CallFire

Lately we’ve been churning out features so fast that we’ve not gotten enough time to write about them. However, this one feature is too hard not to sing praises for: Removing duplicates. Now, every time you add numbers to a new or existing campaign, you’ll have the option to remove duplicates from that list. To do so, just choose yes to the question below and you’re done!

If there are any duplicates in your list, they will be marked as such and not dialed. You can still see them by clicking on the campaign details page.

Pardon the mess while we move from our bohemian Santa Monica offices to the heart of the downtown LA’s financial district. The new location will help us serve you in new and innovative ways!

Quote of the Day

Never confuse movement with action

                                             –Ernest Hemingway

The short answer is no.

Our Website runs independent of our dialing infrastructure which is spread across two data centers in the continental United states and is hosted on dozens of servers. Our UI, though our only public face, is but one small piece of it.

For voice broadcast campaigns, campaign thresholds determine how fast or slow your campaigns run. Each campaign starts with a default threshold of 50 CPM (Calls Per Minute). This is the default account threshold as well. This means that the system will dial fifty numbers every minute that the campaign is running. However, if you have multiple campaigns running, only one will run at 50 CPM, and all other campaigns will run at 1 CPM. If the 50 CPM campaign finishes before the others, the system will intelligently redistribute the threshold, but not until the 50 CPM campaign is over. So, if you need to have all campaigns running in parallel, then you’re better off distributing the threshold manually over your running campaigns. For example, you could have them run in a 10-10-30 or similar combination. The beauty of the CallFire system is that it gives you full control over your campaigns, so you can update the threshold while the campaign is running, and it takes effect immediately!

Note, for those with higher account thresholds, the same logic applies to your account limit. For those who would like a higher threshold, please do drop us a line.

Bobby Khalili, CEO of YellowPages.travel once did some interesting work with us here at CallFire. He invested in a prototype shopping application that used Speech recognition & cell phone UPC picture scanning. CallFire developed the technology but the user interface was never quite perfected and the product was never ushered to market.

Bobby’s latest biz is Http://www.YELLOWPAGES.travel - and it enables you to search ALL the top travel sites at the same time in order for you to save time. They stand to bring together all popular travel sites on the web to determine who really has the lowest price.

Cool idea and I thought it deserved a shout out!

Many of our customers are aware of our Phonebook feature. This feature allows you to have one list of phone numbers that can then be reused for future campaigns. There is a default phonebook created for you that houses your DNC numbers, i.e., numbers that should not be called again. As stated earlier, this list is live. In other words, for any of your voice broadcast campaigns if a user presses the DNC option, or for your Call Center Connect (Virtual Call Center) campaigns you create a ‘DNC’ (case sensitive) disposition, and if your agents choose that option, that number gets added to your DNC phonebook. Now the question arises:

When and how does DNC scrubbing occur?

The answer is only by request. As pointed out by our help page, every time you create a campaign or add numbers to a campaign, you will be given the option to scrub against the the DNC phonebook. Keep in mind that the DNC is a phonebook is a snapshot at any given time. This means a scrub against the DNC at 9:00 AM will not yield the same results as a scrub at 12:00 PM the same day. This may lead you to another question:

I am running multiple campaigns, how can I keep my DNC scrubbing up-to-date?

The answer is again: only by request. Simply select the campaign you want to scrub as shown below:

From the drop down menu on top select “Scrub Campaign” and click go:

The campaign will be scrubbed against all the numbers dialed up until that point.

As the message suggests, please verify the phone numbers before proceeding. One way to do this is to go your call details for that campaign and check for any with the status ’scrubbed’.

I must hasten to point out that this list is your own and in no way or form cross referenced with the Federal DNC. Our clients are responsible for their conformance with federal and local dialing laws. You can read more about dialing laws here.

CNN has this article about companies that hire home-based workers. With quality of life becoming an increasingly paramount factor in people’s lives more companies more companies allowing for employees to work from home. The story states that:

CallFire’s Virtual Call Center allows organizations provide a better quality of life and increase productivity of their members. Think about it, your support, sales, or volunteer staff only need to have access to the Internet and a phone, and you can have all the features and controls that a brick-and-mortar call center would have. Here’s the kicker, it costs you no more than $2.10 per hour per agent. That’s it! No up front fees, no monthly minimums. I’ve had customers who’ve told me that makes a great case for keeping their support desks on US shores.

Try it out!

Quote of the day:

Mr. Watson - Come here - I want to see you.

                                                   — Alexander Graham Bell

Some of our customers may have experienced intermittent issues with their campaigns today (specifically between the hours of 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM PST). Rest assured that the issue was not with CallFire’s own servers. Our long distance carriers were having problems completing calls and our servers detected this issue and put the affected campaigns on stand-by mode. This is a designed feature to make sure that all campaigns are running at optimal levels. So what may appear like a bug is actually a feature. Such is the complicated, dense, and interconnected nature of middleware, we have to be prepared for even the most outlandish of scenarios and do everything we can to keep the system stable and secure.

Quote of the day:

Try not. Do, or do not, there is no try. — Master Yoda

Press-1 campaigns have been around for a while. Why would our Press-1 campaigns be any different? Because we add a Voice 2.0 twist, of course.

Earlier this year, CallFire released its Voice Broadcast user interface for small to medium enterprises. CallFire is the fastest, easiest way to price-effectively create Press 1 outbound campaigns. CallFire empowers small businesses (previously unable to deploy telephony applications due to expense constraints) to now easily connect warm leads to a sales force, LIVE.

Use CallFire.com today to easily create Press 1 campaigns using our Press 1 API, please visit: http://www.callfire.com/dialer/cm/info/voice_broadcast_api.html. To try out a Press-1 campaign for your business, sign up here.

Cheers, DR

My colleague Adrian and I were lamenting about how the startup life can impede one’s workout schedule. Unlike me, he’s a workout fanatic. Working out in the morning would be a good way to ‘get it done and get it out of your way’. One challenge is consistently getting up in the morning, and that’s when Adrian came up with an idea: Why not use CallFire as a wake-up service?

Think about it, if you scheduled a campaign to give you a call every day of the month at 4:00 AM, it would cost you $1.05. That’s one dollar for the entire month! It’s way cheaper than the $4.99/per month or 7cents/min that dedicated wake-up services charge you. You could even schedule three additional snooze style wake-up calls and still not break the $5 mark!

CallFire: the personal productivity tool. Whowudathunkit!

Quote of the Day:

I have to exercise in the morning before my brain figures out what I’m doing.

                                                                                                          -Marsha Doble