CallFire

Sometimes we at CallFire speak our own language. Hopefully this article acts as a Rosetta stone for all your calling needs.

Admin/Admin Login – An admin (administrator) is the CallFire account holder. The admin login is where you create and manage all your campaigns, whether they be Voice Broadcast, Cloud Call Center, IVR, buying phone numbers, or SMS.

Agent/Agent Login – An agent is solely for Cloud Call Center campaigns. An agent is a person actively making the outbound calls. You’ll use the agent login to begin dialing on a campaign that was already created by the admin user.

Agent Barge – Agent barge is a quality control measure that allows an admin to barge, or listen in on, calls as they’re being made by the agents.

Agent ID – The agent ID is a number assigned by CallFire each time an agent begins dialing through the Cloud Call Center. Once the agent inputs the correct agent ID, the agent pop-up window with the campaign script will appear, and the system will begin dialing.

Analytics Tag – This advanced IVR function sends a page-view that will be factored in to Google Analytics.

Answering Machine Detection (AMD) – The AMD capability will determine whether the call has been answered by a live person, or by a machine. When AMD is enabled, you can program your campaign to treat live answers and answering machines differently, such as hanging up and moving on the next call or leaving a message.

API – Application Programming Interface. This is coder speak for our software code that allows a developer to integrate other software into CallFire, or to build custom software.

API Key – This is a code that grants a developer access to the CallFire API. You can find your unique API key in your account settings.

Autodialer – The autodialer is what makes the Cloud Call Center so powerful. It does the dialing for you, so there’s no dialing by hand.

Autoresponder/Auto-reply – An autoresponder is a text message that is sent automatically in response to an incoming text.

Call Ratio – This is the ratio of numbers dialed at a time to a single agent. For instance, a 1:1 ratio means that each agent’s autodialer is only dialing one number at a time. A 2:1 ratio means that the autodialer is dialing two numbers at a time, and will connect the agent to the first live answer. A higher calling ratio helps get through a list more efficiently; it decreases time between calls and ups the possibility of connecting to live leads.

Call Transfer – A call transfer is the ability for an agent to forward a call to a supervisor or other party. All he/she has to do is input the 10-digit phone number into the agent interface and the call will be routed accordingly.

CPM – Calls per Minute. This is the rate at which Voice Broadcast calls go out. By default, broadcasts are processed at 50 calls per minute, but this can be adjusted in your campaign dashboard.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management. You can integrate your CallFire campaigns with certain CRM providers, such as SalesForce, using our API.

DID Number – Direct Inward Dial Number. DID Number is basically an industry term for a phone number.

DNC - Do Not Call. There are two different DNC lists: the Federal Do Not Call List, against which you should scrub your list prior to uploading your contacts. Then you also have an internal CallFire DNC list, which allows people you call to unsubscribe from future calls.

DTMF – Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency, also known as touch-tone. DTMF assigns a different touchtone to each key on the telephone keypad, so it can distinguish one keypad input from another.

Get Tag – This IVR command calls any URL or http request from your IVR.

Google Talk Tag - This IVR command will automatically initiate an instant message to your Google account.

Goto Tag – This tells your IVR to go to a certain part of your phone tree. For instance, you might have a sound file that reads, “Press 4 to repeat the options.” Upon pressing 4, the Goto tag would repeat the part of your IVR that you had already programmed.

Goto XML Tag – This advanced IVR command calls the specified URL and executes the returned CallFire XML.

Hangup Tag – The hangup tag tells your IVR to hang up and end the call.

Hosted IVR – A hosted IVR is a phone menu that does not require any hardware or special equipment, such as an on-premises PBX (private branch exchange). It’s hosted because it’s housed in the cloud.

If Tag – This advanced IVR command evaluates a javascript expression and reacts accordingly whether the expression is true or false.

Inbound – A call initiated from someone else, coming in to your line.

IVR - Interactive Voice Response. An IVR is essentially a phone menu, or a phone tree. It’s programmed to react to keypad inputs.

Keyword – For an SMS campaign, a keyword is the word that is texted. For instance, when the Red Cross says, “Text JAPAN to 50555,” JAPAN is the keyword, and 50555 is the short code. Keywords will be available on CallFire SMS campaigns beginning summer 2011.

Key Press – This command tells your IVR what to do once a digit on the telephone keypad is pressed.

Live Answer – A person who answers the phone, as opposed to an answering machine.

Long Code – A 10-digit phone number that can send and receive texts.

MachineSkip - This feature detects answering machines, and filters them out of your Cloud Call Center campaigns. When it detects an answering machine, it will automatically leave a pre-recorded message, so your agent doesn’t have to do a thing. The MachineSkip feature is available on the Standard- and Pro-level campaigns.

Max Transfer Rate – The maximum number of transfers your Voice Broadcast campaign will allow at any given time; when the maximum is reached, the broadcasts will pause until your campaign returns below the maximum.

Outbound – A call initiated by you to one of your contacts.

Passcode – The campaign passcode is the password that the admin assigns to access a Cloud Call Center campaign.

Phonebook – A phonebook is a contact phone list maintained in your CallFire account. Watch this video to learn more about working with phonebooks.

Play Tag – This IVR command plays an assigned sound file or performs text-to-speech.

Press-1 Transfer – During a Voice Broadcast, if a press-1 transfer is enabled, the called person can press 1 and be connected to your business. You can also assign a different keypress to transfer your calls, but the capability is generally referred to as “press-1″ anyway.

Press Menu – This IVR command prompts the caller with several options, for instance, “Press 1 for our address, Press 2 to speak to someone in Sales.” You’ll need at least one “Play” menu to present these options.

Power Dialer – The Power Dialer is what makes CallFire’s Voice Broadcasting capability so powerful. It has the ability to dial thousands of numbers, all at once.

Record Tag – This IVR command records the remainder of the call, or will begin recording with a beep and stop by pressing pound (#). When you record a message using CallFire’s Voice Recording Utility, our IVR is using the Record Tag, in conjunction with the advanced Stash and Get tags. You can see a video demonstration of the Record Tag here.

SAN Number - Subscription Account Number. Telemarketers may need to obtain a SAN from the Federal Trade Commission in order to call consumers legally. Click here to find out how to get a SAN.

SetVar Tag – (Set Variable) This advanced IVR command creates a variable which can be used later.

Short Code – A 5- or 6-digit number that can send and receive texts.

SmartDrop – During a Cloud Call Center campaign, the agent can press the SmartDrop button on the interface, and it will leave a pre-recorded message for the answering machine. The agent does not have to wait for the beep or speak into the voicemail; this allows the agent to move on to the next call.

SMS - Short Message Service. An SMS is a text message.

Stash Tag – This advanced IVR tag stores the varname (variable name) and value in the call details report in your CallFire account. See a video demonstration of the Stash tag here and here.

Subset Campaign - A subset campaign duplicates all the settings of an original campaign, but applies it to just part of a phonebook. For instance, you might want to run a subset campaign to call back the portion of your contact list who did not receive your original message. This video will show you how to set up a subset campaign.

Tag - A tag can refer to an IVR command, such as a play tag or a record tag, but when used by itself, it generally means what’s found on the “My Numbers” page. Tags can be useful to help you keep your phone numbers straight. For instance, if you put one phone number on a magazine ad, and a different phone number on your website, you may want to tag each respective number “magazine” and “website.”

Text-to-Speech (TTS) - The text-to-speech engine allows you to program voice prompts on the fly. For instance, if you wanted your IVR to read an individual’s account number, you would use CallFire’s text-to-speech capability.

Transfer Tag – This IVR command connects the active call to a specified phone number. For instance, a political campaign might use a transfer tag to connect the call to a voter’s congressional office.

Voice Broadcast- Voice Broadcast is a type of CallFire campaign that allows you to send a pre-recorded phone message to your contacts. Learn more about Voice Broadcast here.

VoIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol. VoIP is a kind of technology that allows calls to be connected over the internet. However, CallFire VoIP should not be confused with residential VoIP such as Skype or Vonage; we offer an enterprise-level, redundant, fiber-based platform for better reliability and call quality.

Whisper – A whisper is a short message that will be played before an incoming call is connected. This can help you better serve your incoming calls. For instance, if you have one phone number assigned for real estate properties for sale, and one phone number assigned for people who want to sell their real estate, you can set a whisper that will tell you “This call is regarding properties for sale,” before you greet the caller. You can enable the Whisper feature on your “My Numbers” page in your CallFire account.

White Label Program – CallFire’s White Label Program allows approved vendors to re-sell CallFire products using their own branding. An improved version of the White Label Program will be unveiled in late 2011.

This post originally appeared on ReadWriteWeb.

The interactive voice response (IVR) app was notably absent from the agenda at ReadWriteWeb’s Mobile Summit in Mountain View, California. This is part of a larger trend: In the race toward capitalizing on the smartphone boom, application developers are focused on creating apps for smartphones, but very little attention is being given to creating apps for the voice network.

The phone call is no longer considered sexy. However, just like the human need for conversation, the phone call is never going to go away. People will always talk, and that conversation will continue to be a perennial part of any communication strategy. Building apps for the smartphone may be cool, but building apps for the voice network is essential.

Personalization to Stay Relevant

The nature of the phone call is rapidly evolving, especially as it relates to commerce. As businesses fight to stay relevant in the conversation – no pun intended – they see the value of using new data streams to access customers and utilizing existing streams effectively. They do this by using the telephone to send out a message that attracts customers.

There is a need to personalize the phone call. It’s a direct response to the fact that people have little patience for the generic phone message, especially in this microblogging age. Unless it’s apparent early on in the message that it was meant specifically for them, it’s going to take a lot more to get the customer’s attention. Not only does the phone call need to be personalized for each customer, but this personalization has to be able to scale with the business.

There are two aspects to personalization. The first is to unlock the information in disparate data sources, and the second is to interject this data into the conversation at the right time and in the right format. This has and always will be the dominion of the app developer with deep smarts in the business domain. These apps need to discern data quality, employ complex business rules and interject the data in real time into the conversation, all in an effort to make the conversation relevant.

This relevance can be in the form of traditional messaging, like personalized appointment reminders that give clients details of the appointment along with the ability to automatically reschedule, or it can be in newer methods, like in student education where key presses on the phone can be tied in real time to an online seminar.

No Longer a “Tool of the Big Boys”

Unlike the mobile device, these apps are hosted on the network, meaning it’s up to the telecom provider to build the platform to support these apps. This is where the cloud-based IVR comes in, providing the full set of features and scale with very little up-front costs.

It’s important to note that the technologies that make up the IVR developers palette have been around for decades; what’s changing is the access to these technologies. For example, open standards like Voice XML, CCXML and technologies like text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text have been available for a while, but until a couple of years ago, building an IVR that could customize a phone call was the dominion of large enterprise applications.

Building IVRs was a complex, multi-person endeavor, partly because of bloated protocols and high learning curves, and partly because of licensing and related costs. Not only was the barrier for entry high for developers, but the pricing of the technologies involved made the business case for a small development shop even harder to make.

To compound this problem even further, providing quality “copper-to-copper” termination at scale has always been an expensive proposition. It was the case that the only way to guarantee that 10 simultaneous calls would have the same call quality as 10,000 was to buy 10,000 phone lines worth of hardware, manage direct carrier relationships and keep dozens of servers idling, just in case the big flood came. Understandably, this made small- and medium-sized businesses even more wary of doing too much with their IVR other than what was available from cookie-cutter software. IVRs remained the tool of the big boys.

Cloud telephony is disrupting this old way of business. It has abstracted the complexity of telephony and the associated costs and provided an on-demand platform where anyone can create apps that are relevant to the conversation. Platforms provided by the likes of CloudVox, Adhearsion and CallFire are disrupting this status quo by creating an environment where the IVR resides in the cloud and can be invoked either by calling out to phones, or by consumers calling in to a hosted number.

“The Illusion of Simplicity”

The cloud solves the problem by creating the illusion of simplicity. The tasks of setting up trunk groups, interacting with carriers, and so on are taken care of by the service provider, who in turn provides open, on-demand APIs to connect, create and execute calls. In fact, many providers are ignoring VoiceXML and CCXML and are creating simplified standards that are more appealing to developers.

CloudVox, for example, provides a JSON-like representation of a call that can then be executed via the Web on its cloud. CallFireXML , on the other hand, provides a reductionist XML spec that allows for great expressiveness by providing a simplified XML tag set. Simplification in cloud telephony means not having to worry about how the phone call is made; you simply tag your data, and the service provider takes care of the rest.

This trend has not gone unnoticed by the big boys. In fact, there’s a mini-consolidation wave happening in the industry. The big players – the AT&Ts, Verizons, and the Level 3s of the world – are now on the prowl to dominate this space, either by innovation or by acquisition. Of course, their deep pockets make it easier to buy rather than build. BT’s acquisition of Ribbit and Microsoft’s acquisition of TellMe are perfect examples.

This is also a validation of the fact that the telephone call is not going away. As long as people want to talk, there will be a need for building apps that allow for person-to-person calls, and that’s a great business to be in. What kind of hosted IVR apps would you like to build today?

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.

A few months back, QuesGen Systems was approached by OneWorld Health with a unique project.  They were tasked to collect and analyze data from developing contries who were participating in a research study.  Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates, OneWorld Health was investigating different medication to cure malaria.

Rather than use traditional methods of paper questionares or text, QuesGen discovered CallFire’s Integrated Voice Response (IVR) software, using text-to-voice.  Participants heard questions asked in their own language, and submitted their answers by choosing an answer on the keypad.  This allowed data to be aggregated immediately and save time on the administration side.

CallFire was able to set up the user interface with in two weeks, allowing the deployment to take place on time.  QuesGen is considering using IVRs domesically for research on diseases including diabetes.

If you have any questions about how CallFire can be integrated for health care companies, click here

To read more of our case studies, click here

The CallFire team will be manning booth # 319 at IT Expo West next Tuesday Sept 1 – Thursday Sept 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Come by, talk to us, learn about our products, and get to know the team.  We will also have give-aways, so come by and see what we have!

CallFire API developers get exclusive access to Voice XML with answering machine detection. This powerful new feature allows you to specify completely different execution paths for either when a live person answers or an answering machines picks up.

As our API customers know, Voice XML is our way of giving you full control of the call. The moment the phone’s picked up, your Voice XML script is executed. This new feature now allows you to specify two separate scripts. One to be executed in case of a live answer, and another in case of an answering machine. This ensures that applications like weather notifications, mass volunteer mobilizations can ensure full coverage regardless of a human or machine answer. The no-frills technical details are available here.

As always, if you have any questions do let our developers know at techsupport (at) callfire.com. It gets lonely at our Skunkworks lab, and they’d love to hear from you.

Do you use a hosted-CRM utility?  Do you use CallFire’s Virtual Call Center?  If your answer is ‘Yes’ to both of these questions, your VCC agents might benefit from a link to your CRM platform, directly within the CallFire Agent Popup screen.

When a call is connected, your agent sees the SugarCRM contact instantly.  Here is an example:

How it works
If you embed this code in your Excel list, for each phone number, it will place a clickable link in the Agent pop-up window.   The link will open your browser based CRM.

Example code
2132212200<name of person>,<iframe src=”<<<<<  embed html link here >>>>>>>>>>>” width=”100%” height=”500″><p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p></iframe>/

<a href=”<<<insert crm link here>>>”><img src=”<<<insert image location here>>>” alt=”Call Me Now!” /></a>

Don’t want to use Javascript? Try:
<a href=”<<<put link here>>>” target=”callfireCrm”>Open CRM</a>

Want even more control? You can take your integration a step further with CallFire Voice APIs.   Developers can easily use SOAP web services calls to inject data directly to your Agent’s CRM interface, in real time!   Visit the CallFire Developer Wiki or call 877.897.3473. 

Say that 5 times fast!   A lot goes into a well made Voice Mashup.  Not only do Voice Mashup API apps have to find a target audience, but in order to gain popularity it is essential that they generate plenty of location-specific content.  One of CallFire’s earliest clients, GeoGraffiti.com has done a pretty good job at that.  

GeoGraffiti’s Voice Map has grown from a 3-user proof-of-concept, to over 10,000 users on iPhone, Android & GeoGraffiti.com, all in less than 1 year.

The CallFire team is happy to help enable GeoGraffiti’s success by providing Voice Mashup APIs that scale, and a hosted IVR platform that handles recording, inbound IVR, and other Voice API features that drive GeoGraffiti’s Phone Mashup.

Check out some of our favorite Voice Mashups:
GeoGraffiti.com – this site seems to have the most traction & users.
Woices.com – An interesting voice map with a cool UI.
SayNow.com – SMS/Voice Mashup for Celebs.

Voice Mashup links:
PC World on Voice Mashups.
Saunderslog.com’s Voice Mashup Concast.
Thomas Howe’s take on Voice Mashups.

Want to personalize your message? Want to make the message warmer? Well, if you’re a developer or have a developer, we have a recipe ready for you!

Good news for CallFire Developers. The Recording Service API is now documented in our WIKI. As always, let us know if you have questions or comments.