Today’s society has become completely self-serve. How we interact with consumer products and services has opened up into a plethora of methods, empowering the consumer. The consumer can now log-in to personal online accounts, purchase and manage services without a single phone call or visit to a store front; they can now pay for products and services from their mobile device using technologies such as NFC and Apple Pay; they can transfer funds from the comfort of their electronic devices without requiring visiting the bank, and the list goes on.
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This trend of empowering the consumer provides benefits to both the consumer and manufacturer. The consumer benefits from becoming more productive in their daily activities and the manufacturer benefits from selling more product and service based on this fact, as well save on support costs as the consumer have access to the same tools.
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So why isn’t this trend as inclusive with the telecommunication industry? For example, in a typical office environment, an employee still requires the assistance from their IT personnel for things like conference phone call setup and management, or to adjust their extension features. Another example is an employee deciding to work from home on a given day, still require IT to setup their tools and access. Or from a consumer point of view, if a business wants to purchase a cloud based phone systems or SIP trunks there is no completely automated self-serve method to do so, without waiting for a response from the provider, or requiring assistance to configure the service.
Self-serve would benefit the telecommunication industry in the following ways:
- Office staff become more productive as they have access to all communication mediums at their fingertips, without waiting for IT permission
- Increase remote office work, as staff can become more mobile and thus accomplish more work
- Businesses can purchase telephony service through online portals, when they want, and configure their services immediately, getting their own businesses running more quickly
Sangoma Technologies has been responding to this need in many of its products and services.
Productivity
Unified Control Panel (UCP)
FreePBX and PBXact phone systems offer a unique web-based dashboard for every user, empowering users to manage and control their own features. They simply log into UCP from any internet capable device and have access to things such as:
- Voicemail: listening, delete, voicemail-to-email, and recording voicemail greetings
- Follow-me: enable/disable and add phone numbers
- Conference: Create unlimited conference rooms, manage live attendee, and administrator level conference room features
- Presence: manage your presence across all your devices
- Device management: customize the applications and features of your deskphone
- WebRTC phone to make/receive calls and SMS with your colleagues…and the list goes on…
Phone Apps
Sangoma IP Phones are pre-built with device applications which completely remove the need for feature-codes and allow users to have administrator level access to all the typical features they require, saving them and their business time and money. For more information on phone apps visit: sangoma.com/phoneapps
Online Sign up & Configuration
SIPStation & PBXact Cloud Service
Whether your business is looking to connect to SIP Trunks or require a complete fully-featured cloud based phone system, Sangoma’s SIPStation and PBXact Cloud offer a completely self-service online portal, allowing customers to immediately register, purchase and configure service, and manage features, without the need for email responses or service connection delay.
Visit the following pages for information and a live demo of the entire setup process.
SIPStation: sangoma.com/sipstation
PBXact Cloud: sangoma.com/pbxact-cloud