Text To Speech
Read Out Emails On The Run You can have the server in your office read you your emails whilst you are in the car on the way to work.
Provide Automated Information To Clients To provide a self-help system (think something similar to Vodafone's Lara who helped you with your account balance without the need for a human operator) no longer requires you to record copious quantities of voice prompts and possible returns. You can now install software to read back to the caller information from databases and text files.
Speech To Text / Speech Recognition
Ring Your Own Memo Service You can now setup a telephone number at your office which you can ring and the computer will take your dictation and send you an email with the text you just read it! This saves time, helps make sure you don't forget things, and can free up human resourcing to accomplish other tasks. This service can also be setup so it can send you an SMS with the information in it via an email to SMS gateway.
IVR - Ditch The Digits You can also incorporate a speech recognition engine into an interactive voice responder so that your callers are no longer required to press digits on their telephone for particular options; they can just say what they are looking for.
Database Integration
Interactive Voice Response Systems We can interface your database to your interactive voice responder system allowing you to accomplish things such as verification of clients details before they are transferred to the call centre. This will also help with technologies such as screen pops; the correct data about the caller will already be entered in and their account can be displayed on the operators screen before the call is answered improving efficiencies when handling customer inquiries.
Billing Systems Hotels and shared tenancy buildings often need to preserve billing data so a bill with exact costings can be sent onto each tenant. By adding a database and some PHP scripts to Asterisk, all this information can be generated automatically on a monthly basis and emailed to the appropriate people. Billing data from Asterisk can also be integrated into hotel check in / check out systems and the correct tolling data provided for inclusion on the customers bill at check out.
Web Based System Administration Via a series of simple web pages and a small database, most of the day to day functions of the Asterisk software can be managed. This allows the addition, removal and relocation of an extension without you having to call an external help desk. This same web interface can be modified to prevent or allow calling from each extensions on the system which is advantageous when it comes to places like hotels and serviced offices where people may be moving in and out or be required to pre-pay for the use of a phone.
Credit Card Payment Systems Using an IVR system (either voice or digit based), you can accept payments via credit card and have them processed by an external organization. This minimizes the time taken to receive payments and allows you to offer customers the convenience of 24/7 accessibility whilst knowing that money will be cleared into your accounts as quickly as possible. A credit card payment system will need to be tied to an invoicing database so details can be cross checked to ensure payment of the right invoice is being made. Additional 'smarts' can be built into the system to tie CallerID to records in the database for additional verification and higher levels of customer service which still comply with privacy legislation.
Solutions Hosting
Hosted Conferencing Reduce the cost of meetings; host them on a conferencing server and leverage the reduced calls rates of VoIP. Hosted conferencing is great if you have a distributed work force (such as sales representatives or people who work from home) as well as for presentations where it is not possible or costly to arrange for your customers / partners to all be in one location at a specific time. Some large organizations use similar systems to hold monthly partner meetings to discuss new products and announce the top performing partners and their solutions.
Hosted Call Recording If you are in an industry which requires you record the calls (for example underwriting contracts) or you require additional resources for training, a hosted call recordings solution can save you money and provide you with the required audit trail. When combined with a web reporting system or CRM (customer relationship management system), call recordings are easy to retrieve and review.
Hosted Interactive Voice Responder If you have several call centre's, or small departments which are physically located in different areas, you can use a hosted interactive voice responder to ask clients for where they want their call to be directed and it can then be forwarded via VoIP to an IP phone, or sent via a traditional telephone line to the correct telephone number. The hosted IVR will also generate records of calls which can then be audited which is especially useful for organizations running outsourced help / service desks.
Hosted Full-Service PBX If a hosted solution really makes sense for your organization, for example because your staff work from home or are located all around Australia in regional areas and you don't have an office which has the appropriate infrastructure, we can build you an Asterisk system and arrange for it to be hosted in a data centre which connects directly to the backbone of a VPN provider. We can engineer and implement the complete solution for you; all you need to think about is which type of phone you want your staff to have!
More About Hosted Solutions A hosted PBX also ensures that your telephony infrastructure is resilient to natural disasters as most data centre's provide backup power and infrastructure. In addition, a second server can be setup at a remote data centre which can act as a 'fail over' for your primary server. Click here for more information about our hosted solutions and what we can help you accomplish.
Please note Asterisk is a registered trademark of Digium Incorporated.
Contact Us
Please feel free to send us an email, or give us a call, if you have any questions or are considering a telephony project. We would appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate how Asterisk can solve your problem and deliver more than you ever expected.