Hosted VoIP

VoIP is great, VoIP is good, when it works the way it should.

Companies of all types and sizes are looking at the efficiencies and cost savings that VoIP can deliver, but at the same time they are being cautious - oh so cautious - when it comes to actually deploying it. After all, VoIP has its quirks, and switching your company’s phone system over all at once does pose some risks. For example, if the power goes out, there goes your phone system - or if your IP PBX (News - Alert) goes down and you don’t have a back up system, well, you’ll be without mission critical communications for a while. There are also security risks – will hackers use VoIP to steal valuable customer information, or simply to sabotage your business? And then there’s the whole matter of whether your network has adequate bandwidth to handle VoIP and how good the call quality will be after you implement a new system. You see, when you migrate over to VoIP, you lose the reliability of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) - and for most business owners, that’s a pretty scary thing.

This is exactly why companies like UCN (News - Alert) are building systems which enable companies to migrate over to VoIP gradually. The company, which delivers hosted communications solutions to the contact center industry, today announced availability of its new inContact/VoIP Service, which lets companies connect both traditional TDM and VoIP stations to UCN’s hosted inContact handling applications. The solution provides PBX functionality to general business users as well.

UCN’s inContact/VoIP Service delivers the features contact centers need to improve the customer contact experience, as well as to increase the productivity of agents handling calls. But now the system lets contact centers “ease into VoIP” by letting them mix VoIP seats with traditional TDM seats. This lets contact center companies (and other businesses) “start small and test VoIP” without disrupting their overall operations. Businesses can implement IP technology within a smaller group before committing to a corporate-wide deployment. In addition, organizations can present a unified set of contact management functions and features to any agent station, no matter what voice transport technology is being used and no matter where the station is located - in the home, at the branch or at the main office.

“Companies often delay the benefits of deploying advanced contact center technologies until they make a decision on their connectivity service and PBX system,” said UCN CEO Paul Jarman in a press release. “With inContact/VoIP Service, the decision on whether or not to go VoIP can be made, then expanded or changed without disruption to critical call routing routines and contact handling services. Whether the VoIP technology resides within the network or at the customer’s site, inContact supports both.”

The service comes in two versions: “VoIP Service for Agents,” which provides access to the full suite of core contact handling services plus free extension-to-extension dialing between offices and at-home workers; and “VoIP Service for Business,” which includes all services available to agents, plus hosted IP-PBX features such as voice mail, conference calling, caller ID, call forwarding, among others.

“Now, through inContact, companies gain access to PBX features, advanced contact handling services and such complementary products as workforce management scheduling and forecasting at a significantly lower cost when compared to purchasing and maintaining the same feature set as on-site equipment and software,” Jarman said.

InContact/VoIP Service is available through UCN sales reps and channel Partners, with the VoIP Service sold as a separate connectivity option with the core inContact purchase.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.