CallFire

by Kimberly Kohatsu

Last year, according to WorldatWork, about 26.2 million people, or nearly 20% of the adult working population, worked from home or from a remote location at least once a month. These “remote locations” included satellite centers, hotels, and while on vacation. But if you’re like me, tethered to your smartphone and laptop at almost all times, that number actually seems pretty low.

Regardless, teleworking and flexible work schedules are becoming mainstream benefits. The ability to perform work remotely is an effective tool “in attracting younger employees who appreciate greater flexibility and to recruite remote workers from a wider talent pool,” Susan Bergman of The Society for Human Resource Management recently told Mashable. And it’s not just the Gen Y’s and millenials who are looking for work flexibility. “It’s attractive to busy parents, workers nearing retirement and workers in metro areas where commuting is very time consuming,” Bergman said.

CallFire, being headquartered in Los Angeles, certainly fits that last category. Last month, the US Census reported that LA commuters on average spend 28.1 minutes getting to work (another number that may seem surprisingly low). But if my fuzzy math is correct, that still means that each year, we spend more time commuting than we do on vacation. Talk about lost productivity. Which brings me to my next point: teleworking is not just attractive to employees, but employers as well.

Employees who telework are generally more productive and report greater job satisfaction, due in large part to advances in technology which give them the same access to information as office-based workers. Intranet sites and shared servers mean employees can focus on work without the distractions of meetings, casual conversations, office politics, and other interruptions which, over time, can prove stressful and infringe upon their work-life balance.

CallFire’s Cloud Call Center is, for many sales teams, another tool in the arsenal that allows employees to work remotely. All a sales agent needs is an internet connection and a telephone. The customer’s data and call outcomes are stored securely on the cloud. CallFire also provides the tools to monitor the employee’s phone activities while on the job.

Last February, I wrote about how Citibank was able to retain 700 of its workers despite closing its physical call center in Albuquerque, by leveraging the power of telework. A month later, Allstate Insurance also closed its Albuquerque claims call center. But because of advanced technology, the adjusters can be supervised out of Phoenix.

More and more, teleworking is being driven by necessity. Angela Baron, an advisor to the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said “whilst technology has enabled remote working, it is more the demands of business that is driving it.” This means that not only do work-at-home employees need the ability to work independently and to self-motivate, but that managers need to develop the ability to manage remotely. Crucial to the task, says Baron, are the “communication skills to keep remote workers connected to the team and ensure adequate knowledge exchange and alignment to team and organizational aims and objectives.”

That’s a fancy way of saying managers must facilitate an environment where, even if you’re working from home, you still feel like you’re part of a company. You’re by yourself, but you’re not alone.

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by Jeff Spisak

Have you noticed that the phone number of the contact you are calling is missing from the agent popup window? Why is that? Well, basically it’s by design.  Some users do not want their agents to see the number being dialed, so CallFire hides this number. We do this by not displaying the Excel column of numbers you click when you are adding numbers to your campaign. So if you do want to show the phone number in your popup, you simply have to include the list of numbers in a second column. Look at the following example:

You see we’ve just copied the phone numbers into column B.  So now when we upload numbers into our campaign, and choose column A for the numbers, the system will hide column A, as designed. But since column B is a carbon copy, these numbers will display in the agent popup, along with the contact’s name, company, and title. And that’s all there is to know.

by Kimberly Kohatsu

We at CallFire often struggle with how to describe what it is that we do. And, as someone fairly new to the company, this is the first question I want a real answer to. What is it? How does it work? Why is it good?

One of the difficulties in describing CallFire is that it offers such a broad array of functions. Businesses use CallFire in completely different ways. Our company tends to describe our suite of products as “cloud telephony,” but that doesn’t seem to clarify much. The best way I’ve been able to describe CallFire is it helps manage big calling tasks. These tasks might be calling a long list of people, or handling a large amount of calls coming in, and routing those calls to the right place. Anything with a phone that might seem daunting, CallFire makes manageable. Are we clearer yet?

Not really. I’m not entirely satisfied with that answer. It seems incomplete—CallFire doesn’t just help businesses manage, it helps businesses grow. It’s a business tool and a marketing tool. For instance, text marketing is becoming a bigger deal. We help businesses do that. We even help businesses retain their customers and build loyalty by enabling them to send automated appointment reminders, or set up customer satisfaction surveys. So now, it’s not really about making businesses more manageable, it’s about making them smarter.

Great. What’s a nice, concise way to convey all that? “CallFire: a really smart way to manage your phone operations that will potentially also help you serve your customers better and get new ones so that you can make more money.” Fit that on a business card, please. Thanks.

I’m still at a loss. So I’m trying out this whole crowdsourcing thing. I’m going to describe some of the ways CallFire is being used, and you guys out there in Internetland tell me how best to encapsulate it.

CallFire in a (Very Large) Nutshell

• Our Cloud Call Center enables businesses to call a lot more people in a lot less time. For instance, political organizations use CallFire for volunteer phone banking, and insurance agents use CallFire to get in touch with their leads. CallFire saves them the hassle of dialing numbers by hand. You simply upload a list (an Excel file or CSV) and the CallFire system dials them for you. It’s even intelligent enough to skip bad phone numbers and busy signals, so it’s just people talking to people. CallFire also has a feature called SmartDrop, where if the agent hears voicemail pick up, they can press a button and leave a pre-recorded message—no waiting for the beep. CallFire also provides call data such as the length and time of each call, and can record each call for quality assurance monitoring.

See, that was a 140-word paragraph to describe one product. There are four more! Woe is me. Alas. Moving on…

• Hosted IVR is our second product. IVR is complicated because we offer both inbound and outbound IVR, and, of course, they do different things. First off, IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response. It’s better described as a virtual receptionist or a phone tree. You know when you call a business, and you hear, ‘press 1 for this and press 2 for that?’ That’s an inbound phone tree. But of course, that begs the question, what’s an outbound phone tree? An outbound phone tree works the opposite way. The business calls you, and then gives you phone menu choices. So a business might use an IVR to conduct a satisfaction survey. Example: “Would you recommend us to your friends? Press 1 for yes, 2 for maybe, 3 for no.” Automated phone polls can also collect RSVPs for an event, ask about new product offerings, or get other feedback.

Um… any ideas for that big umbrella phrase to encapsulate all this yet? All right then. Here’s the next product.

• Call Tracking is generally used in marketing campaigns. Let’s say you’re a real estate agent. You get one of those bus benches with your picture on it, and you put an ad in the local paper. With call tracking, if you put one phone number on the bench and a different number in the paper, you can gauge how many people are calling as a result of the bench versus the print ad. Is either one worth the cost? Call Tracking will help you know.

Pretty clear, right? Maybe? Hopefully? No? Next…

• Voice Broadcast is when you record a message and then send that message to a whole bunch of people. It happens a lot during election season. Last November, for instance, I got a call that Susan Sarandon had recorded, encouraging me to vote yes on Prop 19, California’s “pot amendment.” 
Voice Broadcast is often confused with Outbound IVR. They are very similar, but if Susan Sarandon were to say something at the end of that recorded message like, “Press 1 if you’d like to donate to support Prop 19, or 2 to be connected to your representative’s office,” that’s an Outbound IVR. The IVR would then connect the call to a live person who could take the donation information or forward the call on to my Congressman’s office. Voice Broadcast, on the other hand, would be more appropriate if the message was all you needed to convey, without any further action. It’s often used for emergency notifications, like announcing school cancellations. Oh, to get even more confusing, if you only have one key-press that will forward the call on somewhere, the Voice Broadcast campaign can handle that. But if it’s any more than that, you’re in IVR territory. I know. Sorry.

Are we there yet? Almost. Finally, we have our newest product (drum roll)…

• SMS Broadcast. These messages work much like Voice Broadcast, except instead of a recorded voice message, it’s a text message. It’s a cool marketing vehicle for exclusive discounts or time-sensitive alerts such as, “It’s the last day to get free shipping in time for Valentine’s Day.” The SMS broadcast can also include a hyperlink to connect smartphones to the business’s website. Other applications for text messages include appointment reminders or confirmations, medication reminders, and traffic alerts.

Okay, so that’s a brief (brief?) overview of our products. So now that we’ve gone through the basics, how would you describe what it is that we do, and more importantly, what we help businesses do?

We at CallFire are all ears.

by Natalia Klishina


There has been a lot of talk lately about trying to balance the cost-effectiveness of an automated IVR system with the responsiveness of a live call center. Customer dissatisfaction has been growing at alarming rates in the last few years, with the American Management Association finding that 68% of clients cease doing business with a company because of bad service. And 20% of the population has stopped using a particular credit card because of the waits involved in its customer service phone lines. This numbers spikes to 26% for high-income customers that know they are of high value and can go elsewhere. And if people complain about credit card hotlines, they have probably never experienced the bloated monstrosities that are government organization IVRs. The DMV, the state department, the immigration and naturalization agencies — they all make you want to kill something. We’ve all had experiences with automated answering systems that have been burnt into our memory like some terrible nightmare. However, IVR systems don’t have to be like that. For some reason, we seem not to realize that live customer service can often be just as terrible as any machine. We’ve somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that human beings simply must provide a much better customer service experience. Sometimes this is true, but it also comes at a much higher cost — both to the company, and often to the consumer, as well.

Let’s look at a company that’s probably more known for its excellent customer service than an actual product: Zappos. Zappos hires thousands of real live human beings to answer their phones. They have no scripts, they have no time limits, they’ll even pretend to be your friend (and that’s something we’re all very used to and comfortable with here in LA). And Zappos does something very unique when hiring its agents. After a few weeks of immersive training, they all get offered $1,000 (on top of compensation for the amount of time they’ve worked) to QUIT. This number originally started out as $100, went up to $500, and is scheduled to eventually surpass $1,000. Here is where many of you are probably scratching your heads, but anyone with hiring or management experience might think, “That’s brilliant!” Why? Because it weeds out people for whom $1,000 is worth more than their commitment to the company, helping maintain an energetic, customer-service-oriented culture. (For those of you wondering, about 10% of new agents end up taking up Zappos on their offer.)

Unfortunately, we can’t all do this; it simply wouldn’t be cost-efficient for most companies. According to a psychologist at International Business Machines Corp., the average cost per contact between an agent and customer is between $3 and $9 (compared to 5-7 cents with an automated system), which adds up VERY fast. For a company like Zappos, whose whole reputation stands on the quality of its customer service, the benefits outweigh the costs, but that doesn’t extend to everyone else. For example, back in 2007 Wal-Mart tried to completely remove its customer service number from its website. After a sizable backlash, they settled for burying the number in a hard-to-find spot – à la Amazon’s strategy. This is actually a very popular approach amongst retailers these days. For them, the financial benefits of providing live customer service on a sufficient scale simply wouldn’t cover the costs. This is the point where a large proportion of the exasperated public starts shouting that companies should care more about their customers than about making money, and so on and so forth, perhaps with some choice expletives included. Let’s get real here, though. People don’t shop at Wal-Mart for its customer service; they shop there because it’s cheap. And one of the ways in which they can afford to be cheap is by cutting down on customer service costs. Unfortunately, this is the real world, and there are necessary trade-offs in it. Companies would simply go bankrupt if they didn’t care about costs – and then where would you get your $38 Wal-Mart Pre-Lit 6.5’ White Artificial Christmas Tree this holiday season?

So yes, automated IVR systems are necessary, but they are not a necessary evil. What people don’t seem to realize, is that these systems don’t have to lead to bad customer service. Columnist for TMCnet Tracey Schelmetic writes that one of the best customer service experiences she’s ever had involved calling an American Airlines toll-free lost luggage recovery line and dealing with a speech-recognition-enabled IVR. The system helped her locate her luggage when the live human beings working at American Airlines had lost it. The lesson here is that IVR doesn’t have to be unpleasant to deal with – IF designed right. This, of course, raises the obvious question: What tools might you use to design an IVR? (Like CallFire’s very own IVR Designer. And of course, How do you design it right?

1. First, know what the ultimate purpose of most IVR systems is: Provide answers to frequent questions (like location and hours of operation) and solutions to simple problems (like finding out account balances or the status of deliveries), and direct callers to the appropriate agent for anything really complex or fraught with emotion, i.e. conversations involving fraud, accidents, injuries, etc.
2. Don’t offer too many options, so that customers become annoyed. For most people, four is pretty much the limit before their memory gives out and they no longer know what option 1 was. If you find yourself using up all the digits, and then even creating subsets, your customers will probably either be silently crying in a corner, frothing at the mouth and screaming expletives, or kicking their puppy and/or kitten. In any case, they’ll probably swear to never resort to dealing with you again. Another suggestion here would be to let the customer know right away, “please listen to the following #__ options.” That way they can mentally prepare themselves. (This is something Asurion does that’s been well-received.)
3. Offer self-service capabilities online as much as possible. Have a visible and helpful FAQ section, simplify every process, make things idiot-proof, etc. The best customer service is sometimes eliminating a need for one.
4. Learn to plan for high-volume call spikes. If your IVR always says, “we are experiencing an unusually high level of calls,” then it is no longer unusual, is it? Hire more agents or look into contracted services that will take messages for your during these spikes.
5. Get outside (and inside) opinions on FAQs.  Talk to your agents and see what simple questions they’re always answering and would like to see automated. Talk to your customers and find out what they think. Get as much feedback as possible, analyze it, and use it to improve your system.
6. Use humor and a relaxed tone (if appropriate to your company). For example, Geek Squad used to have an IVR system that, after listing all the regular options, said, “press five to hear a PC that has stopped working being fired from a cannon into a lake full of hungry piranha fish.” When you pressed five, you would actually hear the simulated noises. It’s reminiscent of the Office Space scene where the evil printer finally meets its demise at the hands of Peter, Michael, Samir, and a baseball bat – and it’s also funny. It helps with some of that frustration that customers calling into Geek Squad are undoubtedly experiencing when their electronic equipment ceases to function right.
7. Along the lines of the above point, personalize your IVR system. Almost all businesses use some sort of IVR system, and yet almost none of them record creative messages that reflect the company culture or say something unusual and memorable. For businesses where a large proportion of customer contact is through a contact center, this is a crucial opportunity to affect brand perception. If humor is appropriate for your company, use it. If not, think of something else. For example, Novotel – a hotel all about the right kind of ambiance – would say, “Life is stressful enough. While you are waiting for an agent, take these few seconds to breathe deep, refocus, relax, refresh.” Corny? Maybe. Better than a generic message? Definitely.
8. Use great voice talent.  This may or may not come as news to you, but who voices your IVR really matters. When insurer Aflac replaced a “cold and inconsistent” voice with a middle-aged female voice that sounded much warmer and more conversational, it saw a rise in phone calls, but a drop in callers wanting to speak to a live agent. It also found in a survey that customer satisfaction amongst callers rose by 7%. Similarly, Asurion hired a female actress, coached her to inflect her speech the way that an experienced live agent would, and recorded her voice, resulting in a 5% increase in customer satisfaction and a reduced call time due to customers using the automated system before asking to be transferred.
9. Tailor IVR shortcuts for power users.  If you have high-priority customers who are important to the company for whatever reason, consider providing them with another phone number or transfer code. This may or may not align with your company values, but it is efficient.
10. And finally, ALWAYS provide the option to speak to a representative, or clearly state between which hours one will be available. A good idea would probably be to make pressing zero that option, as that’s the number most people associate with reaching a representative. Remember, making it too hard to reach live help is the #1 mistake companies make in introducing self-service.

So keep all these in mind and start building a more cost-effective, responsive IVR system today with CallFire’s Hosted IVR.

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.

1. Send out automated reminder message to patients that are due to schedule appointments using Voice Broadcast
2. Send out an automated message to patients on a wait list when an appointment has been cancelled and a spot opens up using Voice Broadcast.
3. Check up with patients that have just had medical treatment using the Cloud Call Center.
4. Create organ donation awareness using either the Cloud Call Center or Voice Broadcast
5. Send out surveys to patients using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

To learn more about how CallFire can be used in healthcare, click here

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

TMCnet announced CallFire as the top winner of the “Best Call Center Solution” award!  (BusinessWire)   We extend our gratitude to Rich Tehrani and the entire TMCNet team for recognizing CallFire’s strong commitment to cloud telephony innovation and business excellence for Call Centers, SMBs and the Enterprise.  Thanks TMCNet!

On the second day of  ITExpo,  CallFire’s CTO spoke on an Open Source panel.  Watch a short recap video here!

Employees of CallFire enjoyed an exciting two days  as exhibitors, carriers and telephony enthusiasts rubbed shoulders at TMCNet’s ITExpo at the LA Convention Center in Downtown Los Angeles.  Our booth was easily recognizable by the bright 3D CallFire sign beaming with light!

learn more about our products and services here

Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, IP Communications Group at TMCnet interviewed CEO of Callfire, Dinesh Ravishanker regarding the “best of show” award for our Cloud Call Center product line.   Throughout the day we met many bright executives in the telecom industry including Cecily Herbst, Strategic Account Executive of VoiceCon and many more.

What is changing on September 1st, 2009?

See detailed information on FTC website

Beginning September 1st, 2009 FTC enforcement policy regarding pre-recorded voice calls utilizing autodialers will change.  The FTC will begin its ban on pre-recorded telephone calls for solicitation purposes unless the solicitor has received a prior, written and signed agreement from the call recipient.  Some exceptions for pure information (non-solicitation) calls are permitted.

What does this mean for CallFire ?

ALL CALLFIRE USERS MUST ENSURE THAT FOR ANY TELEMARKETING CALLS THAT SOLICIT BUSINESS OR SERVICES OR NEW DONORS, THAT THE USERS HAVE PRIOR, EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT TO RECEIVE PRE-RECORDED VOICE CALLS FROM THE PROPOSED RECIPIENT. Detailed information can be found on the FTC website.

a) No changes for Call Tracking (inbound) & Cloud Call Center (live voice) customers.

b) No change for Businesses who use CallFire to notify current, written opt-in for pre-recorded voice customers.

c) No change for Customers using Voice Broadcast for opt-in business notification (non-solicitation calls).

d) Customers using CallFire’s Voice Broadcast for solicitation/outbound lead gen MUST ENSURE data lists are Opt-In to receive pre-recorded voice from the particular company in the form of written consent, including the person’s phone number and signature. The written consent must be specific to agreeing to receive pre-recorded voice calls from the particular company. Written consent obtained in compliance with E–SIGN will satisfy the requirements of the law. For example, agreements obtained via an email or website form, telephone keypress, or voice recording. Any agreement obtained pursuant to E–SIGN must be sufficient to show that the consumer: (1) received clear and conspicuous disclosure of the consequences of providing the requested consent — i.e., that the consumer will receive future calls that deliver prerecorded messages—and (2) having received this information, agrees unambiguously to receive such calls at a telephone number the consumer designates.

What can I use as an alternative?

The Cloud Call Center with Power Dialer is the perfect alternative to using Voice Broadcast for your lead generation. CallFire’s Power Dialer will connect your sales agents to live people, while sending pre-recorded messages only to answering machines that promptly disclose at the outset a toll-free number that a consumer can call to assert an opt-out request. This is consistent with the FTC’s stated policies.

Remember to use the CallFire Do-Not-Call list

Companies are also required to keep their own Company-Specific do-not-call list.  This allows consumers to opt out of future calls made by the organization. The CallFire system allows you to add numbers to the internal DNC list, and then scrub against them before running future campaigns.

Who is required to access the DNC Registry?

Any company engaged in telemarketing to the public is required to maintain its own SAN number to gain access to the DNC registry and to update the scrub list every thirty-one days. The few exceptions are non-profits, a pure market research survey company, political organizations, or companies with an existing business relationship or written agreement to call. Exempt Organizations that still wish to access may access it for free.

More Information

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ALL INCLUSIVE OR PROVIDE LEGAL ADVICE.  YOU SHOULD CHECK WITH YOUR OWN ATTORNEY PRIOR TO ENGAGING IN TELEMARKETING UTILIZING PRE-RECORDED VOICE OR ENGAGING IN ANY TELEMARKETING CAMPAIGN.

Please visit: https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov/

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!