Voxeo Talks

View the Voxeo Business-hosted  Webinar we held featuring Forrester Research, Inc. on “How to transform your Customer’s experience While Driving Down Costs”.

Customers today expect more when they engage with companies and offering merely “good” service is no longer sufficient to retain their loyalty. Contact centers need to quickly respond to changing customer demands and deliver dynamic support consistently across all channels. This webinar examined innovative solutions that support the new customer imperative. It provided insight into emerging market trends for contact centers including social media, blending inbound and outbound automated transactions, cross channel communications and customer experience analytics. Additionally, it is essential that today’s contact centers support solid business goals and deliver world class service while lowering operational costs. The session discussed best practices for achieving this optimal customer support balance.

Dan York, Director Conversations at Voxeo and Elizabeth Herrell, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. talked about customer expectations on phone self-services, benefits of multi-channel strategies in customer service, and the usage of new channels such as social medias within this service offerings. They provided best practices for state-of-the-art services, that increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs.

View the recorded session.

Visit Voxeo during the Voice Biometrics Conference, May 04 – 05, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City.

Dan York, Director Conversations at Voxeo, will speak on a panel regarding voice biometrics offering on-demand.

Get a discounted rate for the conference by using the code “VXEO” when you register.

Looking forward to welcome you there.

Join our jam Session on “Web Development with Voxeo VoiceObjects for iPhone and other Mobile Browsers” which is scheduled for Thursday, April 22, 2010.

We will demonstrate how to create state-of-the-art mobile web applications based on service configuration in the VoiceObjects Desktop environment. Andreas Volmer will show you how to create web apps for the iPhone that look and behave similar to native apps.

Register Now

Time: 8:00 AM Western, 11:00 AM Eastern, 5:00 PM Central European

With eComm America 2010 underway out in San Francisco, it is great to see that once again the incredibly talented photographer Duncan Davidson is hard at work capturing the event. This image of Voxeon Jose de Castro is from Duncan… and you can see the other images as he is uploading them to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecommconf

With today being the second day of the show, you can expect to see more images appearing there throughout the day and continuing tomorrow for the third and final day.

In looking through the stream so far, I see these images of folks connected to Voxeo in some way:

• Voxeon Jose de Castro, Chief Architect in Voxeo Labs:
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecommconf/4536860012/ (the one in this post)
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecommconf/4536859418/

• Developer Mark Headd from our partner Tele-Works, who has also provided a number of posts to our Voxeo Developers Corner blog and writes at his VoiceInGov site:
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecommconf/4536622032/
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecommconf/4535988063/

• Zhao Lu of Orange Labs, who spoke at eComm about a “STATUS” application he built on top of Tropo:
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecommconf/4536225581/
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecommconf/4536859988/

There may be others that I missed, but those were the ones I saw so far.

If you are out at eComm, do say hello… as our event page mentions, we have a booth and a team of people out there at the event.

We’re also tweeting from the event, primarily through our @tropo Twitter account… so follow us there and stay up with what we’re doing at the show.

And keep watching that Flickr stream to see all the great photos…

Out at eComm in San Francisco today, Voxeo customer Ringio launched their cloud communications service that gives small and medium businesses the kind of positive customer calling experience you would expect out of a much larger company. I like how this Information Week article explains Ringio:

Just because SMBs can’t afford enterprise-class call center technology doesn’t mean that they don’t have call-center needs every bit as complex as large corporations. Moreover, with smaller customer bases and less entrenched brand recognition, the quality of customer care that SMBs provide, potentially, can have a bigger impact on the bottom line. Bringing the CRM and telephony functionality that enterprises take for granted to SMBs is the premise of the Rich Calling service announced today by Ringio.

Ringio’s news release gives a bit more context for their “Rich Calling Service” and how they see it helping SMBs provide a better customer experience.

I had a chance to interview Ringio CEO Sam Aparicio and in the resulting video you can see in the demo both how easy it is to set up and also what it can do for both the business and customers.

From a caller perspective, I was:

• Given a personalized greeting (you can hear that in the video);
• Promptly connected to someone at the company.

From the company perspective, when my call came in, Sam:

• Received a screen pop with my contact info, recent calls and conversations and other notes. This allows him to very easily see what I’ve been doing and why I might be calling. (In the age of Twitter, I could see one of the links being to someone’s Twitter page where I could simply look at that to see their recent activity.
• Was able to perform basic call functions like Hold and Transfer;
• Was able to see the presence of other people connected to the system and thereby be able to figure out who would be available to take the call;
• Write notes about the call.

Now, sure, you can do this in other premise CRM systems, but this is all out in the cloud and able to be managed through a web interface or through a mobile interface. Ringio has a nice “tour” page that explains how their service is “Far More Than a Small Business Phone System”.

It’s simple and easy to try out… you just have to go do www.ringio.com and sign up…

And if you want to watch Sam and I talking about the service, here’s the video (where he also talks about how Voxeo’s platform is used by the service):

We congratulate Ringio on their launch and look forward to their success!

Interested in learning firsthand the use cases that provide real answers to real world challenges:

• Create Convenient, Secure Customer Care Experiences
• Promote Privacy and Security on Mobile Devices
• Apply the Proper Level of Security for Phone-based Commerce
• Integrate Data from Multiple Sources
• Leverage Existing Security Infrastructure
• Prepare Your Organization for Multifactor Authentication

if so, join us at Voice Biometrics Conference held May 4 – 5, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City.

Voxeo is offering a special discount of $200 off the conference pass fee of $799, it’s easy just use code “VXEO” when you register.

Next week, Voxeo is attending Chirp, the Twitter conference in San Francisco. We’ll be looking at all the new stuff Twitter has coming and hacking on some fun Twitter projects. At the hack day, we’ll be adding new features to our Twitter platform and coding up some some experiments taking advantage of new things Twitter announces at the event.

If you’re a developer who’s using Twitter in your Tropo or IMified application and you’ll be at Chirp, we’d love to talk to you. Contact Ananda Cheddie if you’re in the area and want to meet up with Voxeo.

Join us for our Business Webinar on April 15, 2010.

Dan York, Director Conversations at Voxeo and Elizabeth Herrell, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. will talk about “How to Transform your Customer’s Experience While Driving Down Costs”.

Customers today expect more when they engage with companies and offering merely “good” service is no longer sufficient to retain their loyalty. Contact centers need to quickly respond to changing customer demands and deliver dynamic support consistently across all channels.

This webinar examines innovative solutions that support the new customer imperative. It will also provide insight into emerging market trends for contact centers including social media, blending inbound and outbound transactions, cross channel communications and customer experience analytics.

Dan York and Elizabeth Herrell will talk about customer expectations on phone self-services, benefits of multi-channel strategies in customer service, and the usage of new channels such as social medias within this service offerings. They will provide best practices for state-of-the-art services that increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs.

Looking forward to welcome you in this webinar.

Date: April 15, 2010

Time: 9:00 AM Western, 12:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Central European

REGISTER NOW

It’s time once again for what is probably my favorite conference out there… eComm, the Emerging Communications Conference. For a few days in San Francisco, all the early adopters and “alpha geeks” of the communication world will gather together to share new ideas, learn from each other, network among each other, create partnerships and generally do what they can to move the state of communications forward.

If you are interested in where the bleeding edge of communication is… it really is the place to be.

If you haven’t gone before, I’d strongly encourage you to check it out. This year there is even a third day focused on the rapidly exploding world of “augmented reality”… some very cool speakers and amazing talks. (Admittedly, I’m biased since I am on the program committee.)

In fact, if you go to the eComm site, click “Register” and then enter the discount code “voxeo” during the process you can get 10% off the ticket price.

Voxeo is a Platinum Sponsor and we’ll have a presence there at eComm, including a booth and a presentation by Jose de Castro. We’ll have some cool announcements, too, which of course I can’t say anything about yet…

For all of you who will be there, we’ll look forward to seeing you!