VoIP Solutions for Telecom
How VoIP is Reshaping Communication Inside the Telecom Industry
It took telecom companies and internet service providers decades to develop the necessary infrastructure for enabling voice communications in all other industries. What is ironic about this situation is the fact that even today, many of these businesses still use outdated systems to manage their internal processes and business communications in spite of the advanced solutions available for their customers.
This type of VoIP system is designed specifically for telecom companies and ISPs, providing an opportunity to solve this problem. Be it a local fiber company willing to update its customer support, a VoIP reseller designing a communication package for its business customers, or a large-scale telecom provider, investigating how to save money on infrastructure and maintain service quality, this technology has something for everyone.
Another reason why the telecom industry faces increased competition today is that there are many more competitors now compared to any time before. Services such as OTT communications services, price sensitivity among customers, and migration towards UCaaS systems require telecom providers and ISPs to provide increased value with reduced costs. A suitable VoIP solution lets you do that, whether for your business or clients.
VoIP as a Product: Serving Your Business Customers Better
White Label VoIP for ISPs and Telecom Resellers
Most Internet service providers and regional telecommunication services provide hosted business phone services to their commercial clients as a bundle of broadband services. With white label VoIP software, you can provide business-class telephone service capabilities without the need to build any technical infrastructure by yourself. The client gets the capabilities he needs, the account remains yours, and the rest is taken care of by the platform.
The features provided by a white-label VoIP system usually include business telephones, an auto attendant, call routing, voicemail, call recordings, mobile app access, and others. It should also have capabilities for billing systems integration in order to bill your VoIP service together with the client’s Internet service.
SIP Trunking Services for Business Customers
One of the most widely used voice solutions offered by ISPs and telecoms to their business customers is the SIP trunking service. If a company has on-premise PBX or UCaaS services, it will definitely require SIP trunk services for placing and receiving voice calls. Providing SIP trunking is one of the ways of generating extra income from your business customers as well as increasing the engagement level with your customer base.
The main features of a good SIP trunking service include reliable interconnection capabilities, high uptime levels, cost-efficient per-minute or per-channel pricing, and proper configuration documentation for common business PBXs. While choosing SIP trunking providers, businesses pay special attention to the quality of the above-mentioned features combined with the availability of toll-free and local numbers.
UCaaS Platforms for SMB and Mid-Market Business Customers
UCaaS is one of the fastest-growing areas within the realm of business communications. SMBs are switching out traditional PBX technologies for cloud UCaaS solutions where voice, video, messaging, and collaboration functionalities are all offered within the same application. ISPs and telecommunication providers who deliver a UCaaS service to their business clients are earning ongoing revenues from the software service along with connectivity revenues.
Internal Communication Challenges for Telecom Companies and ISPs
High-Volume Customer Support and Technical Help Desks
Call centers within telecom and ISPs often deal with one of the busiest call volumes in any industry. Outages, billing issues, appointment setting, device troubleshooting, and account updates all contribute to incoming calls that need to be handled professionally and efficiently. With the help of a VoIP contact center solution built for a large number of calls, support teams will be able to manage those calls without compromising on customer experience during the unexpected spike in the call volume.
With skills-based routing, technical support calls will get to the technicians instead of going to the billing specialists, and vice versa. In case of an outage that occurs in a particular region, IVR announcements could inform customers of that so that agents do not have to answer the same question over and over again.
Field Technician Coordination and Dispatch
The ISPs and telecom corporations use field technicians to set up, fix, and maintain the infrastructure at their end in large geographical locations. To coordinate such activities, it is imperative for there to be timely and smooth communication among the dispatch center and the field technicians. A VoIP solution with mobile applications ensures that every single field technician has the company’s phone network accessible through his/her own smartphone and can get assigned tasks, contact customers directly, and also contact any other internal staff members, all on one single business line.
In case a field technician requires any assistance or guidance from a senior engineer while performing a difficult setup, the same VoIP network used for customer calls can perform internal conferences and direct extensions as well.
Sales Teams Managing Business Accounts
Telecom providers and ISPs have separate sales teams who handle business account management and acquisition. Such sales teams require communication solutions that integrate with their CRM system and also allow them to do outbound prospecting and give visibility to the sales manager to coach them. Power dialing, call recordings, and CRM integration in a VoIP solution help the business telecom sales team get the same functionalities that top-performing sales teams from other industries use regularly.
Multi-Location Operations and Network Operations Centers
Usually, telecom providers and ISPs operate from multiple locations such as a corporate office, regional center, network operation center, and retail/service location. Using a cloud-based VoIP solution, all the different locations can be interconnected through one communication system. This is an efficient solution because the management does not have to worry about managing different phone systems in each location.
Key Features That Telecom Companies and ISPs Need
High-Volume Contact Center Capabilities
Telecommunications customer support requires call intelligence for handling, real-time monitoring of calls, call queue monitoring, agent statistics, reporting dashboards, and call recording capabilities as the bare minimum. Additional capabilities such as IVR for managing customer accounts, callback and virtual queuing to help manage high-traffic situations, and artificial intelligence-assisted call summarization to help speed up the after-call documentation process provide the center with a valuable increase in efficiency, which results in a lower cost per contact.
CRM and Billing System Integration
The CRM and billing systems of telecoms hold all the information about accounts that support agents would require in every customer interaction. Once a voice communication platform is integrated with these systems, agents get information about customers’ account status, active service plans, pending trouble tickets, and payment history the minute the call connects.
Network Outage Communication Tools
An outage is inevitable in the telecommunications and internet service provider industries, and the way in which a company handles its communications during an outage plays an important role in retaining customer trust. Using a VoIP system that includes automated outgoing notifications allows you to proactively reach out to your customers by calling or texting them before they get in touch with your company.
Scalable Infrastructure for Demand Spikes
Unprecedented levels of calls can occur in the event of service outages, billing problems, or the introduction of new products. Using cloud-hosted VoIP systems enables your business to quickly scale up to meet the increased demand without compromising the quality of the calls being made. Once the spike has occurred, capacity automatically scales down.
Reporting and Analytics for Operations Management
The telecom operations executives require in-depth real-time insight into the performance of the support centers. These include call volume depending on the time of the day, rate of call resolutions, handle time per category of calls, metrics on agent performance, and queue abandon ratios. The VoIP system, which provides in-depth analytics dashboards, is an important tool that provides the operations executives with information that will help them manage their activities instead of reacting to the challenges after they affect the customer experience.
Who This Solution Is Right For
- Regional fiber and broadband ISPs looking to modernize internal customer support communication
- Telecom resellers building white label hosted VoIP or UCaaS products for business customers
- National and regional carriers seeking to reduce internal communication infrastructure costs
- MVNOs managing customer support for mobile subscriber bases at scale
- Network operations centers that need reliable internal communication during outages and incidents
- ISP sales teams managing business account acquisition and renewal communications
- Telecom companies offering SIP trunking or hosted PBX services to commercial customers
Frequently Asked Questions
How can a VoIP platform help a telecom company manage service outage calls more effectively?
With proper planning, the VoIP solution takes care of outage call volume from both ends at the same time. For one thing, proactively sending out notifications automatically either via call or SMS message to the customer affected by the problem lowers the number of incoming calls to the help desk. In addition, IVR messages that are played to incoming callers about the outage as well as the time it will be fixed take care of a good percentage of those calls, which do not really need to talk to a representative.
What does a white label VoIP solution look like for an ISP offering hosted business phone services?
The White Label VoIP service is a way for the ISP to provide a full-featured hosted business phone service that is branded only by the ISP itself and nothing else to its commercial customers. The end user will see nothing except for the brand name of the ISP in the product. The usual features that this type of solution may include are business phone lines (local/toll-free), an auto attendant, call routing, voicemail to email, call recording, and a mobile app. The ISP takes care of customer service and billing, and the solution provides behind-the-scenes provisioning and upgrading and technical support.
How does CRM integration improve customer service for a telecom support center?
In the case when the VoIP solution is linked with the telecom CRM and billing system, the agent receives a popup showing the name of the customer, existing service package, account status, opened support cases, payment history, and previous conversation notes with each incoming call. The agent knows about it even before greeting the client. It saves the client from the unpleasant situation of repeating information about his account and makes the call shorter and more efficient for the agent to be able to solve the issue.
Can a VoIP contact center platform scale to handle the call volume spikes a telecom company experiences during a regional outage?
Absolutely, and this is why the cloud version of VoIP beats the on-premise setup for a contact center hands down. It can rapidly increase its capacity for processing calls in a matter of minutes after an outage begins. Extra virtual agents, IVR queues, and callbacks can all be added on without any hardware installation or even vendor intervention. Once the outage ends and the number of calls drops back to normal, capacity automatically scales back down again, meaning that you will not be paying for excess capacity all the time.
What is SIP trunking and how do ISPs benefit from offering it to business customers?
SIP trunking involves the provision of voice calling services through an internet connection, as opposed to using phone lines. In cases where a business already has a phone system installed within its premises, the business can make use of SIP trunking to hook the phone system into the public phone network. With SIP trunking services provided by an ISP to its business clients, the ISP stands to earn more money on a monthly basis from each of those accounts, and the churn rate goes down because the customer will be dependent on two different services from the same ISP.
How does a VoIP solution support field technicians who work outside the office?
The VoIP mobile application enables field technicians to have full access to the business telephone network via their smartphones. Field technicians get calls on their professional telephone numbers; they can connect to any other extension within the organization using the company’s directory. It also makes it possible to transfer calls to and from the dispatching center without having to use an alternative contact number from the customer. All calls made through the application are automatically logged into the system, allowing the dispatchers to track any communications between any of the technicians and customers.
What reporting capabilities should a telecom customer support center look for in a VoIP platform?
Support operations within the telecom industry need to favor solutions capable of showing real-time dashboards of queues and current levels of call volume, agent availability, and average wait time while at the same time providing historical reports on first-call resolution rates, average handling time per call type, abandonment rates, metrics pertaining to agent productivity, and advanced IVR deflection statistics. The best systems will offer the option to create tailored reports so that managers can generate the views they require to maintain performance levels in line with their internal SLAs and customer experience objectives. Further, reporting systems must be able to export data to other business intelligence-related tools and systems, which should be confirmed during the research phase.
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