MD of Tollring comments “We are a dynamic business.  I am proud of how our products and services have evolved over the past couple of years and continues to evolve in line with business needs.  Our solutions will significantly increase revenue opportunities for resellers, providing them with call management applications to meet any business requirement.”