The rise of Voip was a real revolution for the world of telecommunications: it marked the end of the monopolistic situation observed all around the globe, with a handful of providers servicing all individuals and businesses of a given country. Telco services for individuals are a fascinating topic, but today we’ll focus on businesses.

Before VoIP, companies had limited options when it came to telephony and were often forced to work with offers barely suiting their needs. It’s now a thing of the past! With SIP trunk, IAX, and other VoIP protocols, every business can now have a customized setup that precisely matches its needs.

We’ve covered in a previous article how to find the best VoIP Installation fitting your need, check it if you are still hesitating between SIP trunk, or IAX. Today is the next step: we help you get started.

We’ll introduce a new release on the CALLR platform: the self-serve VoIP platform. It allows you to set up and manage a VoIP installation in a fully autonomous fashion. It also provides access to a one-stop-shop to purchase phone numbers in 30 countries, to handle your setup, and review the stats on your inbound and outbound voice usage.

Why use VoIP?

A VoIP installation comes with many advantages compared to a regular setup (PTSN) . Here are the three main ones:

1. Easy installation and maintenance: with VoIP, you’ll only need software and an internet connection which streamlines the installation process. Moreover, once the initial setup is done, it’s effortless to scale your installation up or down with no extra setup cost.
2. Cost-efficiency: If you need many outbound calls for your business, especially international call, VoIP is the way to go!
3. Flexibility: With VoIP, you have complete control over your setup. You use a wide range of call features including call tracking, call recording, cascading call forwarding, and many others.

Regarding the drawbacks, the main one is that a VoIP installation is wholly dependant on your internet connection – if your internet service is poor or spotty you’ll fail to see the benefits of VoIP.

VoIP in a fully self-serve fashion

On our platform, your new one-stop shop for your VoIP needs, everything starts with a comprehensive dashboard:

The dashboard provides you with key metrics about your account as well as the resource you need to get started.

You’ll also find your current balance on the dashboard, and you can top it up straight from the web with a credit card or through a bank transfer.

SIP Trunks and IAX accounts management

In the VoIP tab of the new CALLR VoIP platform, you can handle your SIP origination and termination trunk as well as your IAX accounts.

The platform lets you create new trunk groups and IAX accounts autonomously.

You will be able to specify the number format of each trunk group as well as limiting the number of channels they are allocated. You can also enable or disable each trunk group, or even IP address, straight from our platform.

Account-wise settings

You can view and manage your limits on the platform; it includes the CPS, outbound and inbound channels as well as your topup limits:

As a new customer, you’ll have lower limits than those displayed on the screen: it’s our standard procedure to ensure the platform is not used for nefarious purpose. As soon as you reach out to the support to prove that you’re a legit business, we’ll be able to raise the call capacity we attribute you.

Additional resources to get started

Need help to set up or debug your installation? We created several resources to help you get started:

• CALLR SIP Trunking PDF guide that will provide you with all the information you need to get started as well as a sample configuration for Asterisk and Freeswitch.
• The SIP & IAX section of our Knowledge Base: where you’ll find several valuables resources such as the SIP FAQ or the list of the SIP response codes and their meaning to help you debug your installation.

Instant buying for phone numbers in 30+ countries

You can buy new numbers/DIDs directly from the platform. In case you’re not telco-fluent, here a quick overview of the different parameters required to purchase a number:

• The country: pretty explicit, right?
• The Type: “Geographic” numbers are location-bound numbers while “Personal” numbers are mobile numbers.
• The Class: “Gold” (as opposed to “Classic”) phone numbers are numbers that are easy to remember because they are sequential, repetitive or both.
• The Area (code): If you are buying a geographic number, you can pick the region. Prospects are more likely to pick up if a call is coming from a DID that is from their region
• The quantity: From one to thousands, we don’t judge and always deliver!
• The (attribution) mode: if you are buying more than one number, the attribution mode will determine the relationship between these numbers. With the random mode, you’re leaving your fate in the hands of luck. The sequential mode assigns numbers preferably following each other: for instance, if you buy three numbers you will get: (646) 982 0820, (646) 982 0821 and (646) 982 0822.

The purchase process happens in two steps.

1. First, you reserve (a) number(s) (providing us with all the parameters stated above). Once we get your reservation, we’ll return you with the number list corresponding to your wishes.
2. You can then confirm your purchase.

The reservation step gives you the opportunity to review each number allocated and their cost before actually purchasing them.

Phone numbers are paid on a monthly basis. Each month you’ll get an email giving you a recap of your number-related expanses.

On the number tab, you can manage the assignment (to a trunk/IAX account) of each number individually or handle them by bulk.

Have any more questions about numbers? We have a whole section of our knowledge base dedicated to it, check it out. Here are some resources you’ll find particularly useful:

• An overview of how numbers are handled at CALLR.
• How to customize the SMS Sender ID?
• Additional information about number portability at CALLR

High-quality analytics and reporting

When it comes to telephony, analytics are crucial. Our self-serve VoIP platform gives you access to all the metrics you need to get a comprehensive overview of your calling activity.

We have many customers using our services for the high-quality and cost-effective international calls it allows, so we’ve built dashboards for them. You can recoup your stats by country using a detailed list or a world map giving you an easy to grasp summary:

Besides, with all CALLR products, the reporting of your campaigns are built on top of the contact list. It will help you in your effort to qualify your contact lists and to make sure no prospect is ever reached twice for the same campaign. Thanks to this feature you can even use our products to qualify your databases.

An all-in-one telecom platform

CALLR is a 360 voice and SMS platform that offers much more than just SIP. To supplement your outbound voice campaign, you can make use the API to implement call tracking services on your inbound numbers, send SMS, or route incoming phone calls in real-time.

Are you not familiar with APIs? Here is a guide covering the basics to help you get started.

Calltracking

Call tracking let you gather data on incoming phone calls. If you mix call tracking with a smart number allocation strategy, you can get a precise measure of the ROI of your offline marketing campaigns. Here are some clues on calltracking to help you get started.

SMS and Voice Campaign Manager: SENDR

SENDR is our campaign management web interface. It allows people with 0 coding experience to setup up complex scenario mixing up calls and SMS. Over the years, we’ve seen thousands of campaign unfold on our platform. Some of our users came up with very creative use of the features we’ve developed over the years. Learn more about SENDR and draw inspiration directly from them!

Grow your business, one call at a time

With a SIP or IAX installation, you can harness the power of phone calls, at scale. Despite all the innovations that came up (social media, direct messaging, email, etc.) since its inception, a phone call is still the most reliable way to reach your prospects:

Social media and email are cool, yet it would be sad to let the shiny lights of new techs fool yourself. Now more than ever, outbound phone calls play quite often play a role in sound acquisition strategies.

PS: GDPR is enforced in Europe since the 25th of May, make sure your outbound calling practices are GDPR compliant with our GDPR overview.

The post From numbers to trunk management: introducing our self-serve VoIP Platform appeared first on CALLR Blog.