CallFire

CallFire’s Cloud Telephony platform affords SMBs and nonprofits the ability to accommodate an inbound & outbound, geographically distributed call center. The financial and environmental benefits are undeniable, but what are the affects of homesourcing on agent job satisfaction?

As the digital divide dwindles, human interaction seems to increase exponentially.   This begs the question: How can Cloud Call Center agents leverage social media to become one with their company cause?  Agents love working from home, but is it really possible to build community and synergy without “IRL” interactions?

@Callfireceo went to Santa Monica’s BlobLive event last week, seeking answers to these questions. Thanks to @ErickB and the entire BlobLive team for letting me speak on such short notice!

I spent this Sunday afternoon at Eco Fabulous in Newport Coast. My interest in the relationship between tech & sustainability, got me here.  Green conferences like Opportunity Green are pushing businesses to embrace sustainable business practices, while outlining the business benefits of doing so. A homesourcing analysis by IDC forecasts 300,000 ‘homesourced’ workers in the U.S. by 2010. It’s no wonder Cloud Call Center platforms like CallFire are considered serious players in “Green Tech”.

Cloud Call Centers and Hosted IVRs seem to be the #1 way to reduce the overall carbon footprint of your call center or small business workforce.

Reduce emissions by hiring from home

The average US call center agent commutes 24 miles via automobile.
In a 50-week year, this agent will account for 6,000 miles/yr.
The average agent carbon footprint is about 2 tons of C02 each year!

Slash call center startup costs & reduce waste

The average call center requires 130-200 square feet per agent.
Agents require a PC, telephone & high speed internet connection.*
A 100-seat call center can save 168,000 kWh/yr by homsourcing.
*Note: Utilizing idle computing hardware seems to be a green trend.  Watch “The Story of Stuff” with Annie Leonard.

Cloud Call Centers lead to happy agents

Improve employee satisfaction by reducing commuter costs, reducing parking frustration & vehicle wear.
Hire the best agents anywhere in the world, while targeting low-cost geographies.
Increase agent productivity & decrease sick-leave as it did for Holland America Cruise Lines.

Now that Cloud Call Center agents can use their own home office, PC and internet connection, the barriers to develop call centers for the enterprise and SMB markets are reducing quickly.  With $0 hardware and no recurring infrastructure costs, hiring from home is both sustainable & preferable to most US business owners.  

Hi Everyone!

My name is Tina and If you use CallFire then you may have participated in my Webinar.  :)  I get a lot of calls about “best practices” for using CallFire’s Virtual Call Center, Voice Broadcast & various Cloud Telephony tools for outbound call center sales.   Here they are:

Outbound Call Center Sales Tips:

1. Creativity is important
   Phone interactions are impersonal, so be sure to smile in the message. ;)   Feel free to use humor, wit & charisma to engage your potential customer over the phone.   Building trust & relationships is key to making sales.
2. Use fresh data & scrubbed lists
   Generating leads & sales can only be accomplished if you have a great list to call.   Existing customer databases, InfoUSA business listings, and online lead-gen are great sources for high-quality data.
3. Use a woman’s touch
   Try using a woman’s voice for your recordings. :)  Many DIY’ers use their own voice to save a few bucks.  Check out services like Voice123.com to get a professionally recorded greetings.  Your target demographic may react differently to voices of varying gender.  Try to diversify every aspect of your outbound effort!
4. Communicate with your customers
   We all get wrapped up in our amazing sales vision, but don’t forget to ask your customers what matters to them.  For example, you might want to figure out what time of day each of your customers prefer to receive telephone updates & callbacks.  Use this data to schedule your campaigns accordingly.
5. Try Call Tracking & Text-To-Speech
   A balanced outbound sales effort strives to track it’s efficacy over time.   Call Tracking & Hosted IVRs are a great way to track your marketing efforts, at the campaign level!  If you haven’t checked out advanced voice services, give us a call, or watch this video to learn more.

Thanks everyone!  ~Tina

CallFire’s Answering Machine Detection technology (AMD) just got a little better! We worked with schools, emergency service companies, and even automobile dealerships to improve our detection algorithm.

When your campaigns use a sound file longer than 15 seconds, Callfire automatically switches to the newer engine. We hope you are able to experience the difference our beta customers have.

So, what changed?

Old AMD:

Callfire would listen to the customer as they picked up the phone. During the first few seconds, AMD decides whether it’s listening to an answering machine, voicemail box, or live person. In the case of an answering machine or a voicemail, CallFire AMD would wait until after the beep and leave your recorded message.

New AMD:

While playing your message, AMD listens for a voicemail or answering machine. Any such indication will interrupt the playback of the live answer message, and start the answering machine message after the beep. To ensure accuracy, CallFire’s AMD engine requires a 15 second message, or longer, to make it’s decision.

The result?

In some cases, the accuracy of Answering Machine detection jumped to 95%!   This is staggering compared to the 90% accuracy in prior revisions of CallFire’s AMD.  I hope the new engine increases your ROI as it has for our alpha clients already.

For you API developers there’s a way to switch your campaigns to the new answering machine detection as well! Take a look at the “useAnsweringMachineDetectionType2” function in the CampaignService API.