Editorial

Our partner, Easy On Hold (EOH), based in Kalamazoo, MI, provides streaming music and messages on a custom marketing schedule for contact centers, enterprise-level corporations and small-medium size businesses via their phones and overhead environments. The company creates effective message on hold productions, auto attendant and IVR greetings, overhead announcements, and overhead music solutions. And they’ve got some great guidance for what to play and when for your callers during the holidays.

Editorial

Eric Altman, Sales Engineer, Vodia: I understand Vodia is reaching its 10-year anniversary. It’s a pretty significant thing. Can you go through the evolution of Vodia? Where we’ve been and, actually, where we’re going? Christian Stredicke, President and CEO, Vodia: It started much longer than ten years ago. It started in 2005 and under a different name, Pbxnsip. “PBX” for PBX, “n” for and “sip” for session initiation protocol. At that time you clearly saw the cloud already, and there was no product readily available that was ready for the cloud but was carrier-grade. There was BroadSoft and a company called Sylantro which was ultimately acquired by BroadSoft. But these were really big, big deployments. There was nothing for a small MSP so it would be able to run a small PBX in the cloud. That was the original goal, to write software that can be used by these people.

Announcement

PromptVoice sells its white-label service via the channel. It’s used by unified communications and contact center service providers and their resellers to provide professional recordings as part of their solutions. Vodia resellers can now profit from providing professional prompts, in-queue and on-hold audio recordings as part of their telephony solutions.

Editorial

At Vodia, we understand how important branding is to both enterprises and SMEs, and our phone system is perfect for any MSP, VAR, WISPs System Integrator and Interconnect looking to build and maintain its brand. We make it so our resellers can brand our apps, web interface and emails – it’s as easy as dropping in a logo or as in-depth as changing the web front end Email templates.

Announcement

Vodia Networks (“Vodia”), maker of cutting-edge software-based telephone systems, is pleased to announce the interoperability of its phone system with the Yealink Wireless Headset Series, which comprises the Essential DECT Wireless Headsets (WH62 & WH63), the Premium DECT Wireless Headsets (WH66 & WH67) and an entry-level Bluetooth headset (BH72).

Announcement

Vodia Networks (“Vodia”), maker of cutting-edge software-based telephone systems, is pleased to announce the interoperability of its phone system with two new innovative Htek products, the new Htek enterprise smart IP phone UCV20 and the company’s new enterprise smart video phone UCV22. The UCV20 and the UCV22 are innovative smart IP phones with a seven-inch multi-point touch IPS screen (1280×800 pixels for UCV20 and 1024×600 pixels for UCV22), built-in Bluetooth module and dual band Wi-Fi (2.4G/5G) module, covering all scenes.

Announcement

Our customers actually started with us, let’s say 400 calls, about 400 calls a day. Five years later there are 3000 calls per day. The reason for that is we applied Vodia functionality to various parts of their organizations and captured all the call records that transacted through the system, and we analyzed, for them, to find the source of the calls, what areas geographically, and thus the customer was able to focus their resources in servicing those areas, reaching many more patients and many more doctors.

Tech

SMS is cool when you can send SMS and MMS messages directly to customers from your user portal. To configure your Skyetel SMS, log in to your Skyetel portal and navigate to the 3 cog wheels in the right-hand corner (shown below). This will bring you to the API section.

Announcement

“Our company has been using 3CX for all our client phone systems before I got here. It has been nothing short of an absolute nightmare,” said Liz DelSignore, DTM, PCM and Technician at Hexis Consulting. “Since switching to Vodia, once the initial set up is complete (whether multi-tenant or single tenant), it has been a much more pleasant experience. Support is always there for you when you need them, and they genuinely will do everything possible to help your MSP. Being a pretty small MSP ourselves, that matters a lot – to both us and our customers. We recommend Vodia to literally every MSP that even asks about VOIP and PBX now.”

Announcement

“We are the perfect solution for Avaya customers,” said Kyle Asbury, Director, Sales and Marketing, Vodia. “If you stay with Avaya, we’ll support you; if you want to go with another brand, we can help you migrate to both another IP phone brand and to our best-in-class, feature-rich, easy-to-deploy, robust and secure cloud PBX.”

Editorial

Another factor driving hybrid and remote work is inflation, 9.1 percent in the USA as of July 2022, while many economists are pricing in a recession for the euro zone either later this year or in 2023, with inflation in the zone forecasted at 8.3 percent for this year. With the price of goods and services lofted skyward by inflation, and the average price of a gallon of gas across the USA above $4.00 per gallon, working from home gives Americans the chance to reduce the amount of money they spend on commuting and meals and other incidental costs related to working on-site every day.

Editorial

Even with so many ways to engage with a company or brand, including and particularly social media, today’s customers still prefer voice to connect with your business. So, the phone remains a core component of the customer experience, but many call centers are unaware 86 percent of their customers experience significant hold time when they do call. This is where high-value queues and on-hold content can vastly improve the customer experience.