CallFire

Campaign control from your phone

CallFire Remote Control lets you start, stop, and create campaigns using only your telephone.  To learn about the feature, watch our short video:

Before you try remote control, there are a few items you should look up.

1) Find your ID and Password from the Sound Manager.  Click toolbox to get to the Sound Manager.

2) Look up campaign IDs, and Phone book IDs for any campaigns you will want to create.

Now you’re ready to use Remote Control!

1) Dial the remote control hotline: 213-221 3805

2) Type in user id and password. this is found under toolbox –> sound manager at the top of the page.

3) Listen to the recording- you will need to know the campaign id, phonebook id depending on what it is you are trying to do by remote control.NOTE: Keeping a sheet of all of your IDs may be a helpful tool when using remote control.

We are excited to announce the launch of the International Cloud Call Center.  This new product contains all of the features in the previous version of Cloud Call Center, but now enables agents to be located anywhere and call out to anywhere.

Pricing is based on the phone number making calls, and the phone numbers being called.  If an agent is calling from out of the US, they are billed for the time they are logged into CallFire multiplied by the per minute rate for their phone number.  If an agent is Calling out of the United States, they are billed the per minute rate for the number they are calling multiplied by the total time they are connected to the call.  To see the rates for any given country, international telephone provider or phone number, see the rate table.

Cloud Call Center Pricing

Click here to see an example

Click here to see an example

Click here to see an example

CallFire also offers International Voice Broadcast as part of the international portfolio.

The City of Santa Barbara holds city elections in November of odd years. This year, there were 3 council seats, a mayor’s seat, and an important measure all up on the ballot. Measure B was the hot topic of this year’s election, which would limit building hight limit in downtown Santa Barbara to a maximum of 40 feet. The Democratic party as well as environmentalists were opposed to this measure that limits building height because typically, taller buildings in cities actually lead to a greater level of sustainability as well as affordable workforce housing.

A Texas Republican decided to spearhead a large $700,000 “Yes on B” campaign. In addition to the threat of this campaign, it was also the first year that Santa Barbara’s election was all mail-in. For these two reasons, the Democratic Party knew that they would have to exercise strategic Get Out the Vote (GOTV) tactics.

The GOTV campaigns would be targeted towards Democratic households, who were the majority in Santa Barbara. The campaign consisted of a few printed mailings, and door to door phases. Realizing they would need to contact more people than door to door allowed, the Democratic Party decided to augment this door to door effort with aggressive phonebanking with the “stellar and affordable Callfire autodialer system” (calitics.com article)

The Phonebanking component of this campaign began at the end of August and was used three days a week by approximately twelve volunteers. On the final weekend, the volunteers were able to reach approximately 3,000 self-identified Measure B opponents through a disposition question in an earlier CallFire call. The Volunteers wanted to make sure Voters remembered to turn in their ballots at the drop off station rather than the the usual polling booth. It’s a good thing they did too, because many people still had no idea that there was anything different or new about this election.

By the middle of the day before the elections, voter turnout was 37%, and with the help of the GOTV efforts, including the final round of Cloud Call Center campaigns, total turnout rose to 49.5%. In particular, the result of the Measure B changed dramatically. The day before the end of the election, it was at 49% yes, 51% no. By the end of the election, Measure B was defeated by a whopping 62%. Not only were the Democratic Party’s efforts effective, but they managed to do it with less than $30,000. CallFire’s Cloud Call Center was a significant component of this effective campaign, and the victory was even sweeter when spending 1/23 of the opposition.

Reference : Ancona, Dan, 18 November 2009, “A Tale of One City: How Democrats with Good Data Beat the Odds“

CallFire is pleased to announce the launch of its International Voice Broadcast service.  CallFire listened to client requests and developed arguably  the largest new feature since its founding.  Previously, CallFire campaigns only supported valid US and Canadian phone numbers.  Now, CallFire supports nearly anywhere in the world.

Here’s how to do it:

• Go to settings, then account settings and set the international  to “true” and submit
• All phone numbers in your spreadsheet must include country code (including the US and Canadian country code “1″) without any preceding zeros
• CallFire will dial the international Voice Broadcast campaign as if it were any normal campaign
• Check out the Voice Broadcast tutorial for details on setting up a Broadcast campaign from scratch.

Rates vary based on the destination of the calls, and begin at 3.5 cents per minute.  To find out the rate of a given country, go to the rate lookup page and click on the country, search by the country name, or type in an actual phone number.  To learn more about International Voice Broadcast, watch m0re from the project’s lead developer, Pete Shah:

The Great thing about a hosted dialer is its capability to help a wide array of people.  From non-profits to financial institutions, Medical centers to schools, the Cloud Call Center helps save them all time.

People don’t always realize how much time a web-based autodialer can save them.  The PTA board member calling for donations to a school, or the doctors office reminding patients that they have an appointment are used to conducting calls they way they are used to:  manually.  However, what they all have in common is falling in love with CallFire’s autodialer.

Do you think you could use an automatic phone dialer ?  Watch the video and see just how easy an autodialer can make your life.

CallFire’s new agent interface and feature set offers an enterprise level look and functionality for businesses and organizations of any size.

Here is a detailed view of the new agent interface.  The features have been outlined in a variety of colors, and will be explained individually below.

Tabs

Tabs are location in which URLs stored in the excel spreadsheet can be displayed for agents to see.  If the administrator included columns with a company URL, or a CRM url for each entry, these will be displayed in tabs at the top of the agent interface.  Agents can view the tabs while speaking on the phone, and will increase their knowledge of the party they are speaking to.

Script

Scripts can be provided for agents to assist them with their phone calls.  The campaign administrator has the ability to compose scripts for agents to read during each call. This allows agents to be consistent with their customer contact, and never forget important details.

Disposition

The disposition field allows agents to easily make notes and ask questions.  The new agent interface includes a free text field for general disposition notes as the previous version, but it now offers functionality in adding additional questions and compiling results, making gathering statistics easy for administrators. These can be multiple choice questions with customizable options or short free text questions with an open response.

Connected Box

The connected box enables personal information to be displayed for agents to see while they are on the phone. The box contains all the information that is in the excel spreadsheet used to upload numbers.  Any information the administrator wants agents to see will be its own column in  the file.  A few likely uses for this field are name, company, and phone number. Any type of information the administrator finds useful for agents to see can be included accordingly.

Call Transfer

Call transfer facilitates the transfer of a call if an agent needs to pass on a customer to another party.   If an agent wishes to transfer a phone call at any point, they can enter a phone number and transfer the call to anyone at any time during the call.

SmartDrop

The SmartDrop feature lets agents leave a pre-recorded  message when an answering machine picks up.  This allows users to save time that they would have spent leaving individual messages. For users that choose not to use answering machine detection, the moment they hear an answering machine, they can click SmartDrop and move on to the next call. This will leave a pre-recorded answering machine message on that machine.

Next Call

The next call button is used when a user is ready to move onto a new call.  There was a next call button on the old interface, and it still has essentially the same purpose.  Once a call with an individual is complete, hit next call to reach the next person.  It is also essential to press the next call button after using the SmartDrop feature.

Report an Issue

Agents should use the report an issue button if a user is experiencing an issue while using the Cloud Call Center.  Reporting an issue right when there is a problem is extremely important for troubleshooting.

Call Recording

Call Recording is now available for all Standard and Pro Campaigns.  While it’s not part of the agent interface, a new feature launched with the updated Cloud Call Center is the option for Call Recording. If either the Standard or Pro options are picked, administrators have the option to record all calls, giving them a chance to check up on agent performance or verify the content of specific conversations.

Developers, if you’re like most people and just getting started on your CallFire dating app that was originally due tomorrow, 11/11, you’re in luck!  The deadline has been extended until Monday 11/16 to help people like you!  Same contest, same rules, just new date.

Today, CallFire is announcing a new developer challenge.  The contest is to use any of CallFire’s APIs to develop a dating application, and the winner will win an new Amazon Kindle.  VP Buisness Development, TJ Thinakaran speaks to welcome all developers to the challenge:

Here are the details:

Applications should be submitted here. You must read the rules and regulations outlined here. The best resource for accessing the APIs is the CallFire Developer Wiki. Contact support@callfire.com or send a tweet to @callfire if you have any questions or need assistance with your creation.

This past weekend, the CallFire team attended Opportunity Green, a conference where leaders and executive in the “green” space collaborated, shared ideas, and discussed sustainable practices.
CallFire was there to share information regarding how call centers can be made more environmentally friendly.

Businesses and organizations can use our Cloud Call Center to hire employees or volunteers that can work out of their homes instead of commuting into a traditional call center, and creating pollution. The conference itself was extremely environmentally friendly, with each attendee receiving a Kor water bottle, and filling stations from Everpure located throughout the conference area. Food served for lunch was organic from Organic to Go and Whole Foods, and all of the plastic was biodegradable. The non-dairy coconut icecream from Coconut Bliss was a highlight of ours!

The green perception of CallFire was well received at the conference, and we made some good industry connections. Organic fair trade chocolate from Sweet Earth and Shaman attracted people to our booth, and the telephone number listed on the plantable seed paper band was an ice breaker into what CallFire does. The number on the paper gave attendees a chance to win an ipod nano. One lucky winner would call the number and find out that they were the winner. The number was one of the toll free numbers that CallFire sells for the Call Tracking/Call Forwarding product. This lead into discussions about CallFire as a whole.

We’re updating our Hold Music here at CallFire!

We have always offered selections of music from the Open Source community, and we are pleased to be updating our selections.

This month we are featuring new classical music from some exciting performers. We have two Beethoven sonatas: the “Appassionata,” Op. 57 No. 23, performed by Andreas Haefliger, and the “Waldstein,” Op. 53 No. 22 performed by Daniel Veesey.

In addition, we have several selections featuring the US Air Force orchestra, including Bach’s”Air on a G String”, Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War” from his orchestral suite The Planets, two selections from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, and a couple of violin concerti including Beethoven’s D Minor Concerto, and “Winter” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with John Harrison on violin.

We round the selections out with two more beautiful piano works, Chopin’s brilliant “G Minor Ballade” No.1 Op. 23 as performed by Donald Betts, and Handel’s “Suite No. 2″, wonderfully performed by Ivan Ilic.

These works are from the open music web site musopen.com. Please support these musicians, the musopen.com web site, and the entire open source music community with your contributions and donations.

Today, CallFire is announcing a new developer challenge.  The contest is to use any of CallFire’s APIs to develop a dating application, and the winner will win an new Amazon Kindle.  VP Buisness Development, TJ Thinakaran speaks to welcome all developers to the challenge:

Here are the details:

The application will be due Wednesday 11/11 at 5 PM Pacific time.  Applications should be submitted here. You must read the rules and regulations outlined here. The best resource for accessing the APIs is the CallFire Developer Wiki. Contact support@callfire.com if you have any questions or need assistance.