What is Cloud Telephony?

Communication is a crucial factor for any business or organization. With good communication, a company can function perfectly. Cloud telephony service streamlines your business communications with powerful features like voicemail, multi-level IVR, call recordings and mobile apps for agents.

Cloud telephony, also known as cloud calling, is a type of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) that offers voice communication services. UCaaS replaces your need for conventional enterprise phone systems like private branch exchanges (PBX). Instead, cloud telephony services are accessible through web-based or PSTN.

Cloud communications providers build, operate and maintain a standardized voice platform on their servers., with customers gaining remote access — via the internet — on a subscription or as-needed basis. This system is perfect for companies who want to skip over the conventional and expensive phone systems in offices.

Cloud telephony services enable users to place calls from any computer or mobile device with an internet connection; businesses aren’t wasting money on separate hardware like PBX boxes and old devices.

Cloud telephony doesn’t refer to a specific technology; it’s generally used for multi-tenant networks with subscribers sharing common resources like channels, mobile apps and calling software. On the other hand, hosted telephony usually refers to a dedicated, off-site PBX system that a provider sets up for any company to maintain in its cloud for a single organization’s use.

Cloud IVR Service is the future of business communications. It eliminates hardware installation, costly call centre server software, and inefficient landlines and allows you to scale the service per your requirement.

In addition, cloud telephony removes the need for physical receptionists and server room maintenance, making it an exciting new option for small businesses that cannot afford the enormous capital expenditure.

In addition, the cloud phone system provides you with a professional phone number in your area code, allowing you to be part of the local community.

Cloud Telephony can help companies effectively incorporate voice communication benefits.

 

What are the benefits of Cloud Telephony?

💰 Save money:-

Cloud Telephony services are designed to provide business owners with an inexpensive way of connecting to businesses, employees, and customers.
Customers can share voice messages & voicemail messages with the service. They can also use a company’s custom greeting and auto-receptionist message. With these features, cloud phone services can save money for a business by eliminating physical receptionists.

🔧 No Maintenance or hardware upgrades:-

Hosted IVR system reduces the cost of hardware, server room, and technician you need to maintain and manage the physical PRI phone service. In addition, you can use any device, i.e., web or mobile phone, with an internet connection to make or take your business calls!
Cloud Telephony service operates on a cloud platform that doesn’t require installing any physical hardware, nor does it cost money for additional maintenance fees or software upgrades.

📈 Scalability:-

As the business evolves, a need for multiple channels or agents usually arises. You can easily add or remove channels and agents with Hosted IVR system and have everything you need to complete your work.
You can start your Cloud telephony subscription with one Channel or agent, and you can scale as per your business requirement. It’s important to note that these phone systems allow you to track your phone usage, so you know exactly how much you spend on your service each month. In addition, you’ll only be paying for the features you need without any overage charges.

💻 Reliability:-

Research has shown that cloud telephony technology has advanced and evolved drastically, providing a reliable source of unified business communication. Moreover, cloud telephony services are highly reliable. For example, they offer redundancy by hosting the service in multiple data centres across the country. SaleSquard hosts the solution in CtrlS data centres in Hyderabad, Banglore and Mumbai. In addition, it has telephony connectivity with Airtel, Jio & Tata telephone networks in India, bringing a high-reliability factor.

Feature Rich:-

Cloud telephony is the future of communication and is taking over how companies communicate. Hosted IVR systems are more efficient and cost-effective. In addition, they offer powerful features such as multi-level IVR, call recording, voicemail, call queuing, office hours & holiday routing, SMS & Email and 25 other features. All these features can be accessed from anywhere with just a click of a button, no matter your device. So it’s time for businesses to ditch their old phone systems and take advantage of this technology.

Flexible:- 

With a cloud-based telephone number, an employee can seamlessly take and make inbound and outbound calls no matter where they are. Cloud telephony is especially beneficial for those doing work-from-home (WFH) jobs.

Resilient:-

During natural disasters or other emergencies, your on-site PBX may go down, and you will no longer be able to make or receive voice calls; Cloud telephony services are more resilient and less vulnerable to downtime than their on-premise counterparts. They also provide guaranteed uptime for business continuity in case of system or network failure. In addition, most cloud telephony services have a failover mode which ensures that backup is available if there are any connection problems.

Cloud-based voice technology sets the stage for more UCaaS features, such as multi-level IVR, voice and keyword analysis, call centre system, interactive voice response (IVR) and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled customer support. However, contrary to the current opinion of UCaaS analysts, organizations can customize their cloud calling offerings as much as possible with on-premises systems, leading many large enterprises to delay adoption.

Regarding risks, based on a recent study of some telephony platforms, experts have found that they cannot meet security standards — with multi-tenant, public cloud environments failing to meet specific stringent compliance regulations. For this reason, Organizations with strict data regulations may have to opt for on-premises or hosted telephony if they want to keep customer data secure.

 

Cloud telephony providers in India

Many providers currently offer cloud telephony services alongside complementary UCaaS features, such as web conferencing, screen sharing, team messaging and more.

UC analysts expect increasingly sophisticated integrations between cloud telephony platforms and other business applications, such as Zoho, Bitrix24, Hubspot, Pipedrive and Freshsales.

Today’s cloud telephony vendor offerings include the following:

1. SaleSquared
2. Airtel IQ
3. Ozonetel
4. Servetel
5. Sarv
6. Exotel