How Cloud Communications and IVR Offer Flexibility, Low Costs
November 29, 2012
By Rachel Ramsey, TMCnet Web Editor
Cloud computing and communications have taken the technology industry by storm. Companies and consumers alike are adopting the cloud in different ways, opting for the Internet-based communications option for its flexibility, low-cost and on-demand features.
In a whitepaper, “Cloud Communications and IVR: A cost-effective solution to quickly create, deploy and bring your voice applications to market,” Interact, a provider of IVR solutions, discusses the features and services offered with cloud communications and how they can be implemented by an organization to offer greater flexibility and low costs to immediately impact a company’s business.
In the past, organizations looking to implement a software solution would need to budget for setup, licensing, training, hardware and software and maintenance costs. As a hosted solution, cloud communications require no hardware costs, no need to manage and maintain telephony hardware or software on site.
With cloud communications, businesses don’t have to worry about the expenses associated with infrastructure.
With cloud computing, services operate consistently, with capacity and performance being able to scale to meet use demand. Cloud communications enable voice applications to be written and deployed, with the added benefit of providing service creation tools to help write and deploy applications.
The whitepaper explains that cloud communications also allow for new business models and respond rapidly to changing market and customer demands while protecting sensitive information.
Large parts of utilities are taken up with customer contact, either incoming or outgoing, and this is where IVR technology and cloud-based communications systems like Interact's can step into the fray, helping utilities not only save money by allowing basic service requests like bill payment or status reports to be automated, but also improve customer service by better routing incoming customers to those most likely to be able to help resolve their particular issues.
Having a good customer service program in place can improve relations and keep customers less likely to seek out alternatives to a utility's services.
With the advent of new technologies, the cost and pace of upgrades due to these technology advances have increased. With the right cloud communications provider, technologies such as Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TT) are included with the solution, allowing companies to avoid the costly expenditures of integrating the technology themselves.
Interact has developed Nimblevox to offer companies pay-as-you-go billing and to enable companies to quickly build and deploy applications into production, while at the same time scaling to meet customer demand. With Nimblevox, virtually anyone can build voice applications and call flows without installing any tools on a computer and deploy these applications with the click of a button.
When looking to develop, manage and deploy applications in the cloud, Nimblevox is a proven cloud communications solution that enables organizations to do so with greater innovation, less risk and at a lower total cost of ownership.
To read the entire whitepaper, click here, and to learn more about Nimblevox and its cloud communications offerings, visit www.nimblevox.com.
Want to learn more about cloud computing solutions geared specifically toward small to medium-sized businesses? Don’t miss the Cloud4SMB Expo, collocated with ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida. Stay in touch with everything happening at Cloud4SMB Expo. Follow us on Twitter.
Edited by Braden Becker