Ifbyphone Blog

I’m a big fan of Social Media in general.  Anything that can bring people together and help create interesting conversations has a great deal of value.  I’m on Twitter, Plurk, FriendFeed, Facebook, keep about 3 blogs besides this one, am online on about 5 different IM platforms, and I put my click-to-call in almost every email I send out.  I like having conversations with people.

But for many people, Social Media is a little too much.  It’s hard to keep up with all of the information.  Based on the way these services are setup, it IS hard to keep up with all the different conversations.  It’s hard to even explain the differences to people who aren’t already among the early adopter crowd.

So I’m starting to try and explain  them as distribution methods.  What does that mean exactly? These services simply assist in facilitating, recording and delivering conversations. Take Twitter for example.  You can get information into and out of Twitter in several different ways (IM, Twitter clients, the Web, SMS), and you can get the information out in the same ways (plus Email).  Twitter is just a service that allows you to find people and talk about things of common interest.

Much in the same way that IfByPhone makes dealing with Phone applications easier, Twitter makes dealing with delivery of messages easier.

So it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to use Twitter as a way to notify me of incoming calls.  So I used IfByPhone technology and the Twitter API to post messages my Twitter account. Now when someone hits “connect” on my Click-to-call, I will get a secure, private message from Twitter saying “Inbound call from ……”  Since our API (and Twitter’s) are so easy to use, the whole project took about 30 minutes (for a non-developer like me).

And if you’re the enterprising type, seeing how easy it is to integrate IfByPhone with Twitter, it’s just a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from writing a snippet of code that checks inbound phone calls with your CSR database.
Interested? Let’s talk.

Our vision, stated here time and again, is that the phone is the best technology that small and medium businesses have at their disposal. Normally it is in the context of using our technology to drive more conversations (using Click-to-call, IVR applications, Virtual Receptionist, Voice Broadcast, etc).

But today we’re taking another angle. Today we’re showing off a demo of a time entry application. There are a number of businesses that have workforces that are primarily in the field. The fact that the main office is in a physically different location than the workforce presents any number of challenges.

The main office wants information from the field (status of jobs, time spent), and they may want to send updates to the field (a change in priorities, a new job, etc). But how do they enable that kind of communication?

You could just have everyone calling each other day, but then no actual work would get done. You could use tablet PCs or SmartPhones with custom built applications. But think of the associated costs. The development cost for this type of application is going to be significant. The developers are going to have to learn a particular mobile phone OS and the associated SDK. Plus, you are going to have to purchase and support the hardware. Then you are going to have to train the users on the device AND the application.

Once you get done with all those costs, it’s clear that the return on investment is going to be negative.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you could do all those things just using the phones all your workers already have? Using IfByPhone’s API, you can do just that. We have developed a bare-bones Time Entry application. This application allows you to input an Employee ID, a JobID and start and end time. Here is how the demo works.

An employee would call a phone number, and it will ask them for their employee ID. After validating the Employee ID, it will ask them for the Job number, the starting time, and the ending time. Once the call is complete, IfByPhone posts the results to a webpage run by the company recording the time. Then the data can be thrown into any internal database they want.

This is a pretty bare bones application. But with some customization, you can imagine some pretty powerful possibilities. For construction companies, you could allow a foreman to authenticate himself, and then enter in not only hours worked for his crew, but potentially request new equipment, enter in amount of product used for a given job, etc. If you have technicians in the field, you can use your existing database to direct them to the next job (potentially including step-by-step directions).

So please, try this out. Click the phone to enter some data (look below for valid Employees and Jobs).

Then go see the results pop up in real time here.

The app will ask you for an Employee ID (11111, 22222, 53581, and 49525) and a JobID (11 and 22). I feel the need to emphasize: I am not a graphic designer, and this is simply a demo. So the data page ain’t pretty. And we’re not doing things you want to make sure to do in any real application (user validation, validating the job #, etc). This is simply a demo meant to show how our voice applications can extend to external systems and databases. I’ll be posting the files to the download section of PhoneMashup in a couple days.

Click here to talk to Khyle.

“Who you gonna call?” World & Web Marketing called ifbyphone to rescue Papa Dean’s Popcorn from drowning in its own success.

The ifbyphone virtual receptionist success story was featured today in the San Antonio Express-News. Below is an excerpt:

Staglik had gone to San Antonio-based World & Web to revamp their Web site. Between the walk-in traffic and the Internet orders, Papa Dean’s suddenly was too successful.

“I called up Garth Dennis,” Staglik said, referring to World & Web’s founder. “I said, ‘We’re drowning here. What can you do for us?’.”

That same day, Dennis patched the Web site into Ifbyphone, a Skokie, Ill.-based phone applications service.

“It’s like having a virtual receptionist that is collecting information from your customers,” explained Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro. “So when you get to them, you have additional information and you can handle their order more effectively.”

Staglik said the service rescued the shop’s holiday season. And it gave Papa Dean’s much more information on clients than staff could have acquired under such rush circumstances.

Read the full article
Learn About The Virtual Receptionist
Visit Papa Dean’s Popcorn
Visit World & Web Marketing

Recently in this space we’ve talked about the lack of interesting VOIP Applications. It seems that people all over are asking where the apps are. No less than Jeff Pulver has decried the lack of innovation in this space. At first, I objected to Jeff’s post, saying that there were several companies doing interesting things (us being one of them!). Then I had the chance to chat with him, and immediately came to the conclusion that he was indeed correct.

The functionality that IfByPhone provides, the tools we offer, are not in fact innovative. Shocking, isn’t it? And in actuality, I’ve said that here in the past. Big companies started adding voice to their existing applications years ago. Airlines use it to notify fliers that there is a flight cancellation. Prescription companies are making it easier to refill medications. There are a million uses.

So the tools have been around. The trick is that in order to use voice in applications there has been, historically speaking, a huge amount of overhead. You have to get a delivery mechanism - a physical way to make the calls. Then you have to monitor the ports, support them when they go bad. You have to get telco providers. Probably you will have to hire support people in IT to monitor and maintain the whole system. You have to hire and support very specific types of developers (ones that understand VXML). Developers that likely will only work on voice applicaitons. You have to maintain very comlpex code, and any changes to your applicaitons are also going to be expensive. Rolling out new applications? Start from scratch.

If you are a huge company, you have options. You can play off a couple vendors who do big-league IVR systems against each other, and get them to eat the cost of development. They probably deliver phone calls for a living, so they’ll eat that cost because you are going to send them more than enough traffic to make up for it.

But let’s say you’re not a major airline. What happens if you don’t drive millions of minutes of traffic? Well, you are out of luck. No matter what the ROI would be, adding voice to your business operations was a non-starter. You simply can’t get over the hump to make the effort worthwhile.

Here is the true power of IfByPhone. We make it easier for any developer to use voice. I talk to a lot of developers who want to use our tools to add voice to their applicaitons - and the number one thing I hear in almost every conversation is ’straightforward.’ If you have a developer that can run a query on your database and write a little PHP or ASP code, that’s all you need.

We’re a better tool box. With us, you use a GUI (graphical user interface) to design the application. Then you access it securely over the internet. We’re the right tool for the job, if the job involves voice. I would strongly recommend you spend 15 minutes today thinking of all the various aspects of your business that you don’t like doing. What are the things you have to do, but take you and your employees away from creating more revenue? What are the things you’d like to be able to do but don’t have the time?

Do you like following up on late invoices? Do you want to call and remind people of their upcoming appointments? Are you using a call center but are spending a lot of money while they ask or answer the same questions over and over? Are you gathering leads and losing money because you can’t verify their phone numbers or they go cold? Would you like to use your knowledge of your customers to combine an order received phone call with an upsell?

We have the tools to solve all those problems. All you need to do is sprinkle a little PHP on it (or ASP if you like), tie it with your database, and you have your voice enabled application :). Don’t read me wrong, it will take work. But if you have access to a developer you trust, you should strongly consider adding voice to your line of business applications. The ROI will amaze you.

If you are a consultant or a developer, spend a few minutes trying to understand your clients’ pain points as they relate to communicating with their customers. Pitch them on ways you can make their life easier and make them more money, and watch their reaction. To paraphrase “Field of Dreams” - “Build the apps and they will come.”

If you’d like to talk to me about it, click here.

More than a year ago PhoneGnome CEO David Beckmeyer posed the question Where are the Voice 2.0 developers? We’re still waiting for the answer, says FierceVoIP editor Doug Mohney in his post, Pulver’s Purple Prophesies–And Fallout Thereof, charting VoIP’s journey from industry-disrupting new technology to plain vanilla status quo. 

If you’ve been around the VoIP space any length of time you’ve heard plenty about the uber-cool applications that digital voice was going to bring us. Well, we have mobile personal ads from Jangl – wait, didn’t Jangl go under a few weeks ago? 

Let’s face it, whether you call it rich voice or Voice 2.0, the pickings are slim. Talk about the impossible dream. Searching Google News on “rich voice VoIP” yields three hits. One is about fax-over-VoIP and the other two are about the same services for public safety agencies. Not exactly paradigm-shifting.

A decade later the VoIP industry has barely scratched the surface on the opportunity presented by turning phone calls into data. The last VON show in San Jose was all about new variations on the century-old theme of making and delivering phone calls. Like one more Baskin Robbins flavor – it’s still just ice cream. A new Skype handset is still…a handset.

Instead of making more ice cream maybe we should think about making something new — using the flexibility that VoIP opens up for making business operations smarter, more efficient, and more effective.

For example, add a short IVR to capture information like address or account number to route calls to the nearest office, look up account information or schedule a service call. Or think outside the phone call envelope altogether, as PEAK Technologies has done in its voice-based supply chain applications.

Just as we no longer write separate applications to update customer name in the accounts receivable and customer order systems, it’s time to stop silo-ing voice in something called the “phone system.” But that’s not going to come from the VoIP industry – it’s still too busy making cheap phone calls.

We released Version 2.7 last night. Below are highlights of the new features.

Some of the new features in Ifbyphone Version 2.7 include:

• The availability of local telephone numbers in all major US metropolitan areas. Customers will be able to select either toll free or local numbers for use with our Virtual Receptionist, Find Me, Survo and other inbound call routing applications.
• The Publish SurVo feature has been improved to allow for multiple logins for a single SurVo, as well as the deletion of SurVos that have already been published. The ability to edit the top portions of an active SurVo - e.g. everything above the questions, such as the email addresses, play beep at end of question and announce question count.
• The addition of a SurVo question type that allows a transfer to a Virtual Receptionist, Find Me, or Voice Mail.
• We will begin offering a new Audio Only Voice Broadcast with the ability to send out 25 simultaneous calls at no additional port usage cost.
• The ability to schedule Voice Broadcasts to run only on certain days of the week.
• The audio file maintenance tool now includes the approximate length of the recording in minutes.
• The ability to delete multiple audio recordings at once.
• Feature to automatically remove the beeps at the end of recorded Virtual Receptionist and SurVo prompts.
• The speed of many reports has been significantly enhanced.
• The addition of confirmation emails/receipts when signing up and adding additional items.

Some enhanced features for developers include:

• A new API for retrieving SurVo recordings as a streamed MP3.
• The ability to create Find Me’s using the Administrative API.
• The ability to retrieve the Call Detail report via the API.
• The use of a click-to key or API key will be required on new accounts to increase security. Current accounts won’t require this key, but we recommend you add it for additional security.
• Some additional parameters for Net Gets including dialed number and SurVo ID.

You can find more documentation on our support page here.

Click here to talk to me.

I wrote a guest post on VOIPSupply’s blog. The post is about the Voice 2.0 market, how TAPs (Telephony Applicaiton Providers) are changing the market, and how VOIP companies in particular are able to take advantage of the functionality we provide.

Also, our Facebook app was reviewed:

Somewhat Frank

EasyasVoip

And both Start Henshall and Andy Abramson weigh in on Irv’s post about AOL + Jajah.

Click here to talk to me.

The integration of Jajah’s network into the Yahoo Messenger platform signals a continuation of the movement of telephone transport from traditional PSTN networks to open VOIP transport. These new voice and data networks allow the user to bring their own device and access the world of telephony from new and exciting places.

Many of you may still remember when the telephone company provided all of your phones. The latest VOIP initiatives just continue the transition from telephone company owned devices to a device of your choice, by providing a device agnostic transport medium. Most telephone users now have access to open VOIP transport alternatives that are changing the pricing of transport. As transport costs continue to fall telephone users will obtain a new freedom in how that utilize telephone minutes. In a world of transport costs that are no longer a factor, users will want powerful applications that maximize the utility of these voice and data highways.

Let’s break this down a bit with an example. Why have railroads failed in America and prospered in the rest of the world? The American highways were much too good, gas prices where too low, and the price of an automobile was a reasonable percentage of the typical Americans income. This lead to the creation of the largest automobile companies in the world. (These same companies are now failing because of a combination of historical mistakes and changes to the relationships between transport costs and personal income.)

The new VOIP networks are the highways of telephony. The traditional telephone companies are the railroads. Telephone Application Platforms such as Ifbyphone are the new automobile manufacturers. The Ifbyphone Telephone Application Platform delivers applications over low cost VOIP networks, affordable by any business, that leverage the power of low cost telephone communications in any business, at any location, any time of the day.

A link to the Information Week article on the Jaja Yahoo deal follows:

Yahoo Outsources Messenger Voice Service To Jajah

The world needs another three-letter acronym about as much as it needs $200-a-barrel oil. However, CRM magazine is right on the money with its new CRM Service Awards category: Web Interaction Management (WIM). 

In a post last week, InfoToday Editorial Director David Myron explains why the magazine replaced the Web-Support Services category with two new ones, Web Self-Service and Web Interaction Management:

“… to make a clearer distinction between applications that provide automated self-service and those that handle live support across multiple Web channels (i.e., email, instant messaging, click-to-call, and click-to-chat). As time goes on, innovation may soon yield new Web interaction management tools.”

It’s one more sign that in the tech business focus is moving from “how” to “what.” And that’s all good news. First because it means that we’ve got “how” – the technology — down. Second, because focusing on “what” – the product – is where industries grow and money is made 

For example, public key cryptography by itself isn’t likely to catapult a company into the Fortune 500. But a widget for shopping safely online anywhere, is. In 2007 PayPal generated $1.8 billion in revenue for eBay.

Likewise in the VoIP space, we haven’t yet seen anybody skyrocket into the financial stratosphere by selling Internet phone service – while at the same time the market for mobile phone service continues to explode. The reason is simple.

Many people – about three billion worldwide — see value in not being tied to a wired phone line. On the other hand, a very small number  – about 90 million – see value in making a phone call via the Internet.

So what does this have to do with WIM? This: For years VoIP companies have been wandering in the wilderness looking for the promised Killer App. But it isn’t one killer app or even a killer app they need. It’s an app – period. Something people want that the technology makes possible. 

For example, suppose you need a plumber. A standalone IP phone just lets you call the plumber over the Internet – something you can already do with your landline. 

By contrast, use a click-to-call and you can turn that transaction into a Web service that finds out what your problem is and schedules a technician who’s already in your neighborhood. And if it’s urgent, the service can automatically escalate the call to the plumber’s 24-hour emergency operation.

Oh, and it dials the phone call for you, too.  

The EComm (Emerging Communications) 2008 conference is under way as of Wednesday morning and Ifbyphone, a silver sponsor, has been in the press quite a bit. Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro gave a speech yesterday on the usefulness of Phone Mashups and announced Ifbyphone’s plan to give away 1 million minutes a month to developers to promote the creation of new third-party voice applications. Here are a few of the links. We’ll add to the list as more go live:

VoIP News

Information Week

Macworld

Thomas Howe Log on Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro : Irv’s company, ifbyphone, looks to me like the phone mashup service provider that’s closest to getting it. His presentation was right on, his message clear, and the ifbyphone business model looks like it might be a winner. Pay attention to them.

 The VoIP Weblog