Saturday, May 10, 2014

Voice communications technology has come along way in the decade since mass-market VoIP services began to take advantage of existing broadband access. Sophisticated designs such as CallFire’s Voice Broadcast are opening up new paths to business/customer engagement, whilst making use of familiar, trusted telephony technology.

Companies use voice broadcasting as a promotional tool and to alert existing clients of new products or services. Governments at all levels use the technology to provide citizens with vital data in the event of an emergency situation, and politicians use it to engage with potential voters. You probably already have an idea of how your business could use voice broadcasting as part of its marketing strategy, but there are all sorts of other useful applications.

Planet Fitness used a combination of text and voice broadcasting to roll out a new account collections strategy for its 30,000+ members. The gym franchise also used the technology to send out promotions and offer free memberships. Prior to getting Voice Broadcast, Planet Fitness was using a combination of traditional correspondence like letters and phone calls. They have since cut costs dramatically, and recoup their investment if just one delinquent account responds with a payment.

Better than Email?
Cloud telephony solutions are just as easy to implement as email campaigns, - and significantly more effective. They don’t require technical assistance from IT specialists, and campaigns are easily monitored with real-time reports.

Furthermore, voice broadcasting campaigns can be personalized in the same way as email campaigns. Each recipients name, location and other pertinent information can be included in the message. And with live transfers, even tricky queries can be quickly handed over from the automated message to an agent, so there’s no endless trawling through menus only for the customer to discover they can’t get what they need anyway.

Not only that, you can customize your voice-based solution depending on how they are accessed (by smartphone, touch-tone etc), just as you tailor emails differently according to the device on which they are viewed.

VoIP can also be easily integrated with voice broadcasting. Instead of using the keypad to respond, the system lets recipients of the message provide verbal responses to each question or request further information by email, or even text message. This makes it possible to obtain more detailed data from surveys or confirm information needed to further assist the caller.
 
So Voice Broadcast is at least as efficient as email as a marketing tool. In certain areas it exceeds email’s efficacy – and in terms of reaching more people, it’s significantly better. If you’re on the brink of adding voice broadcasting to your marketing arsenal, the only question to ask yourself is: why wouldn’t I?