RingCentral, a cloud computing-based, hosted business phone service received the 2008 Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation’s (
TMC) Customer Interaction Solutions
magazine.
Google Voice is a neat addition to the world of online telephony. It offers a wide range of features that have, before now, either been out-of-reach for the home telephone, or difficult to implement. The ability to listen in on a screened call or record calls are neat features that might not have daily applications, but are nice to have when you need them.
It wouldn’t be at all surprising to see a number of these features become standard in the near future for residential use. For businesses, however, they’re more a case of almost-but-not-quite. Without the flexibility and features of a full business package, Google Voice doesn’t quite deliver everything most businesses require.
A proper communications package for business needs to integrate with how a company actually operates. In addition to allowing the company to craft every aspect of how they interact with customers, businesses also need the tools to chart and manage their call traffic. This goes beyond voicemail to actually charting where every call came from, who the caller spoke with, and the results of this conversation. This sort of data can be vital, for instance, to marketing and sales. They need to know why customers are calling and why they are buying. Failing to capture this data makes it that much harder to duplicate your successes and avoid repeating your mistakes.
The best packages also work with the software you use to run your business. Being able to
make calls directly from Outlook, for instance, can be extremely useful for people on the go. You also can’t rely solely on your mobile phone everywhere you go. Batteries die and signals get weak. A flexible package includes options for making a call from any phone, even a payphone or a hotel phone. And so long as business still requires people to sign on the dotted lines, faxing will be with us.
The combination of professional image, capturing data, and flexibility makes a telephony package business-grade. Without that integration of services, a business can struggle through but will be operating at a noticeable deficit in efficiency and professionalism.
RingCentral has received a number of awards from TMC (
News -
Alert) and most recently won INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine’s 2008 Excellence Award and Customer Interaction Solutions magazine’s 2008 Innovation Award. The company has also won INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine’s 2007 Product of the Year Award for three consecutive years, Unified Communications (
News -
Alert) Magazine’s 2007 Product of the Year Award, Communications Solutions 2006 Product of the Year Award and TMC Labs’ 2006 INTERNET TELEPHONY Innovation Awards.
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