CallFire

by Natalia Klishina

Call centers have increasingly transitioned to hiring at-home agents lately, with roughly 30% of U.S. centers utilizing remote agents already. Some predict this number will grow to 80% by 2013, which may be a bit steep, but the trend is clearly in that direction. Currently, there are 45 million Americans who telecommute to their jobs. Published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, an American Psychologial Association (APA) analysis of 46 studies on telecommuting involving 12,833 employees comes out strongly in favor of the practice, calling it a “win-win” for both employees and employers. The employees are happy to not have to commute and the employers are happy to be getting better results and encountering lower costs.

We know that many of you still remain skeptical, but this is why you shouldn’t be.

You will not lose any control over your agents.

Yep, you read that right. Just because you cannot walk the floor and physically watch your agents doesn’t mean that you will lose any control. In fact, with CallFire’s monitoring capabilities and comprehensive reports, it’s even easier to keep track of your agents online than in person. You can see which agents are currently on the phone, how many calls each agent placed and their duration, and all the notes that they have input for each customer. Still feeling paranoid? You can listen in (or even barge in) on ongoing phone calls, or listen to call recordings at any time (included in the cost). Big Brother at his best.

You don’t have to worry about network security.

All your information is stored on our secure CallFire database, and you — the administrator — are the only one who has access to it. Your agents don’t have any of this information on their own computers, so you can sleep soundly.

Training & feedback is as easy as ever.

We’ve long since entered the Internet age, so there’s nothing you can’t do online. eLearning has become quite prevalent, and it provides a flexible schedule not just for your trainees, but also for you. You can sit down and create training materials and videos whenever it’s convenient for you. As for testing their effectiveness, with all the analytics and recordings right at your fingertips on your CallFire dashboard, seeing results and compiling evaluations is quick and simple. Then just jump on a conference line or a Skype call if you want to have a conversation with your agents.

If you’re still wondering why you should switch, here’s just a few reasons.

Lower costs

You don’t have to rent out real estate to house a call center, or buy all the equipment that’s necessary for it. Most at-home agents have the Internet and phone access required for the job. You’re also probably hiring most of these agents part time, not full time.

Higher productivity

For one, absenteesism and attrition rates decrease: A TelCoa study showed a decrease from 18% absenteesim for in-house agents to 7% for at-home agents; and employee attrition went from 53% to 39%.

On top of that, productivity has been shown to go up by anywhere near 15%. There are a myriad factors contributing to this: employees no longer have to spend time commuting or getting dressed for the office, weather and traffic aren’t issues, costs of fuel and vehicle maintenance are cut, and employees are generally more willing to work longer hours when at home.

Better Workers

At-home agents are of higher caliber: A Frost & Sullivan study found that the average at-home worker is over the age of 35 (vs. 23 for in-house). Also, 80% of at-home workers have some college experience (vs. 30% for in-house), 40% have management experience, and 30% are bilingual. A believer in equal-opportunity? Well, at-home workers are usually 50% male and 50% female.

Higher customer satisfaction

The same TelCoa study mentioned above also found that customers who spoke to at-home agents vs in-house agents were 12% more satisfied with the service. If your customers are happy, they’ll spend more, talk about you more, and generally make your life better.

By now, you should be convinced. The question then becomes not whether this is a good idea, but how to implement it. Here’s some quick advice.

1. Create virtual training materials, whether this be videos, PowerPoint presentations, interactive systems, or simple printable documents. Continue to edit and supplement these as time goes on. Set aside time for individual or group Q & A. Perhaps you may even want to go the route of on-site training if you still plan on all your agents being located in the same city.
2. Compile a list of technical demands: minimum connectivity, hardware and speed requirements, Internet and search engine familiarity, experience with SalesForce, etc. In general, at-home workers should possess higher IT skills than in-house agents.
3. Equipment: what do your agents need, what should they already have, and what are you willing to provide? With CallFire’s cloud call center, all any agent needs is an Internet connection and a phone line (this can even be a cell phone or Skype number).
4. Set clear expectations. How many hours a day do you expect home agents to be dialing? How often do you want them to report back to you? Let them know exactly what working from home means to you.
5. Create a communication structure. Every agent should know how to get in touch with you and be comfortable doing so if they need support. They should also feel like they are part of the company and its community, so make sure they’re included. This may involve occasional events if your agents are located in the same city, or it may be as simple as creating an online conversation forum if your agents are all over the country.
6. Plan out your agents’ schedules. Take advantage of the fact that some people may be willing to wake up and start working at 5am if that means they can end earlier. Also, keep in mind different time zones. This may mean that no one has to get up early or work late.

You asked for it, and it’s finally here. You can now prompt your CallFire account to automatically charge the credit card on file when your balance dips below a certain amount. You’ll get an e-mail each time an automatic payment is made. Set up automatic payments the same way you previously created low-balance e-mail notifications.

Step 1 – Log into your CallFire account and go to your Account Settings.

Step 2 – Scroll down to the last option and select “Automatically add $10.00 from my card ending in xxxx” in the drop-down menu. (The amount will default to the amount you last deposited.)

Enjoy!
The CallFire Team



/**
 * Serves to provide an excellent job experience in a talented and cutting edge environment.
 * <p>
 * Please check to see that qualifications match your skills and use the method shown in the
 * submitApplication function to apply.
 */
public class CallFireJob extends Startup implements CodeWarrior {

    public String getJobTitle() {
        return "API Developer / Engineer";
    }

    public String getCompanyUrl() {
        return "http://www.CallFire.com";
    }

    public String getCompanyInformation() {
        return "CallFire.com is a cloud telephony startup. " +
                "We’re dedicated to providing high-availability systems, " +
                "beautiful user interfaces, furious developer support and " +
                "unparalleled customer care. We are a unique group of " +
                "intellectuals with aspirations to truly change how companies " +
                "do business.";
    }

    public String getCompanyLocation() {
        return "3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica, CA. Three blocks from the ocean.";
    }

    public String getQualifications() {
        return "Overview:  Great communicator and programmer needed for developing and supporting CallFire API's."
             + "Languages: Java, PHP, .Net "
             + "Skills:    SOAP, REST "
             + "Education: College";
    }

    public String getSalaryRange() {
        return "$60,000 - $90,000";
    }

    public String getBenefits() {
        return "Health, Dental and Profit Sharing.";
    }

    public String getCompanyAchievements() {
        return "INC 500, fastest growing companies #285.";
    }

    public String submitApplication(String contactEmail, String coverLetter, String resume) {
        Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(getMailProperties());
        MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(session);
        try {
            message.addRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress("jobs@callfire.com"));
            message.setFrom(new InternetAddress(contactEmail));
            message.setSubject("API Developer Job");
            message.setText(coverLetter + " " + resume);
            Transport.send(message);
        }
        catch (MessagingException ex) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Failed to send e-mail");
        }
    }
}

by Natalia Klishina

Towards the end of 2010, CallFire was invited to try out the beta of Promoted Twitter. I had originally written a blog article explaining the service and reviewing it. Unfortunately, this article has been removed due to Twitter’s informing us that “during the beta rollout of [their] Promoted Products services, advertisers can’t blog about their experiences using the products.”

Here’s some information on what the service IS for those just researching the topic:

What is Promoted Twitter?

Promoted Twitter is a way for Twitter users to highlight their account or their tweets to the Twitter community — for a price, of course. There are essentially 3 categories this falls into: promoted accounts, promoted tweets, and promoted trends.

Promoted accounts:

Promoted accounts highlight your account as a whole to other users. This can be done through targeting specific keywords in people’s descriptions, or through relying on whatever algorithms Twitter uses to determine whom you’re relevant to (the details of this process still remain a mystery). The way this manifests is through the “Who to follow” suggestions all users see to the right of their feed. Your account will automatically be recommended to users likely to be interested in following you, but you can also add specific interests you want to target.

Promoted tweets:

Promoted tweets highlight not the account, but specific tweets posted by that account. This means that you must first organically post a tweet that includes the keyword or hashtag you want to target. If another user then searches for that keyword or hashtag, and if you are the highest bidder on that keyword or hashtag, one of the tweets you promoted under that campaign should show up at the top of that search. The tweet will have a yellow tag underneath it saying “Promoted by… .” Resonating Tweets will be automatically recommended to interested users in their timelines, but you can also add interests and search keywords for which your tweets will show up.

Promoted trends:

Promoted trends work essentially the same was as promoted tweets, except you also make the hashtag or keyword under which you promoted a tweet into a promoted trend. This then forces that hashtag or keyword into the “Trends” section, and your tweet will always appear at the top of that trend feed. I’ve seen some really creative ways of doing this, and it seems to work best when companies attach a promoted trend to a specific promotion or competition.

Analysis and results unavailable, as per Twitter’s request to be taken down. This post is in no way meant to be a reflection of our opinion of the service, just a summary of what it is.

by Jeff Spisak

Call forwarding: you love it. So much so you’ve bought a forwarding number from CallFire: 555.123.4567. Now you want to use it, so you have it set up to forward to your business number, let’s say that is 444.123.4567. Everyone knows that you can add identifying tags to this on the My Numbers page, but what about the campaign dashboard? When you navigate to that page, all you see are the two numbers sans tags, as in our example below.  Can’t we make that more readable?

Yes, we can! It’s sort of round about, but it does work. Simply click the red stop button to halt the campaign for a minute.

Once the campaign stops and moves to the lower section of your dashboard, the pencil icon magically appears. Click it.

Enter the new campaign name (we’re using Denver) and click Set.

Click the green start arrow to restart your campaign.

And voilà!

Now instead of having to review campaign 555.123.4567 => 444.123.4567, it instead displays as campaign Denver. And that’s all she wrote!

by Jeff Spisak

So you’ve run a campaign and everything went swimmingly. Now you are ready to extract your data and review your findings. There’s just one problem: Excel pulls all your particular data and lumps it all in the same column. Isn’t there a way to make it more readable?

Take heart! The solution is simple and painless. First, let’s take a look at your spreadsheet. Your exported data will show up in a column titled “Extra Data,” where each piece of data that was formerly in its own column now occupies the same column, separated by commas. “Null” indicates the end of the list.

So let’s get this cleared up, and fast! First click the letter of the column containing the extra data (“P” in our example), and then choose the Text to Columns option in the Data menu. Depending on your version of Excel, this option will either be in a drop-down menu when you click Data, or else it will appear horizontally under the Data tab (as it does in this example).

Now when we click the Text to Column button, it opens up the Conversion Wizard. Most of the default options are the ones we want anyway, so just click Next for Step 1.

Now we get to Step 2, and we need to make one important change. Make sure that you change the Delimiter option. The default choice is “Tab,” but we want “Comma,” so that Excel will make a new column each time it sees a comma (see, the engineers didn’t put the commas in there by accident). So check Comma and click Next.

Step 3 looks intimidating! So we ignore it and click Finish.

Um, not sure why we see this. Just click OK.

And bingo! Everywhere we saw a comma, we now see a new column! Of course, you’ll probably have to rename “Extra Data” to something like “First Name,” then rename all the other columns so it makes sense, but that’s that!

And that’s all there is to it!

by Jeff Spisak

So you’re all ready to import your numbers into CallFire when you notice, to your horror, that the area codes and the phone numbers are in different columns! Do you have to copy and paste the entire list by hand? Isn’t there another way? Take heart: there is indeed! Just grab your Excel workbook and follow along with us.

Now, if there isn’t a column of empty cells just to the right of your numbers, you will need to add one. Click the column header letter and choose “Insert.”

OK, so now we have a blank column.  We’re ready to merge our cells.

This is the tricky part. Well, not really tricky, but it is important to do it correctly. Click the cell to the right of the first set of numbers you want to merge. In our example below, it is cell C2. Now, click in the formula box in Excel, and enter this formula: =A2&B2. You will have to change A and B to match the columns where your area codes and numbers are. Basically, you are telling Excel to put into cell C2 the contents of cells A2 and B2; in other words, put the area code and the number together in a new cell.  Enter the formula and hit Enter.

Hooray!  We have done it.

Now for the “slick” part. Click again on the cell where you’ve merged the numbers (C2 in our example). Hover your mouse in the lower right of the cell. The pointer will change into different shapes.  It is really important to get it into the correct form.

You don’t want these:

You want this one, the one that looks like a plain black cross with no fancy stuff on it. When you see that, click and hold your mouse button, and drag it down the entire length of the column. When you get to the last row, release the button.

Yay! Done!

by Kimberly Kohatsu

Not everyone realizes that there is a recently unveiled toll-free area code, 855, available.

An 855 phone number works exactly like any 800 number (800, 877, 866, 888). The benefit, however, is because these numbers are brand new, you can be assured no other business has ever owned or used this number in the past. Your business won’t get any calls intended for a previous owner, which can sometimes happen when numbers get recycled.

Ready to try one? CallFire makes it easy. Toll-free numbers cost only $2/month. The initial charge of $6 will cover your first three months with that number, and after that, we bill your number on a month-to-month basis. So, if your marketing campaign ends and you no longer need that 855 number, you don’t have to keep paying for it. But, if you want to hold on to it, you certainly can, and it continues to be only $2 per month.

When people call in to your 855 number, you can send them through one of your CallFire IVR menus, or you can simply forward them to a number you already use. Calls are billed at 5 cents per minute, rounded up to the nearest minute.

1) To get started, sign up for a CallFire account. It’s free to sign up, and there are no minimums, no set-up fees, and no hidden charges.

2) Then, once you’re logged in, navigate to the Numbers tab up top, and select “Buy Toll-Free or Local.”

3) You’ll then see a list of available 855 numbers. Choose any of them, or if you need more, choose a whole bunch. Then hit the green button. If you’d rather have a local number, write the area code you’re interested in in the ( ) box and click “Find Area Code.” The process is the same.

4) Your new number will be ready right away, but a common mistake made is forgetting to enable your number. To do that, go to the “My Numbers” page and click Enable. You should see your campaign’s status will turn to “Running.”

by Kimberly Kohatsu

In my capacity as CallFire’s Director of Marketing, I am trying not only to market CallFire as a brand, but to help our clients, most of whom are small business owners, market themselves.

First, I shared some best practices for opt-in text marketing. This week, I’m sharing tips on how to create an effective voice broadcast campaign. And we should know. Last month alone, CallFire helped businesses send over 10 million voice broadcasts.

This video covers how to script your message, how to time your message, whether you should consider using a professional voice, and most importantly, what to do after your campaign has run. If you are interested in running a subset campaign, watch this video with my colleague Ryan.

I hope you find this video helpful, and I encourage you to share any of the tips and tricks you’ve learned in using Voice Broadcast in the comments below.

by Natalia Klishina

Due to all the interest in my earlier post about transferring campaigns from Google AdWords into Microsoft AdCenter (Bing), I decided to add on some additional information I’ve learned since then, and to put it all in video form.

Share of US Online Search

Google – 67.6%
Microsoft – 14.1%
Yahoo! – 13.9%
Ask.com – 3.8%
AOL – 0.7%
Conclusion from this: you can be paying a lot less for Bing, so make sure to change your maximum bids when you transfer campaigns (we use about a quarter of our Google bids, and see a quarter of the CPC).

Similarities & Differences

• Same bidding system: pay $0.01 more than the next-highest bidder, all other factors equal.
• AdCenter is PRE-PAY only. AdWords will send you invoices.
• AdWords lets you rotate or optimize ads. AdCenter will automatically optimize by CTR.
• AdCenter does not currently support image or video ads.

Match Types

Note: AdCenter does NOT have modified broad match, which you will have to compensate for. AdCenter also only has negative PHRASE match (no negative exact match).

AdCenter also has keyword normalization, so it will automatically ignore common conjunctions and prepositions (a, about, an, at, by, for, how, in, is, of, on, or, the, to, what, with). That means that if you have a phrase like “what is,” both of those words are going to be thrown out because they are noise words.

Ad Structure

AdWords: Line 1 is a maximum of 35 characters; Line 2 is a maximum of 35 characters.
AdCenter: Ad text is a maximum of 70 characters.
Looks the same, but isn’t. AdCenter inserts a line break in the most appropriate place automatically; you choose where the line break is in AdWords.

How to Transfer Your Campaigns

Watch the video.

Important Factors to Keep Track Of

1. Make sure your campaign settings transfer correctly (usually the “devices” is what never transfers right).
2. Keep track of your negatives! (AdCenter sometimes calls this “exclusions.”)
• “Account negatives,” which are new to AdWords, will not transfer because AdCenter only has campaign negatives and lower, so you will need to transfer these manually.
• Since AdCenter doesn’t have exact negatives, make sure you find everything that used to be an exact negative and review whether it will work as a phrase negative. Example: you might have an exact negative like -[phone] in AdWords because it’s too nonspecific for you to want to capture people searching for just “phone.” Once it transfers as the phrase negative “phone,” though, it means anyone searching for a phrase with the word “phone” in it will not see your ad.
• Look through all your negative keywords searching for noise words and get rid of them (or the entire phrases). For example, if you had [what is call tracking] as an exact negative phrase, it becomes “what is call tracking.” Both “what” and “is” are ignored as noise words, meaning you essentially have the negative keyword “call tracking” for the keyword “call tracking.” Don’t let it happen to you!
3. Keep track of your modified broach match keywords. They will transfer with the “+,” but AdCenter will not recognize what that means. You’ll need to manually replace those with either broach match or phrase match.
4. Scroll through all your ads and make sure they look the same visually. Sometimes you will also have to fix length, because the strange break will put you over the length limit.

Also…

DON’T use a mac!

DO download AdCenter Desktop — the AdCenter equivalent of AdWords Editor.

Good luck!