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07/07/2014

Concerns Grow Over VoIP Security in Kenya
Kenya’s financial institutions lose nearly Sh1.6 billion yearly to cases of fraud and cybercrime, according to a shocking report published this month by the 2013 Banking Fraud Investigations Department (BFID). Even more concerning, the statistic marks a nearly 300 percent increase over a nine month period in 2013.

As the developing world gains access to the Internet, the immense vulnerability and lack of infrastructure in these nations is exposed. Pouring resources into advancing technology and restructuring the way businesses operate is not enough to raise them among the ranks of the global economy. Often, the trappings of the internet and overexposure lead them even more susceptible to criminal activity, and in this case fraud.

Even more devastating to the hopes of Kenya and other nations, these crimes are often produced “through schemes hatched by employees, [who] took advantage of the online and mobile banking platforms to temper with the web systems in their respective banks to siphon out the cash,” according to William Makatiani, managing director of Serianu Limited, a leading IT services firm in Kenya.

As the banks become more digitized, internet transactions, online banking, mobile money transfers and cyber credit card and check payments become increasingly the norm in a country that does not possess the ability adequately protect all of these assets. Makatiani highlights the two fold advantage to these fraudsters of preying on a population with a “growing dependence” on the new infrastructure and a “perceived lower risk of detection and capture…as compare to more traditional crime.”

Hackers are preying as well on the popularity of VoIP services, breaking into private branch exchange (PBX) phone systems to make illegal and fraudulent calls on behalf of the bank they represent, and taking money from unsuspecting civilians. Banks are equally hurt as they are left completely liable for the lost money. “Car selling companies” based on the internet are also targeting unsuspecting consumers selling them ghost cars and other nonexistent goods.

Beyond the banking industry, the Kenyan government itself is facing major risks with their newly launched programs. The Kenya Revenue Authority’s iTax system, the Kenya Trade Network Agency, and the Integrated Financial Management Information System, all face serious threats. In 2013, network attacks grew by 108 percent to 5.4 million compared to just 2.6 million the previous year. Makatiani states that nearly “85 percent of all Web application in the country are unsecure and available for attacks.”

Kris Senanu, chairman of Telecommunications Service Providers of Kenya, a technology industry lobby group, sees a partnership between the private sector and the government as the solution to the growing threat. Senanu called for corporate and government organizations to impose security sanctions at the beginning of ICT (information communication technology) infrastructure creation.

The Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology, Joseph Tiampati ole Musuni responded with the promise of a National Cybersecurity Strategy to research, create and regulate the growing problems in Kenya’s technology industry. He envisions a Kenya Computer Incident Response Team Co-ordination Center to be formed and operational by August of 2014.

The example of Kenya points to the realities of technology in developing countries. Simply dropping off advanced systems and operations at their doorstep is not enough to aid developing countries in playing catch up with the global superpowers. These are delicate states with intense structural inequalities and problems that cannot be fixed with faster processors. The entire society must play a role in the advancement of the economy and technology, and cannot leave gaping insecurities that will render them even more powerless.

04/07/2014

The Contact Center Revolution
While the benefits of the cloud are obvious, figuring out the logistics is less clear.

The 2014 North American Call Center Survey reveals that while 78 percent of contact centers today are premises-based, the vast majority (70 percent) plan to move to the cloud. Did someone say revolution?

The contact center space has long been overdue for a makeover. For decades, voice has been the primary means of communication between businesses and their customers, with complex and expensive on-premises servers providing the infrastructure. Fast-forward to today and the arrival of some drastic changes, with many companies struggling to meet their clients' changing needs and communication preferences. More importantly, as businesses increasingly adopt the popular subscription-based models (SaaS, etc.), the need to retain clients by providing best-in-class customer service has never been greater.

Enter the cloud.

With the need for flexibility, scalability, and cost efficiency, cloud has rapidly become the quickest solution to many of the challenges facing contact centers, including leveraging multichannel communication, managing big data, increasing client retention, and lowering initial cost of ownership, among others. But adopting a cloud solution is in itself a significant change requiring some planning. How can you address the issue strategically?

A few thoughts:

1. Prepare. Moving your contact center to the cloud without proper prep work will not provide a silver bullet solution to whatever challenges you may be trying to resolve. In many instances, companies making the switch fail to think about the differences between traditional contact center solutions and cloud-based ones, often leading to the conclusion that cloud doesn't work. One consideration, for example, is the security difference between an on-premises solution and a cloud-based one. This disparity needs to be accounted for when you consider your business objectives and any possible service provider. Know what your business has but also explore what it lacks, how you would address those gaps in an ideal world, and how a cloud solution would help you. Remember, a primary benefit of the cloud is the flexibility it provides, so come prepared to state your business and how you need the cloud to complement your needs, not the other way around.
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2. Leverage the benefits. Everything is moving faster these days. For the old guard manning the contact center space, the new environment that comes from having always-connected customers can be difficult to understand, let alone service. However, with a cloud solution, the flexibility to keep up is at agents' fingertips, and can be available within a turnaround time of a few weeks, rather than months. In addition, it doesn't have to come at an increased cost. So by all means, leverage the benefits that a cloud solution can provide, but make sure to consider the many options—product origin, pure cloud versus a converted premise system, the reliability and maturity of the solution, public cloud versus private cloud versus a data center—and make a point of knowing the difference between each and how they can affect your business.

3. Integrate CRM, workforce optimization (WFO), social media, and multichannel capabilities. A cloud-based contact center solution, by itself, fails to truly take advantage of the broader cloud environment and what it has to offer. With the added benefits of integrated CRM software, WFO software, social media monitoring, and multichannel capabilities, you will have effectively brought your contact center into the modern age. However, simply integrating third-party applications will not singlehandedly boost your reps' productivity or your business' top line. If you are not careful, it could complicate what was previously a fairly straightforward business model. So when choosing a cloud-based contact center solution, keep in mind vendors' experience with integrations, and review the strength of their architecture and what they offer as part of their core-product versus third-party partnerships.

Cloud-based contact center solutions are here to stay. With that in mind, it's not so much a matter of jumping on the bandwagon as it is doing so without painfully falling off.

01/07/2014

Transforming Contact Centers with VoipNow

Companies today understand the importance of differentiating their businesses from the competition’s by offering customer service that is second-to-none. This imperative is supported by recent research, which indicates that more than half of customers will take their business elsewhere in the aftermath of a negative experience with a brand.

When companies decide to enhance customer service delivery, their decision makers often first look at contact centers. Since contact centers serve as the human extension of brands, they are the primary interface with key targets and, therefore, of paramount importance in retaining customers or improving relationships with them.

As a result, many businesses choose to deploy industry-leading contact center solutions, many of them cloud-based, to bolster their customer service offerings. And this means that business is good for contact center providers.


Service providers catering to these businesses need to stay on top of industry trends and add to their portfolios those solutions that ensure their customers get all the functionality they want. Cloud communications platforms are a common solution for several customer service key trends.
Adopting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for Agility

Recent research by Forrester shows that 15 percent of organizations have already replaced their on-premises customer service applications with SaaS solutions, while another 24 percent complement their existing solutions with SaaS. What’s more, by 2015, more than half of companies are expected to adopt SaaS solutions. This technology allows businesses to forgo expensive license fees, pay only for the resources they use, and scale up and down rapidly, depending on business needs.

Also, a hefty benefit of a cloud-based contact center solution is that companies can employ work-from-home agents that are able to do their jobs in a cloud-based environment. It was only about five years ago when 100% of the workforce was on-premises. This flexibility, of course, leads to increased employee satisfaction and, presumably, lower employment costs. VoipNow, specifically designed for the cloud, is a perfect solution in this case, as it can be deployed either on a service provider’s infrastructure, directly in the company’s datacenter of choice, or in 4PSA’s cloud. Smart features like extension virtualization and remote agents allow agents to work from anywhere and still seem to the customer like they are in the office.
Incorporating Video-Based Customer Service

As technology evolves, more businesses are turning toward video calls to help deliver a more personalized touch to their customer service. While the jury is still out debating if customers really desire to interact visually, certain industries definitely benefit from it. Banks are using video at ATMs, Amazon launched its video support service, Mayday, and many contact centers are turning toward video support as well. Industry-leading cloud communications solutions such as VoipNow give contact centers Unified Communications functionalities that enable them to offer video support to customers.
Developing Personal Connections

When we have something in common with someone, the bond we share brings us closer. Businesses can use robust contact center solutions to track customer histories, meaning they are able to build specific profiles for each customer. Armed with these profiles, calls can be routed to agents with similar interests and personalities, as well as to those who have already spoken with the same customers in the past.

Similarly, Zappos, a leading online shoe retailer, routes calls to agents who are based in the same state as the caller and, thus, share that bond. Another example: strong cloud communications platforms enable companies like Empain-Chaker, active in many countries, to route calls to the most appropriate agent – based on the language of the country the customer is calling from. The VoipNow Platform allows for all these ways to personalize interaction with a customer.
Improving End-to-end Service with Analytics

With much more touchpoints than a decade ago, companies are flooded with customer service data. Making sense of it all will be key in gaining a competitive edge. Fortunately, best-in-class cloud communications platforms are engineered with advanced APIs that allow for easy integration with CRM platforms and other business applications. This makes end-to-end analytics much more streamlined. By taking advantage of integrations, sales will be able to more specifically target their customers with up-sell and cross-sell opportunities; business leaders will be able to make timely decisions and contact center agents will be able to improve customer experience overall.

18/06/2014

How Cloud Communications Help Create a Holistic Customer Experience
By 2020, customer experience will matter more than price and product in determining consumer purchases. A strong and sobering fact for most companies. Thanks to the rise of the digital world, customers now have more choices when it comes to brand selection. Following a bad experience with a company, consumers are able to go online and spread the word about their poor experience. And this experience soon leads the way in which other consumers will make their purchase decisions. Because of this, many forward-thinking businesses are focused on cultivating an environment leading to positive customer experiences.

Deciding to pay more attention to improving customer service, many contact center decision makers are embracing the fact that customer experience needs a holistic approach. Customers no longer tolerate companies living and acting in silos. In fact, an omni-channel customer experience stands out as one of the top trends affecting how customers perceive their interactions with a specific company. A holistic approach entails achieving synergies among the multiple tools that companies use to serve customers, especially the contact center tools. Among these, there are two main factors that count: one is a strong and versatile cloud communications platform and the other, making sure this cloud communications platform has a modern application programming interface (APIs). That’s because modern APIs allow for easy integrations among tools.

Firstly, cloud communications platforms such as VoipNow, can be used successfully for contact centers. That’s because no matter how many customers desire new tools to communicate with a company, voice is still no 1. And VoipNow’s core is represented by hosted PBX and VoIP, bundled with Unified Communications and smart contact center functionalities. In fact, recent research by eConsultancy indicates that 61 percent of customers desire voice support for their problems. Customers still prefer speaking with an agent on the phone whenever a problem or concern pops up, so voice is still the primary communications vehicle for your target audience.

Additionally though, customers are increasingly opting to receive support via video calls and through social media channels. Therefore, the ways in which customers prefer to be helped are changing, and contact centers are moving toward delivering what is truly an omni-channel experience.

This move towards omni-channel can only be supported through synergies between multiple tools. There is no single, complete, customer service tool. Coming back to our second factor, you need a modern API. By deploying strong cloud communications solutions featuring advanced APIs, various applications work seamlessly together, enabling agents to access information the moment they need it. Additionally, since data is accessible from a centralized hub, decision makers can say goodbye to the days of fragmented information; departments work in harmony and businesses realize the effect of the resulting synergies. Together, this functionality helps ensure that a personal touch is delivered during each customer interaction. And personalization stands out as another customer experience trend turning mainstream. In a future blog post, we’ll talk more about the trends affecting customer service and how cloud communications platforms can support them.

In conclusion, to be prepared to seamlessly handle the move towards a holistic customer service, service providers and business owners will want to look for cloud communications platforms with modern APIs that can integrate with contact center software tools, CRM software and other business applications. That way, agents are able to make use of the wealth of customer-specific information at their fingertips and create the kind of customer experience that is necessary in today’s digital world.

17/06/2014

Managed VoIP Service to Double by 2016

An industry report predicts that managed PBX VoIP service will likely double by 2016. Also, it now appears to be a buyers’ market for PBX phones. A new research report says PBX phone systems achieved a “buyer power score” of 4.4 out of 5. That shows the “extremely favorable market conditions” that current buyers have, according to IBISWorld. Reasons for the relatively high score include lower prices, many substitutes, the fact there is little in the way of product specialization, low costs for switching, and limited volatility in prices.

"Thanks to these factors, the market is in prime condition for buyers to negotiate lower prices on PBX systems," Andrew Krabeepetcharat, an analyst at IBISWorld, said in the statement. He explained that competition, because of current prices, is relatively high, especially because of low-cost competition from different nations. Competition is further increased because products are comparable and standardized. Switching suppliers is not expensive.

Overall, there is a relatively high level of competition, too. There is a “wide variety of substitutes available to buyers," Krabeepetcharat noted. When selecting phones, many companies use individual landlines for each employee. That costs more but quality is an issue for them. In addition, hosted PBX services and free open-source PBX software give options, too. “These additional options boost buyer negotiating power,” according to the firm’s statement.

“Prices are anticipated to continue falling at a slow and steady rate through the next three years with very low price volatility,” the firm added in the statement. “Low volatility is positive for buyer power because it helps buyers accurately budget for a PBX purchase without risk of price spikes. The only significant detractions from buyer power are the moderate levels of supply chain risk and vendor financial risk associated with PBX systems.”

“More small, medium and large business customers are adapting to the new technology and features offered by hosted PBX resellers in order to cut back on costs," Chris Griffith, COO at White Label Communications, said in a statement. "It is not news that businesses are looking for ways to reduce expenses and save time, but the idea that they are turning to outsourcing their communications systems points to a promising future for the telephony trade."

In fact of all VoIP customers, almost half select a managed service – which leads to more flexibility, features and savings. In addition, seats for hosted VoIP will likely double between 2012 and 2016, the study said.

11/06/2014

Unified Communications for SMBs, : Web Conferencing

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often have different requirements than their larger enterprise counterparts, but that doesn’t mean their requirements are simpler. In fact, the opposite is often true, with SMBs requiring greater flexibility and agility in a unified communications (UC) solution. This series covers several topics related to UC for SMBs:

Part 1: Presence and instant messaging (IM)
Part 2: Web conferencing
Part 3: Voice
Part 4: Integration—bringing it all together

Web Conferencing

Web conferencing is arguably the best-known function of the UC portfolio. From Cisco WebEx to Citrix GoToMeeting to Microsoft Lync, web conferencing is core to all of the offerings. In defining web conferencing, I include audio conferencing, as it’s a necessary prerequisite to a successful web conference. I also assume that a web conference has the ability to share presentations, desktops, or applications to meet the collaboration required for a successful online meeting. Finally, for the purposes of this article, I assume that a web conference supports high-definition video for at least a subset of participants. One thing I won’t consider is the maximum number of participants supported. Most SMBs average five or fewer participants per meeting, but if your use case requires more than 100 users, check this need against all of the UC options, as many have strict limitations on the number of participants in a meeting.

Many solutions are available in the market, including cloud offerings from various vendors and on-premises solutions. Often, the same vendor offers its solution in on-premises and cloud versions, depending on customer preference. Be careful to review this option, however, because there is often no feature parity between the on-premises and cloud versions.

Web conferencing can also be the cornerstone of a return-on-investment study. Depending on the SMB’s size and the amount of web conferencing used, the cost differences between a hosted offering and an on-premises offering can be huge. Hybrid offerings like the InterCall Enterprise Connectivity Conferencing solution allow for global dial-in numbers through InterCall’s global network, yet the meeting is hosted on a customer’s on-premises Lync servers. This can be the best of both worlds if the solution fits the SMB’s needs.

A good web conference can be a close second to an in-person meeting but without the hassle of travel. As someone who travels more than 100,000 miles a year, web conferences are my best friend and can allow me to be in multiple cities throughout the day—virtually. Nothing can replace a handshake, but I’ve found that most everything else can be done remotely. Most SMBs can’t afford a ton of travel or the downtime required, so web conferencing allows an efficiency not available any other way.