December 10, 2015 at 10:01Multi IP-SIM in the service of small business. Special SIM card for free classified sites
In our blog on Habré, we describe interesting schemes for upgrading corporate telephony that can be built using FMC-technologies, cloud-based PBX and integrations with CRM-systems. Judging by the fact that almost half of our customers are interested in integration solutions, and snow-white clouds in the original form of only telephone SaaS are of little interest to anyone, we just guessed the trend in the VoIP market and are moving in the right direction. Usually, the integration of telephony, cloud PBX and mobile communications is the destiny of at least small and medium-sized businesses, and we also thought so until recently, until it turned out that IP SIM cards, a virtual PBX and the wonders of VoIP could work for micro businesses. To a business where the entrepreneur is “one men show” and “the shvets and the reaper and the dude igrets”, where sales are based on the promotion of goods through free ads, Incoming calls from customers throughout the Russian Federation. In other words, today we’ll talk about what we came up with to help entrepreneurs who earn sales through bulletin boards.
A very small introduction, in which we recall how our basic product works - Office in Pocket, the genetic father of the hero of today's publication - Multi IP-SIM . The idea of the Office in Pocket itself implies the complete mobility of employees who decisively refuse a real office and landline phones and use mobile phones as the main and only “dialer”. In order for this to work, it is necessary to connect special IP SIM cards and a virtual PBX HIVE. It turns out a kind of cloudy and fully mobile office PBX, such as shown in the picture.
Customers call the company’s advertising number, they are greeted by a polite IVR, after which the call is sent to the desired employee’s cell phone, recorded, gets into statistics or CRM in the same way as if he came to a stationary office device. This whole scheme is spinning on a virtual HIVE PBX and special IP SIM cards that are connected directly to the cloud like regular IP phones.
Developing our HIVE, we unexpectedly came to the understanding that the client’s business can not only be small, it can be very small, and at the same time, “a very small business” has “very large telephone needs”. The reason is obvious - where one or two people work, the help of the Electronics robot is simply vital, and Syroezhkin’s hands alone aren’t enough. A typical example of such a business is sales through free classified sites. It is enough to type in the search engine the query “Make money on Avito” to understand how a significant number of entrepreneurs promote their goods and services through old, good, free message boards throughout the Russian Federation.
The business model of such an entrepreneur has changed in recent years thanks to IP-telephony and the triumph of broadband access. Previously, advertisements for the sale of spare parts or smartphones from China were placed only on the websites of the hometown, but now the restrictions have disappeared and you can conduct business throughout the country by specifying the virtual number of the desired city or region as the contact number, and the goods are perfectly sent by courier.
An Internet entrepreneur buys many, many virtual numbers from different regions, indicates them in the announcements and potential customers, when they call such a number, are sure that they are calling the seller in their hometown. This is not a hoax; rather, such a scheme works to increase conversion and reduce telephone costs for all interested parties. At first glance, everything looks simple and there is nothing to automate, but it is not: the main headache of an Internet seller is managing a whole zoo of virtual numbers, processing applications, and properly built dialog scripts. Goods in different regions can be sold at different prices and it is best to understand from which region and which goods the customer is calling for an incoming call in order to properly build a dialogue. Entrepreneurs go to all kinds of tricks, look for free cloud PBXs on the Internet, CRM or configure something “about howl” on their own. Unfortunately, such “zoos” are poorly managed and unreliable.
The second problem is the need to sit all day in front of the computer in the headset with the softphone running. This is a very tiring task, and sometimes you want to run outside for a walk. In such cases, forwarding is set from all 55 virtual numbers to one single mobile phone, which means that incoming calls cease to be free and payment per minute is turned on for each redirected call, plus serious work is required to create a script for processing all this.
We decided to modify the scheme and use our cloud-based PBX HIVE and our IP-SIM card. All numerous virtual numbers are now configured in one interface, and a rule is created - any incoming person is sent immediately to IP-SIM, and call forwarding disappears as a concept (SIM works like a regular IP phone).
The result is a tandem PBX and Multi IP-SIM to which many, many incoming virtual numbers are connected, and the SIM card itself appears as a softphone PBX. Calls to the SIM card can be processed by smart incoming scripts: call schedule, voice menus, intelligent routing according to a set of conditions. Let's go even further: since the SIM card works as an extension, we can transfer to the mobile phone when the caller ID comes in is not the real number of the caller (when communicating for the first time, it’s not necessary to know such a number, it’s more important to know the number from the announcement the call came to), and identifier of a specific virtual number. When a client calls, not a little significant figures will be determined: +7 987 654 32 10, and the number of the incoming channel to which the call came.
At the same time, the real customer number does not disappear, it will be saved in statistics and can be seen after the end of the conversation by opening the PBX monitoring panel. True, the dashboard is not always accessible, for example, when an incoming person came while walking with children and there was no laptop at hand. We envisioned this as well: HIVE after each call sends an email with a detailed event card - who, when and to whom it called. For more proper automation, integration with amoCRM can also be configured, then the business process becomes completely correct and the entire transaction is automated: with all statuses, tasks and reports. After we put together a test bench and began to “play” with IP-SIM, cloud PBX and caller ID spoofing, it became clear that the product is very curious and you can tighten some more useful “features”.
We will try to show all the features and capabilities using an example of a specific case.
For 3 years, the entrepreneur Timur has been selling digital equipment throughout Russia purchased through the Internet from Chinese manufacturers. Advertisements for sale are posted throughout the country on the AVITO website, and 93 virtual telephone numbers are involved in the scheme, which Timur acquired from 14 telephone providers. Timur sells both GoPro smartphones and laptops and trendy action cameras. GoPro is particularly popular because Timur’s Chinese partner, hiding under the nickname Laura Lu, once gave good terms and sales.
Timur receives dozens of calls every day and the entrepreneur is not able to remember who is calling him and where, the classic leaflet and pen in the pocket of his shoulder bag can no longer help out - what can be the account if you have more than a hundred announcements launched and the phone rings every 10 minutes. Timur was tired from morning to night rushing from laptop to phone and wants automation, he is ready to pay to someone who solves his problems. Timur decides to buy Multi IP-SIM, because he can’t live like that anymore, he’s not yet forty, and he has already begun to turn gray.
Previously, Timur used a free, periodically falling, cloud-based PBX of Romanian developers and a Zoiper softphone to work from home, and when he went out for a walk with his wife, he turned on call forwarding to his mobile phone. After connecting the forwarding, chaos ensued: calls rained down one after another, incoming unknown numbers overwhelmed the smartphone’s dialer. Timur constantly asked customers the same question: “Sorry, I didn’t hear, are you from Ryazan or Kazan?” The nervous system of the businessman fell into decay, the gym and hiking on the ice rink ceased to bring joy.
The first thing Timur did after connecting Multi IP-SIM + HIVE was that in half an hour he configured all 93 numbers as incoming channels. HIVE automatically assigned a unique ID to each channel and when it received an incoming call to IP-SIM, it was not a new number of the next client from Arkhangelsk that was sent, but an easy-to-remember, short, identifier of the incoming trunk. Now Timur has become much easier to understand by what announcement the call came.
But even a short, two-digit incoming channel ID is not so easy to remember. 37 or 45 is much more convenient than +7 987 654 32 10, but still not sufficiently informative. The digital trading guru decided to spend another half an hour and quickly spread a spreadsheet in Excel, where in two columns he compared the number of each incoming channel and an understandable letter designation. Now 23 is “Samara, laptops”, and 78 is “Tver, GoPro”. Then Timur imported the created list into his Google account with a flick of the mouse, and the smartphone picked up a new contact sheet on the fly and loaded it into the notebook. Now when you enter a Tver number on your smartphone, not a two-digit identifier is displayed, but a convenient and understandable inscription “Tver, GoPro”, you can calmly breathe and start a conversation according to a previously worked out scenario.
The entrepreneur’s life improved, his nervous stress subsided, and he returned to watching the Round-the-World on Oars YouTube channel every night.
But there are still a couple of unresolved issues: it’s not enough to see only the understandable name of the announcement, you also need to know the real customer number, without this, nowhere, suddenly you need to call back. Timur again went to the HIVE interface and connected the option “Call card to e-mail”, now, after the end of each conversation, a letter with all the necessary data arrives at the post office: subscriber number A, subscriber number B, talk time and a link to the recording. In the same place, Timur also activated the integration module with amoCRM in the HIVE interface - to automate, to automate. Now, notifications with the necessary information are also received by e-mail and attached to the contact card in the CRM system. In the evening, after work, you can systematize everything, think over and create a list of tasks the next day, and the amoCRM mobile app provides access to all the information you need right from your smartphone. Micro-business has become like a serious, multi-million dollar, trading process.
The described automation, in essence, is a successful combination of several cloud solutions. The flexibility of the HIVE VoIP platform in combination with Multi IP-SIM allows you to virtually adapt the virtual PBX and mobile communications to the tasks of businesses of various sizes and specifics. An example with optimizing sales through bulletin boards is a special case, a wrapper, for the classic functionality of IP-PBX and FMC-technologies. We do not claim that we invented something super innovative, rather we did the marketing procedure, analyzed the needs of the market, and then wrapped almost standard functionality in an understandable and convenient case for the client. There are more and more such solutions on the market and we promise not to hide and share all ideas and best practices with readers of our blog.
To be continued.
A very small introduction, in which we recall how our basic product works - Office in Pocket, the genetic father of the hero of today's publication - Multi IP-SIM . The idea of the Office in Pocket itself implies the complete mobility of employees who decisively refuse a real office and landline phones and use mobile phones as the main and only “dialer”. In order for this to work, it is necessary to connect special IP SIM cards and a virtual PBX HIVE. It turns out a kind of cloudy and fully mobile office PBX, such as shown in the picture.
Customers call the company’s advertising number, they are greeted by a polite IVR, after which the call is sent to the desired employee’s cell phone, recorded, gets into statistics or CRM in the same way as if he came to a stationary office device. This whole scheme is spinning on a virtual HIVE PBX and special IP SIM cards that are connected directly to the cloud like regular IP phones.
What and for whom we automate
Developing our HIVE, we unexpectedly came to the understanding that the client’s business can not only be small, it can be very small, and at the same time, “a very small business” has “very large telephone needs”. The reason is obvious - where one or two people work, the help of the Electronics robot is simply vital, and Syroezhkin’s hands alone aren’t enough. A typical example of such a business is sales through free classified sites. It is enough to type in the search engine the query “Make money on Avito” to understand how a significant number of entrepreneurs promote their goods and services through old, good, free message boards throughout the Russian Federation.
The business model of such an entrepreneur has changed in recent years thanks to IP-telephony and the triumph of broadband access. Previously, advertisements for the sale of spare parts or smartphones from China were placed only on the websites of the hometown, but now the restrictions have disappeared and you can conduct business throughout the country by specifying the virtual number of the desired city or region as the contact number, and the goods are perfectly sent by courier.
An Internet entrepreneur buys many, many virtual numbers from different regions, indicates them in the announcements and potential customers, when they call such a number, are sure that they are calling the seller in their hometown. This is not a hoax; rather, such a scheme works to increase conversion and reduce telephone costs for all interested parties. At first glance, everything looks simple and there is nothing to automate, but it is not: the main headache of an Internet seller is managing a whole zoo of virtual numbers, processing applications, and properly built dialog scripts. Goods in different regions can be sold at different prices and it is best to understand from which region and which goods the customer is calling for an incoming call in order to properly build a dialogue. Entrepreneurs go to all kinds of tricks, look for free cloud PBXs on the Internet, CRM or configure something “about howl” on their own. Unfortunately, such “zoos” are poorly managed and unreliable.
The second problem is the need to sit all day in front of the computer in the headset with the softphone running. This is a very tiring task, and sometimes you want to run outside for a walk. In such cases, forwarding is set from all 55 virtual numbers to one single mobile phone, which means that incoming calls cease to be free and payment per minute is turned on for each redirected call, plus serious work is required to create a script for processing all this.
We decided to modify the scheme and use our cloud-based PBX HIVE and our IP-SIM card. All numerous virtual numbers are now configured in one interface, and a rule is created - any incoming person is sent immediately to IP-SIM, and call forwarding disappears as a concept (SIM works like a regular IP phone).
The result is a tandem PBX and Multi IP-SIM to which many, many incoming virtual numbers are connected, and the SIM card itself appears as a softphone PBX. Calls to the SIM card can be processed by smart incoming scripts: call schedule, voice menus, intelligent routing according to a set of conditions. Let's go even further: since the SIM card works as an extension, we can transfer to the mobile phone when the caller ID comes in is not the real number of the caller (when communicating for the first time, it’s not necessary to know such a number, it’s more important to know the number from the announcement the call came to), and identifier of a specific virtual number. When a client calls, not a little significant figures will be determined: +7 987 654 32 10, and the number of the incoming channel to which the call came.
At the same time, the real customer number does not disappear, it will be saved in statistics and can be seen after the end of the conversation by opening the PBX monitoring panel. True, the dashboard is not always accessible, for example, when an incoming person came while walking with children and there was no laptop at hand. We envisioned this as well: HIVE after each call sends an email with a detailed event card - who, when and to whom it called. For more proper automation, integration with amoCRM can also be configured, then the business process becomes completely correct and the entire transaction is automated: with all statuses, tasks and reports. After we put together a test bench and began to “play” with IP-SIM, cloud PBX and caller ID spoofing, it became clear that the product is very curious and you can tighten some more useful “features”.
We will try to show all the features and capabilities using an example of a specific case.
Case
For 3 years, the entrepreneur Timur has been selling digital equipment throughout Russia purchased through the Internet from Chinese manufacturers. Advertisements for sale are posted throughout the country on the AVITO website, and 93 virtual telephone numbers are involved in the scheme, which Timur acquired from 14 telephone providers. Timur sells both GoPro smartphones and laptops and trendy action cameras. GoPro is particularly popular because Timur’s Chinese partner, hiding under the nickname Laura Lu, once gave good terms and sales.
Timur receives dozens of calls every day and the entrepreneur is not able to remember who is calling him and where, the classic leaflet and pen in the pocket of his shoulder bag can no longer help out - what can be the account if you have more than a hundred announcements launched and the phone rings every 10 minutes. Timur was tired from morning to night rushing from laptop to phone and wants automation, he is ready to pay to someone who solves his problems. Timur decides to buy Multi IP-SIM, because he can’t live like that anymore, he’s not yet forty, and he has already begun to turn gray.
Previously, Timur used a free, periodically falling, cloud-based PBX of Romanian developers and a Zoiper softphone to work from home, and when he went out for a walk with his wife, he turned on call forwarding to his mobile phone. After connecting the forwarding, chaos ensued: calls rained down one after another, incoming unknown numbers overwhelmed the smartphone’s dialer. Timur constantly asked customers the same question: “Sorry, I didn’t hear, are you from Ryazan or Kazan?” The nervous system of the businessman fell into decay, the gym and hiking on the ice rink ceased to bring joy.
The first thing Timur did after connecting Multi IP-SIM + HIVE was that in half an hour he configured all 93 numbers as incoming channels. HIVE automatically assigned a unique ID to each channel and when it received an incoming call to IP-SIM, it was not a new number of the next client from Arkhangelsk that was sent, but an easy-to-remember, short, identifier of the incoming trunk. Now Timur has become much easier to understand by what announcement the call came.
But even a short, two-digit incoming channel ID is not so easy to remember. 37 or 45 is much more convenient than +7 987 654 32 10, but still not sufficiently informative. The digital trading guru decided to spend another half an hour and quickly spread a spreadsheet in Excel, where in two columns he compared the number of each incoming channel and an understandable letter designation. Now 23 is “Samara, laptops”, and 78 is “Tver, GoPro”. Then Timur imported the created list into his Google account with a flick of the mouse, and the smartphone picked up a new contact sheet on the fly and loaded it into the notebook. Now when you enter a Tver number on your smartphone, not a two-digit identifier is displayed, but a convenient and understandable inscription “Tver, GoPro”, you can calmly breathe and start a conversation according to a previously worked out scenario.
The entrepreneur’s life improved, his nervous stress subsided, and he returned to watching the Round-the-World on Oars YouTube channel every night.
But there are still a couple of unresolved issues: it’s not enough to see only the understandable name of the announcement, you also need to know the real customer number, without this, nowhere, suddenly you need to call back. Timur again went to the HIVE interface and connected the option “Call card to e-mail”, now, after the end of each conversation, a letter with all the necessary data arrives at the post office: subscriber number A, subscriber number B, talk time and a link to the recording. In the same place, Timur also activated the integration module with amoCRM in the HIVE interface - to automate, to automate. Now, notifications with the necessary information are also received by e-mail and attached to the contact card in the CRM system. In the evening, after work, you can systematize everything, think over and create a list of tasks the next day, and the amoCRM mobile app provides access to all the information you need right from your smartphone. Micro-business has become like a serious, multi-million dollar, trading process.
The described automation, in essence, is a successful combination of several cloud solutions. The flexibility of the HIVE VoIP platform in combination with Multi IP-SIM allows you to virtually adapt the virtual PBX and mobile communications to the tasks of businesses of various sizes and specifics. An example with optimizing sales through bulletin boards is a special case, a wrapper, for the classic functionality of IP-PBX and FMC-technologies. We do not claim that we invented something super innovative, rather we did the marketing procedure, analyzed the needs of the market, and then wrapped almost standard functionality in an understandable and convenient case for the client. There are more and more such solutions on the market and we promise not to hide and share all ideas and best practices with readers of our blog.
To be continued.