In today’s global change in technology, a lot depend on how to make everything possible and easily done in a fastest and effective way of communication. Choosing good equipment tool in a call center industry is something that will be given a top priority. If you want your call center business to be on top of the competition then you have to check the kind of tools for you to stay on this business.
This article will discuss about VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol), its importance and how its work to your contact center industry. Many are still do not have sufficient idea how this technology help you in maintaining quality calls overseas. I have to say that the company I work for is known to be expert in providing pieces of information to any form of services like in an off-shore business. Based on the article wrote by Beau Rudd, chief executive officer of Unique Interaction, he outlined the straight definition of VoIP. Mr. Rudd is a wizard in a call center arena since he had been working in call center at the age of 17. I admit that I am not pretty much “knowledgeable” about this technology nor how is this work but Mr. Rudd’s idea helps me a lot to fully understand this technology.
It is no doubt that the Philippines is one of the leaders in using VoIP services, as the country is known to be the key leaders in outsourcing. Call center owners are very particular when it comes to the money they spent for their business to succeed. Venturing to call center is a serious matter. This is not just spending money and losing it in such a careless way. Better solutions to the concerns of the customers is a way of proving to your clients that they are important.
WHAT IS VoIP?
Let me start first defining VoIP – it is the ability of an IP network to carry telephone voice signals as IP packets in compliance with International Telecommunications Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) specification H.323. VoIP enables a router to transmit telephone calls and faxes over the Internet with no loss in functionality, reliability, or voice quality. Another translation of this term is a category of hardware and software that enables people to use the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls. Voice data is sent in packets using rather than by traditional POTS circuits. One advantage of VoIP is that the telephone calls over the Internet do not incur a surcharge beyond what the user is paying for Internet access, much in the same way that the user doesn’t pay for sending individual e-mails over the Internet.
HOW IT WORKS?
Majority of the telecommunication companies in the Philippines are using VoIP to streamline their networks through routing the phone calls from a circuit switch and into an IP gateway. Once the call is received by a gateway on the other side of the call, it is decompressed, reassembled and routed to a local circuit switch. Today, more and more companies particularly call centers are installing VoIP system. IP telephony just makes sense, in terms of both economics and infrastructure requirements. With VoIP, you can make a call from anywhere you have broadband connectivity. Since the IP phones broadcast their info over the Internet, they can be administered by the provider anywhere there is a connection.
Mr. Rudd, on the other hand, disclosed that his company offers attractive package to any of the interested investors who will venture in a call center. He said that VoIP is one of the backbone for the contact centers industry because it is guaranteed that many software developers believe that this service have a great future in helping the industry survive from any possible changes of the technologies in the future. He stressed that with his predictive dialer, you have to capability to:
Do real time monitoring of your agents Do Outbound, Inbound and Blended campaigns Do predictive, progressive and power dialing Do Remote monitoring Do full and/or on demand recording Do call barging, conference and internal/external call transfer CRM IVR Voicemail Call Conferencing Your own phone extension Your own toll free number for your account
The effect of having quality service increase their sales and no complains from the clients who became his business partners when the company starts to outsource up to now. VoIP will help you save a lot of money particularly in telephoning to the mainland US. The benefits of this service is that international and long distance VoIP charges are much cheaper. Depending on the package or service that you select, you will either get unlimited or a set number of minutes for North America (US & Canada) long distance calling. It simply means, that any international calls are significantly lower from VoIP providers than traditional phone companies, although the differences between the providers are vast.
It is expected that within the next following years this technologies will continue to provide a great impact to the off-shore business in the Philippines and the rest of the world.
By: Roberto Bacasong
Posts Tagged ‘H 323’
VoIP Technologies in the Philippines
March 7th, 2010The Aim To Standardize VoIP Protocols
January 1st, 2010
Voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) is a remarkable technology that lets us talk to one another from our home computers. It provides an efficient and flexible way for us to communicate at work and at home, and the cost savings versus conventional telephone services are incredible. It requires little upfront investment, and you have the ability to travel with your phone number all over the world. It is a technology that almost seems too good to be true. As with any relatively new technology, though, there are technical kinks with VOIP that continue to need refining and development in order for the technology to reach its fullest potential as a replacement for the current telephone systems that we are accustomed to using.
At the beginning of a VOIP phone call, there is an analog phone (in use with an ATA), an IP phone, or software that converts data from analog to digital and routes the call to an endpoint. Along with these pieces of equipment, there are protocols that are employed to get the job done efficiently. A protocol is a set of rules that control data transfer between two points, in this case, from the placement of a phone call to the destination. Protocols are put into use by any combination of hardware and software to define real-time communications performance.
There are several VOIP protocols used at this time that mark out which programs (that transform the data) connect with one another along with the network. The most common protocol being used for VOIP is know as H.323, which was created by the International Telecommunication Union for the purposes of videoconferencing. This protocol is actually a group of several specific protocols that provide provisions for videoconferencing, data sharing, and audio transmission (VOIP). However, since it was not expressly designed for VOIP, there are often compatibility issues with its use.
A newer protocol has come out known as Session Initiation Protocol, or SIP. SIP was developed specifically for VOIP, and it is less complex than H.323. Yet another protocol used for VOIP is known as Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP). It focuses on destination control, and is intended to be used for supplemental features such as Call Waiting. A big problem arises because these three protocols do not always work together very congruently. This is often a problem when placing VOIP calls between different networks that use different protocols. And since there has not been yet developed a uniform set of standards for protocols to use for VOIP, problems are likely to continue until they are established.
Despite the technical glitches that can be encountered in using the technology to place phone calls, VOIP is still far more efficient, accommodating, and cost effective to what we are used to in telephone communications. The direction in which VOIP is heading hints that it is poised to one day replace our traditional telephone technology altogether. As with any technology-driven product or service, developers of VOIP will likely continue to improve upon current standards of VOIP and its protocols, further improving the technology for widespread use. This will provide users of VOIP even greater efficiency and reliability when they want to make a telephone call.
By: Mark Woodcock
