We were asked to do a podcast with Don Witt of Telecom Reseller. Click here to listen.
We were given some questions that would be asked so we could have some time to prepare. Don Witt was clearly very experienced and knows his telecoms. Our notes are copied below for those who haven’t got 15 minutes to listen to the podcast about Dialer outbound call center solution.
Question: How long have you been in business?
Star2billing was set up in November 2009 to provide commercial support and development to our main telco product at that time, A2Billing, but since then we moved into outbound call center solutions with DialerAI which has been available since early 2011.
We started with auto-dialling because we were asked to have a look at building a voice broadcasting application and SMS delivery platform for a charity in Africa who wanted to disseminate health care information efficiently and at low cost, Something that was not being achieved with their current leaflet drop methods they were using. Mobile phone penetration in Africa is quite high, even in developing countries.
From those beginnings, DialerAI has developed into a very versatile outbound call center solutions for a number of markets.
Question: What market do you serve? Who are your customers?
Our DialerAI customers are small and medium sized businesses who are using DialerAI to contact their existing customers as well as generate new ones. But the majority of our customers are telecoms companies who want to sell voice broadcasting and auto-dialling services to their own customers.
Question: What products do you provide?
Our main product is DialerAI, this is a outbound calling system for auto-dialling large numbers of people, and presenting information over the phone, either for marketing, or informational, such as appointment reminders, market research
Question: Describe how DialerAI (outbound call center software) works?
DialerAI can be used in a range of different ways, so for instance,
- A direct message drop calling someone and playing a pre-recorded message or via text to speech. If the call hits voicemail, then a message can be left after the beep automatically.
- A press 1 campaign typically used for lead generation, or indeed debt recovery, where someone is called, the proposition is made via pre-recorded or text to speech and the contact is invited to press 1 to speak to an agent.
- Callback campaigns, which are broadly similar to press-1 campaigns, except the contact presses 1 to express and interest with a promise to call them back within a few hours.
- Direct transfers, contacts are called, sometimes calling multiple contacts at a time, and when a person answers the phone, the call is bridged directly to a waiting agent, if an answering machine is detected, then a message can be left after the beep, but the efficiency saving is that the agent is only speaking to real people, while unanswered calls and answering machines are all dealt with automatically.
When all the agents are occupied, then calls stop.
Question: What is DialerAI used for and why?
DialerAI has a number of uses:
- Outbound Call Centers selling anything from home improvement to financial services as well as debt recovery. For these customers,
- DialerAI is used for lead generation using callback style campaigns, Press 1 campaigns, or direct transfers.
- Debt recovery is also a good market for us, as DialerAI can call all the numbers of one debtor, one after another until a response is received. Once the desired response is received then the system stops calling that debtor.
- We have others who are providing services for the home and are sending out appointment reminders via phone and SMS, these include pest control, roof checks and repairs and carpet cleaning.
- Many use DialerAI for market research, that includes political polling as well, so you can present a series of questions and capture the answers via key press.
- We also have inbound calling surveying as well,
- We have had customers who are using DialerAI for emergency voice broadcasting and general information updates.
- However, our biggest market is selling to other telcos who want to provide these services to their customers. DialerAI can be branded, it is multi-tenant, and it has billing, so Telcos can provide and bill services to their own customers.
We expect customers to use their own VoIP carrier, which suits many telcos, and it has a range of API, so it can be integrated with existing CRM systems, and other third party software.
Question: How do you sell your products?
Our sales are made mostly via Direct sales via our website, but in some markets around the world we are getting a very good reputation, so some of our enquiries are via word of mouth and recommendation.
We don’t really have channel partners and distributors selling under the DialerAI brand, but we do have quite a few telcos selling our systems under their own brand with our help and support.
Question: Is there anything else you’d like our listeners to know?
As is stands at the moment, we integrate well with existing telephone systems and customer’s equipment, but not everyone already has a telecoms infrastructure in place, so we are developing that side of it at the moment so that agents can connect directly to DialerAI, with queue management, agent management and associated statistics.
In this way, DialerAI will cover much more of the requirements of a small business using DialerAI to generate leads.
We hope that this will make it more attractive to telcos as well, as they can use one instance of DialerAI to have many customers making outbound calls, with agent management included.
Question: Where can people find out more?
People can contact us via our website https://dialer.ai, and as well as the information and videos we have on there, anyone would be welcome to call or drop us an email to discuss their individual use case or requirements.