Category: News

Since the launch of Optihost is a celebration for us and marks the expansion of our range of services, we have a special offer for you:
Until the end of the year, existing Optivoice customers or those who purchase an Optivoice subscription benefit from one year free hosting for the website-their subscription (on the START version) or the equivalent discount when purchasing another Optihost subscription (the discount is applied on the first Optihost invoice and in order to benefit from the full amount, the value of this invoice must exceed the amount of the discount).

SSL, SQL, VDS, Domain, Server, Cloud, etc? Are you familiar with these terms? If you are not an IT-ist you probably don’t but whether you know it or not they are part of our daily life, along with the more “friendly” website, email, apps.

Online presence is no longer a luxury or a plus for a company’s image, it is a necessity; along with the phone number and physical address, the website and email address define the identity of any company, no matter how small. The trends are towards moving commerce online and we are not far from the statement “If you are not online you don’t exist”. But this does not mean that in order to start or run a business we all have to become IT specialists or include a dedicated department in the company’s budget, especially since the trend even in large companies is to outsource these services.

We are trying to come to your support and take the responsibility off your shoulders for some of the mandatory steps to be taken:
– Registering a domain;
– Hosting the company’s website, optimizing access by customers and monitoring it;
– Securing the website to protect customer data and payments made to you;
– Setting up, configuring, monitoring and optimizing a server.

Optihost is neither the first nor the only provider of dedicated solutions on the market, but we rely on two important aspects to convince you that we can be the best choice for you:
– We have incorporated into our offerings the newest and most efficient solutions and technologies on the market;
– We are committed to providing the same quality that our Optivoice customers have come to appreciate:

“We are particularly pleased with our partnership with Optivoice. It’s nice to get quick feedback and a solution perfectly tailored to your business, without having to insist endlessly. Throughout our collaboration, we have constantly upgraded the options we use, based on Optivoice’s recommendations. We feel like a respected customer.”
Laura Tanase, Managing Partner,www.mamica.ro

“I have nothing but praise for the Optivoice team and services.”
Tudor Gorcia, CEO, www.tntcomputers.

“We chose to work with Optivoice because of the much friendlier platform first and foremost, and then because of the prompt support. We are happy with how it works. On technical support we were not disappointed so we have a plus here too.”
Bogdan Kochesch, CEO, www.edmundo.ro

See
here
the full range of Optihost services.

Choosing a new phone system or changing your existing one can seem like a daunting task if you’re not an expert; but giving it the right attention can bring major benefits in the long run. A good manager looks not only at the current situation, but also at the development prospects of the company, so as to consider a solution that can effectively meet the requirements of the company at any time of its existence.

Choosing the right system for your business and configuring it optimally can be the differentiator you need.

In many areas competitiveness is increased and with small differences between the products/services offered and their price; to differentiate yourself in the market you need to work on the image and the quality of the interaction with customers; a good tool in this respect can be the telephone system.

Technology has come a long way from the time when all telephony could give you was a number to call and be called. Modern phone systems come with a number of features that bring communication to a new level: IVR, call queuing, simultaneous calls, time setting, conferencing, transfer, whisper&barge-in, mobile interiors, etc.

Properly configured, the telephone system can bring significant savings to a company’s budget.

A more accurate assessment of communication needs and right sizing of the system (phone numbers, extensions, national/international/roaming minutes, simultaneous calls, etc.) can reduce telephone costs. Considering that contracts are generally signed for 1 or 2 years without the possibility to reduce the subscription during that period, it is vital to size the phone system correctly from the beginning or to look for companies that offer flexible contracts (without a contract period); if you have seasonal activities, contract flexibility can be a vital point in choosing the system/operator you work with.
If chosen and set up correctly, the phone system can help you reduce other expenses:
-travel expenses (transport, per diems, accommodation)
-expenditure on purchases, maintenance, upkeep and repair of equipment
-marketing expenses, etc.

The correct evaluation of the cost of the telephone system must take into account:
-The initial cost of purchasing equipment and commissioning the solution
-Maintenance/repair/maintenance/reconfiguration costs for the equipment/system, their average lifetime and the rate of technical depreciation
-Costs of changing the system if it is technically depreciated or if it no longer meets business requirements

Spending the right amount of time at the beginning to evaluate several solutions and choosing the right one saves you important lost time later.

If you make the wrong choice in the beginning, it can cost you a lot to change the system later (both in time and money). In addition, the system must also be evaluated according to:
-time needed to learn the system
-the time needed to access the reports and the information contained in them
-the time needed to bring the system back into operation in the event of a move
-time needed to resize the solution
-time needed for reconfiguration

The first thing to decide is the type of system you want: simple phone line or PBX and if PBX is chosen, which one: classic, IP or cloud. In this regard read our article PBX-IPPBX-HOSTEDPBX to understand the differences between the three types of PBX.

If you have chosen the classic or IP telephone switchboard to install at your company’s premises, you must choose between different models, taking into account not only the needs of the moment, but also the possibility of scaling the switchboard according to the expected developments at the lowest possible cost. Then you have to choose the telephone operator: classic or VoIP and a company with which to contract for maintenance/repairs/configuration so that you are not taken by surprise by a possible breakdown. Check the response times assumed in the contract to minimise possible downtime.

If you have chosen the hosted PB X you only have to decide which operator you work with. Although in Romania the cloud telephony market is not as widespread as abroad, there are still several providers to consider. We advise you to take into account some important aspects when considering different operators:

1. First make a list of mandatory features/functions you need and a list of desirable features.
Check whether the operators you are comparing can offer you all the mandatory features and as many of the optional ones as possible. Check if the packages offered automatically include features you don’t need and if you can waive them to reduce the total cost.
2. Compare the real cost of the offers taking into account not only the package price but also other categories of costs/fees that may influence the final decision
Check what equipment and/or software is needed and how much it costs, check if there are costs for changing the contracted package either up or down, how much it costs to add or drop certain features later.

3. Check company policies on important issues:
o Contract termination or flexibility for package changes (what contract periods are available and whether you are allowed to change your package during the contract period)
o Support provided for package selection, solution understanding, access to reports and/or configurations (how much you are allowed to customize the system yourself, access to reports, IVR message logging, etc…)
o References from other users
o Possibility to test the service before buying

Optivoice offers free evaluation of your current system and advice on choosing the optimal configuration. Contact our sales team

 

Hosted PBX is an IP PBX hosted in a data centre, with only the terminals (extensions or phones) at the customer’s end, and which can be accessed via a friendly interface.

Choosing a cloud phone system is a good decision not only for new companies buying a phone system, but also for those who already own a PBX. A hosted PBX can bring significant savings in call management, maintenance and costs, so moving to a cloud IP system should be the obvious choice for any company.

Main advantages of Hosted PBX solutions:

1. No up-front costs: you can invest nothing in equipment, which translates into significant savings for the company; the switchboard is hosted in a data centre and you can use software on your PC or mobile phone for dialling.
2. No maintenance, upkeep, repairs: with the disappearance of the equipment, the related activities and costs disappear, as well as the downtime caused by breakdowns.
3. Go green: environmental care is a must for modern business; cloud technology means no wires and equipment at the customer’s location, so less waste and less energy consumed
4. Free 24/7 monitoring: you don’t need hired or contracted staff to monitor, configure and repair equipment, hosted pbx providers generally provide 24/7 monitoring and real-time intervention by qualified staff at no extra charge.
5. Scalability, changes, instant move: increasing or decreasing the number of interiors, changes in configuration, moving from one location to another are done almost instantaneously and do not require service interruption.
6. Mobility: mobile VoIP allows you to connect to the switchboard from anywhere in the world and from any internet-connected device (PC, mobile phone, tablet, IP phone); you can have your landline phone with you anywhere and anytime.
7. Integration and upgrade: most Hosted PBX solutions allow API (application programming interface) integration, which makes it possible to customize the phone system and integrate it with the company’s CRM (customer base); rapid technological evolution does not require the purchase of newer equipment or additional software because you will always have at your disposal the latest solutions on the market.

Hosted PBXs can be the optimal solution for both corporations and small and medium-sized businesses. See for yourself

I kept thinking about whether to write this article from the perspective of the customer or the service provider and realized that there are no major differences. The existence of a queue is obviously a source of stress for both. In fact, studies have been done on the psychological impact that time spent in the queue has on customers and the results can provide valuable information to companies trying to improve customer interaction.

The century of speed, the age of services, the consumer society are some of the phrases that describe the world we live in and make us understand that today everyone wants more and faster and the challenge for companies to serve the expectations of their customers has led to the creation of a discipline in itself: Customer Flow Management (Customer Flow Management) orQueue Management.

There are many researches and studies, many papers written on this topic and they aim both at understanding the process itself by dividing it into stages and types of queues, at understanding the customer perception and the psychological processes involved, as well as at finding the most efficient methods to address queues in order to reduce time and to make the employee-customer interaction more efficient. Queues differ in type (physical queues and telephone queues, queues for purchasing products/services/accessing information/problem solving, etc.) and dividing them into categories helps us to better understand the area of interest as queue “behaviour” differs according to many criteria.

I will continue to refer to telephone queue, and because we are all customers for various companies it is impossible not to have been asked at least once to wait in line either to be picked up or to be given an answer to the question or problem raised. I have yet to meet a single person who is happy to be in a queue but before we throw stones we need to understand what they are, how they work and why these queues exist.

What is a telephone queue?
Queuing is a feature of telephone exchanges that allows more calls to be taken than available operators and kept on the line until they can be picked up.

Reasons for the queue

1. Availability and consideration

Queuing allows callers to wait until they are picked up by an operator if everyone is busy at the time of the call; if the company you are calling does not have a queue and the person(s) answering the number are already engaged in other calls, you get a busy tone and have to call again and again until a line is free. Another big disadvantage of not having a queue is that you have no control over when you’ll get through to them, as a first-time caller may get a free line just as you’re getting ready to call for the nth time.

If the company’s phone system is integrated with the CRM (customer database), when you are picked up the operator already has your history (services/products accessed, past interactions) in front of them, so explanations are considerably reduced.

Reporting and evaluation

The existence of a queue allows companies to have detailed reports about callers: how many people call in a given time, which are the busiest hours, how long they wait on average until the call is answered, which makes it possible to optimize the timetable and the allocated workforce so that you, as a customer, are better and faster served. The reports also allow an evaluation of the employees: how many calls they take during the working hours, the average duration of the calls, allowing over time to increase the quality of the employees and thus a better service for you.

How to make waiting bearable

When you are engaged in an unpleasant activity it seems to take forever but if you do what you like time passes very quickly. There is quite a big difference between real time and perceived time and serious companies use various techniques to make the time their customers spend waiting as efficient as possible. Many of the techniques can only be applied to physical queues (TV monitors or magazines placed in waiting areas, various activities that can be undertaken while waiting, etc) but there are solutions for telephone queues too:
-classically, music was used during the waiting time but recent studies show that music, used excessively, can increase the caller’s stress level
-you can be informed about new promotions or new events of the company you call
-there are also more creative solutions: a sports club runs, during the waiting period, the highlights of the previous week’s matches (in one memorable incident a customer shouted to the operator, when he was picked up, to put him back on hold because he was about to score the favourite team)
-it’s known that a wait with no time horizon is perceived as longer than one where you know from the beginning how long it will take and this can be solved very elegantly by queuing: you are told how many times you are in line and how long it will take; a time horizon is also necessary if you are asked to wait until you get an answer to a question or a solution to a problem: if the wait is prolonged it is mandatory that the operator takes you off hold and informs you of the reason for the prolonged wait.

Together with an IVR (interactive voice response), a queue can revolutionise the way a company’s customers are treated. The answering machine can take simple and repetitive calls (e.g. where and how to pay the bill, what are the opening hours and address, or any other repetitive question that has a simple answer) so that customers who really need to reach the operator can wait less. By having this IVR in place you can see the load at department level and you can supplement people exactly where they are needed. Calls can also be recorded for future reference.

On top of that, if you call a company where an answering machine answers and you end up waiting in a queue, be glad; the discomfort of the moment is, in the medium and long term, in your best interest and indicates that the company you are talking to is interested in offering you a quality service.

If you are an entrepreneur and do not yet have a queue
contact us
.

An increasingly popular concept in business circles, the cloud market is booming although still at the beginning of its journey. With such a large number of IT specialists in Romania, it is expected that the evolution will be rapid and the market will quickly understand and adopt such solutions that can help companies of any size enormously.

“In cloud adoption it’s all about business. You always have to look at the three performance indicators: growth, cost and efficiency. The problem is that companies in the region are looking at the cloud as a technology thing which is wrong, it should start from the business. In Western Europe it’s different because people start from the business, but it all depends on who runs the IT department. The IT director talks to the CEO, and some of them see the cloud as business and some as technology. If they still think of the cloud as a technology they won’t have arguments in front of management and everything gets stuck,” Ana Radosevic, Hewlett-Packard’s cloud segment manager for Southeast Europe, told Wall-Street.ro.

The term cloud covers a wide field, from cloud computing to a suite of applications accessible without owning equipment on the company’s premises, and is experiencing an exponential evolution of solutions that can be implemented in the day-to-day activity of a company; for large companies it can mean a significant reduction in costs and for small companies it allows access to services that previously could not be accessed, as their cost was prohibitive.

“Installing a business solution on a cloud platform has the following advantages: lower total investment, flexibility (you can choose the features you want), low cost (you pay for what and how much you use), fast deployment, security, mobility (it can be accessed from anywhere a Wi-Fi network is accessible, on any device that has a web browser installed). Compared to Romania, where cloud installations for SMEs are still few, the trend in the region is that business solutions, such as ERP, for example, are presented exclusively as requiring a cloud installation” said Liviu Buligan, Executive Manager SoftOne Romania for Wall-Street.ro.

The extremely rapid technological evolution of recent years is not easy to follow even for specialists, so it is no wonder that legislation is not keeping pace. Rapid alignment of legislation is a necessity if the adoption of cloud solutions is not to be blocked and SMEs’ access to such services is to be facilitated; ultimately this is to the benefit of the end consumer, leading to increased competition in the market.

“We’re living in a time when you’re going to see IT change radically. If until some time ago IT was less important and everything was based on on-premises infrastructure, […] now we are going to see an extremely strong change, everything is going to go to the cloud area.[…]By 2020, about 45% of IT companies’ budgets will be spent on cloud services. […] The cloud may sound fancy, and at a conceptual level I can agree with that. But the cloud is like a one-way street, and there is no turning back. Sooner or later this will happen. I think the Romanian market is a raw one, but one that understands this concept well. We are facing problems in the local market related to legal issues, […] risk management issues and issues related to national and European legislation that are not keeping pace with the speed at which technology is developing. It is clear that the big global companies will implement this cloud concept faster and then roll it out to all the branches in the countries where they operate. Once adopted at headquarters level, it is clear that they will eventually reach Eastern Europe and, including Romania”, said Dan Popa, Virtualization and Cloud Lead of Microsoft Romania, to Business Magazin.

learn more about Hosted PBX

 

Last year I was looking for a company in town to make me some custom shaped business cards, not rectangular, but cut in a certain shape. I search on the net for companies and then I pick up the phone and start calling. I was horrified by the way the first contact with a potential client was handled. I called about 10 companies and on the other end of the line I was greeted with “Hello”, “Yes” or even silence. In a few cases I was answered with the company name and hello and in one case I was answered with the company name, the name of the person on the phone and hello.

I relate below one of the interactions that stuck in my mind and unfortunately it was not the only one that made me understand that terms such as “customer satisfaction”, “quality of customer interaction”, etc. are still quite alien to a part of the local business environment, despite the fact that they are talked about everywhere.

Optimistic by nature, I tell myself that it may just be a cop-out, that maybe I didn’t hear it, so I make sure I’m calling the right place: “Company X?” A young lady replies, “Yes, go ahead,” obviously annoyed that I’m kidnapping them ahead of time and not getting straight to the point. I start to explain what I would be interested in, leaving pauses to confirm that she hears me and understands what I am saying; unfortunately the young lady was not too keen to fill these pauses so I have to ask “Hello, can you hear me?”. “Yes, I’m listening,” she tells me dryly, as music blares loudly in the background (a mix of popular music and manele, not very good for business, I think). I finish explaining and quickly get a “Yes, we do”.

I had already called four firms who had turned me down so you can understand my surprise at hearing her response and the need to make sure we were on the same page: me, glad: “Are you sure? Don’t get me wrong but I’ve already been turned down by a few firms and I’m glad to finally find someone who can help me. “The young lady doesn’t seem to share my joy, so I say: “How do you do it? How much does it cost?” The answer came as fast and dry as the previous ones: “Send us the model you want by email and the prices are on the website”. Disappointed, I realise that he didn’t understand anything and start again with the slower explanations and how clearly I understood, thinking that maybe I wasn’t coherent enough the first time. I can hear her screaming at someone: “Hey, can we make business cards in a shape other than rectangular?”. I don’t hear what she’s being told but she informs me: “Send by email and we will reply”.
You can imagine how eager I was to continue the conversation so I say a thank you, she says goodbye without any other closing words and hangs up.

I make a few more calls still no success, I had one offer and no comparison. I’m thinking that it doesn’t take me long to send the request by email, who knows, maybe I’ve come across a very new or weaker employee, after all, I don’t judge the whole company by one employee so I’m writing. The response I get within minutes politely informs me that they only make classic business card designs. I was totally surprised by the wording: “As we spoke on the phone… “considering that the email was signed by a man and I had clearly spoken to a woman, just to put the icing on the cake.

Fortunately, I also have examples of pleasant experiences as a customer of some companies and it is always the people, the employees you come into contact with, who make the difference. I have yet to meet a contractor or company director who doesn’t want happy customers, but what they do to make sure that happens…that’s another story altogether.

When you run a company, you can’t leave it to chance or luck the quality with which your clients or potential clients are treated. You need to make sure that each employee is clear about the standard you want them to perform to and consistently measure that this standard is maintained. There are plenty of tools and firms offering advice in the market and some are within the reach of any firm, regardless of size and budget.

A very effective and affordable tool in increasing the quality of customer interaction is the company’s telephone system; modern systems include many features that you can use, properly configured the telephone system can be a goldmine in trying to have an interaction that generates trust and demonstrates professionalism:
– Greeting message: a customer often makes their first impression of a company by the way they are answered on the phone: affectionate or icy, polite or dry, with simplistic or elevated language; the greeting message achieves this first contact at the same quality standard on every call.
– Promotional messaging: a free and easy-to-implement method of making a promotion, event or important information known to anyone who calls a company, either immediately after greeting or while waiting to be picked up by an employee
– Call transfer: for customers who call and do not reach the person they are looking for, it is annoying to be asked to hang up and call again; it is totally unprofessional to shout for a colleague to come to the phone or to run with the phone to the next office; call transfer means for the customer a help, saving time and money, and for the company an image gain and the elimination of the risk of losing a potential customer who might not come back with a second call.
– Follow-me: if a customer needs to get in touch with a specific employee and the employee has field work, with the follow-me function the caller will follow him wherever he goes (he can have an extension set directly on his mobile phone); for the customer this means interest and availability from the company.
– Queueing: which removes the annoying busy tone; a potential customer is willing to call back a number that rings busy a maximum of 2-3 times, after which they usually give up, and an existing customer quickly turns into an unhappy customer if they can’t easily get in touch with someone to solve a potential problem
– IVR, hourly routing: interactive answering system, popular answering machine, which invites you to press a certain key either for the department or person you are looking for, or for a certain information; in addition, it can be set to play another message outside office hours
– Call recording, whisper&barge-in: calls can be recorded for further consultation or for employee training and evaluation, a call in progress can be listened to and support can be provided to the employee without hearing the caller,
see dedicated article
.
– Voicemail to email: if a customer leaves a voicemail message it immediately arrives as a file to the desired email
– Callback: if you have a website you are interested in facilitating access to visitors and to turn them into customers as quickly as possible; the callback button asks the visitor to leave the phone number, and the switchboard instantly calls an employee, when he answers, the switchboard calls the customer and the connection is made practically in a few seconds, being a free call for the latter.
– Internal chat: by improving collaboration between employees you ensure that customer issues are dealt with more quickly and efficiently,
see dedicated article.

learn about Optivoice solutions

Optivoice has become a distributor of Polycom, the pioneering American company in the production of videoconferencing equipment for companies: distributor Polycom

The partnership with Polycom was aimed at completing the range of products offered by Optivoice with top solutions. Polycom is recognized for the quality of its IP products: HD phones, videophones, Microsoft Lync compatible equipment, audio and video conferencing equipment, and more.

At the moment our customers can choose between the products of four major manufacturers:

1. Polycom – the world’s leading manufacturer of conference equipment
2. Grandstream – best value for money
3. Tiptel – German technology
Yealink – performance accessible to all

More information about Polycom can be found on the official website www.polycom.com.ro

A few years ago, when we returned from maternity leave at the corporation where we worked, we found out that we had a new tool: an internal communicator. I looked with a dose of scepticism at first at this new tool that I didn’t find useful: we only worked in telecom, we had mobile and landline phones at our disposal and we could talk on them at any time, we had e-mail, we had a lot of applications that we had to open in the morning, to remember their passwords…why another headache?

I was soon to realize how wrong I was and how quickly this means of communication had become my favourite, with visible and rapid effects on the productivity of the team I was working with. I’ll tell you what I’m referring to in a moment, but first I’d like to explain a bit about it for those who are not familiar with it.

Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time text communication between two or more people in a digital network. The popular name is chat and most people who use a computer and more recently a smartphone have at least once used some form of communicator (chat), the most popular being Skype, Yahoo Messenger, WhatsApp and many others. According to factbrowser.com by 2016 almost 1.5 billion people will be using instant messaging on their mobiles.

When it comes to using the communicator in the workplace, there are dedicated solutions other than those mentioned above for two reasons:
1. being an INTERNAL communicator, it excludes discussions with friends, relatives, acquaintances…which are not related to the performance of the activity and which rather contribute to the decrease of the employees’ productivity.
2. it integrates with the company’s existing telephone system and comes with some additional features (it can also allow you to initiate/receive internal calls or transfer files quickly for example)

A better customer experience

Returning to my story now, let me tell you in what situations we use the communicator and how it has helped us as a team. Have I already told you that we work in a corporation, with several workplaces in the country and abroad, with several departments and therefore thousands of employees? I used to work in a shop, in constant contact with customers. The staff was often insufficient compared to the influx of customers, so the main concern as a team was to streamline the “downtime”: with going to the back to bring a product, to check if something is still in stock, to ask a question you don’t know the answer to or to call the head office to ask for help, etc…These situations were drastically reduced, all people had to do was to quickly write on the communicator and in a few seconds they had the answer. Not to mention how elegantly customer requests were handled.

It has proven very useful for new people, who at first contact with customers had more questions than answers and it would have been unpleasant to call the customer face to face to ask for help or to talk to the customer several times in the same conversation to find the right answer.

Better collaboration between employees

Being integrated with the employee database, the moment you needed to contact a colleague in another department or location and you didn’t know their exact name anymore, it was very easy to reach them.

The attendance indicator was the gold mine. We knew at any time the status of the person we were looking for: in the office, out, in a meeting/conference, free, etc. so we saved a lot of time with the phones: “I’m not in the office, call me later”, “I’m in a meeting, call my office mate”, etc…sometimes you had to make 2-3 calls before you managed to solve something, but with the presence indicator we were on target.

If I had something urgent to communicate to the team, the communicator was the only way my message could reach them quickly and be read by everyone.

If I was engaged in a phone call, conference or meeting and people urgently needed an approval or a response, the communicator was the lifesaver; they no longer had to travel to see if I was available and/or wait for me to clear.

 

Advantages over email:

The idea is that, by its very nature, the communicator encourages people to be brief and to the point, unlike email, where the conversation is usually more formal and sending the email and waiting for a reply is more time consuming. A big advantage over email is that you can have multiple windows open with different people or groups that you can address simultaneously.

Advantages over the phone:

There are studies that show that people are much more relaxed in a chat conversation than in a phone call and so the communicator can become a very good tool to improve collaboration between employees, especially if they are in different locations. Employees also reported better concentration on tasks, since they can better control interruptions; when you have something urgent to finish and you get 2-3 calls in a row you can either answer (and risk not finishing on time), answer and rush the caller (which can damage working relationships), or not answer at all (which increases the chances of the same person calling n times in a few minutes); with the communicator you can set your status to “busy” and thus make sure you get rid of unwanted interruptions. In addition, conversations are confidential and you don’t risk reaching the wrong “ears”.

Of course, email and telephone retain their usefulness in many other situations and employees need to choose the best method of communication for the particular situation they face. But being integrated with the PBX, you can easily change the communication method (message, send file, call inside, email) using one tool: an app on your computer or smartphone.

Bottom line: instant messaging is yet another component of unified communications and cloud PBXs that can fuel increased productivity and collaboration among employees and provide the customers of the company you run/work for with a much improved experience. Communicator is by far the fastest and easiest way to communicate, and a study conducted by Ohio State University and California State University confirms that companies that have adopted internal chat solutions have reported productivity gains.

Optivoice solutions incorporate internal chat with presence indicator, instant messaging, file transfer and internal dialling.

 

Companies and institutions in Romania are starting to realize the importance of having a contact center, a call center, for their clients; at the same time, worldwide there is a growing trend to outsource services of this kind and for them the Romanian market is increasingly attractive because it offers a well-trained workforce, very good foreign language speakers and at a low price.
Invited to an event organised by Business Magazin, Vladimir Sterescu, CGS Romania, said, “Romania is gradually becoming for many technology providers a market that they are starting to look more and more to in recent years. The market is developing, there are more and more companies, even state institutions, that have invested in recent years and are still investing in support centres. In our experience, a distinction needs to be made between the basic features of a support centre and the new ones that are coming onto the market.”
According to the same daily, Bucharest has started to overtake other central and eastern European capitals, such as Sofia and Budapest, but we are still far behind the Czech Republic and Poland. The state is starting to recognise the contact centre industry, and since the end of 2012 the authorities have been giving subsidies to those who create jobs in the support area.
Call center communication solutions can be deployed either on-premise or in the cloud. Studies show that in the US, 70% of activity is already in the cloud, and globally the percentage reaches 50%. In Romania, the cloud is still at the beginning of the road but it is good that there are already companies that come with cloud solutions to meet customers open to new technologies with all the advantages they bring.
Vital in choosing a communication system for a customer service is the reporting and monitoring part. In addition to the classic functions: IVR, queues, personalized messages, hourly routing, call transfer, etc. without which a call center cannot fulfill its mission, real-time user-level activity reports, call recording, whisper&barge-in functions make it possible to prepare and evaluate the sales force/customer relations and monitor the quality of the employee-customer interaction.
The major advantage of cloud solutions is that they are evolutionary systems, not static; they can incorporate the latest technologies, given the dizzying evolution of software and solutions worldwide. A cloud system grows with you and allows you to always be in the market without having to change your system every time a better solution comes along.

find together with Optivoice a suitable structure for your call-center