Have you ever wanted a quick question answered via chat?  CallFire just released chat support for customers who are logged in as a CallFire administrators!

Using Chat Support is easy:

1) Log into CallFire.com

2) Look for the chat box on the lower right hand gutter of your browser, and will expand when clicked.

3) See if a support agent is available (it will say “Hi, I am around”)

4) Ask your question!

That’s it!  We’re confident that this new addition to our website will make solving support problems faster and easier for our customers.

What is Voice Broadcast?

Voice Broadcast messages serve an important purpose in the field of notifications. Voice Broadcasts, otherwise known as robo-calls, often have a negative connotation associated with them. They were widely used in marketing campaigns, sending pre-recorded messages to potential consumers/  However, this type of Voice Broadcast dialing has been illegal since September 1 2009. For more information on these laws, see our previous blog on the subject.

While this portion of Voice Broadcast is largely dead, there are many other applications of Voice Broadcast that may not be apparent. Emergency notification, Get-out-the-vote reminders, communication between local organizations, and more!

For customized appointment reminders or notifications, an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) can be used using text to speech.

In case you are confused about what an IVR is, what it is capable of, or how you can use it, watch our newest video and have your questions answered!

As you can see, Susie used the IVR designer and  Hosted IVR to solve a variety of problems!

1) Create phone surveys
2) Telephone routing system
3) Custom notifications

These are just a few ways that Hosted IVR can make your life easier, and we’re always excited to hear about new ways that you used hosted IVR. Feel free to contact us with any questions or just creative ideas you may have!

We are thrilled to announce the release of our newest product: Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) ! This product fills an important gap in the telephony space allowing quality of conversation that’s much better than traditional automated messages and yet not require a live call center representative. IVRs are widely used for large enterprises, but with this release, we are democratizing the technology space for the smaller to mid-size businesses. Hosted IVR’s robust capabilities offer a comprehensive solution for a large variety of telecom needs.

IVR Designer Interface

Core to our Hosted IVR product is the user-friendly IVR designer, which offers drag and drop functionality for non-technical users empowering them to create complex survey’s,  and meeting reminders via an intuitive, engaging user interface.. This capability widens the range of users who can individually build their own IVRs, something that historically could only be done by a developer.

The ease of use, however, does not decrease the feature set. Features that include reading text from a specific excel column using text to speech, complex dial plans, recording of responses, and more.  These features support a plethora of customer uses creating a high degree of personalization in the conversation. For example, the IVR can be used for a virtual receptionist that will route phone calls, Comprehensive phone surveys that will compile results, or Customized appointment reminders. The IVR can either be sent out to a list of phone numbers or assigned to a specific phone number that can receive incoming calls.

Click for more information about Hosted IVR and IVR designer

For developer documentation, see the Custom Telephony page

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.

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:

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.

This weekend, CallFire developers rolled out a great new feature: Inbound telephone service.  Now, you can buy Toll Free & Local telephone numbers with only a few clicks on our website!

This powerful new feature allows you to track which advertising campaigns generate you the most sales calls.

Screenshot:

So, what does this mean for you?

Buy Toll Free or Local numbers

Purchase one, or thousands of numbers for your business.  By displaying unique phone numbers to each of your advertising campaigns, your sales team can monitor which ads are driving the most phone calls.  And of course, with CallFire’s pay-as-you-go platform, you can stop receiving calls on your new number at any time.

Nationwide Call Forwarding

All local & toll free phone numbers can forward to your existing phone number.   Your cost during a forwarded call is 5c/minute for local numbers and 8c/minute for Toll Free.

Know which ADs make your phones ring

Create useful reports and visualize your callers patterns.  You may find that some campaigns drive more sales calls than others.  This data can be used to make valuable marketing decisions.

Developer tools and APIs

Integrators, please visit http://www.CallFire.com/dev to learn more about CallFire’s Voice APIs.  Publishers & large advertisers can use APIs to purchase & provision DIDs.  Call us to learn more at 877.897.FIRE.

Only $2/month + 8c/min

For Toll Free numbers… for local numbers, it’s only: $1/month + 5c/min.

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.