New software boasts expanded conferencing features, call pickup capabilities, and performance enhancements

MARKHAM, ON, April 2, 2019 – Sangoma Technologies Corporation (TSX VENTURE: STC), a trusted leader in delivering Unified Communications solutions for SMBs, Enterprises, OEMs, and Service Providers, both on-premises and in the cloud, today announced the release of Switchvox 7, the latest software version of the Switchvox UC solution. Switchvox 7 introduces advanced conferencing features for greater collaboration, delivers added functionality for D-Series IP phones with call pickup capabilities, and upgrades the platform’s operating system for improved performance and security. Switchvox 7 marks the first major release of Switchvox since Sangoma’s acquisition of Digium, which finalized in September of 2018.

“Sangoma is committed to the Switchvox Unified Communications platform,” says Bill Wignall, CEO of Sangoma. “Since the acquisition of Digium, we have invested many resources into making Switchvox an even better solution that provides a greater value to our customer base. It is important for our customers and partners to know that we are dedicated to Switchvox and are relentlessly working to grow the platform, starting with the capabilities added in Switchvox 7. The release includes new features, performance enhancements, and deeper integrations with the D-Series IP phones. We look forward to continuing to enhance Switchvox going forward.”

The Switchvox Meet Me Conference feature has been expanded in Switchvox 7 to enable more transparency for conference room administrators and to provide them with additional tools for ensuring productive conference calls. A new Conference Widget shows all conference participants, highlights speakers, and provides the ability to mute or remove participants and end the call. The widget is available for the browser-based Switchboard end-user dashboard and for the D80, an affordable, HD touchscreen IP phone, giving users access to visual conference control on their computer from any location or right from their phone screen.

Switchvox 7 provides a more integrated and collaborative experience for D-Series IP phone users with call pickup capabilities. The new functionality allows users to pick up an incoming call on their Digium IP phone destined for another user’s extension. This new feature ensures calls are never missed when someone is away from their desk, or unavailable, since there is someone monitoring the inbound calls from another IP phone.

In addition to added features and capabilities, Switchvox 7 is the highest-performing release to date. Now, users can enjoy greater processing power and added security.

Switchvox 7 is available today for Switchvox on-premise customers with an active subscription and the following supported appliances: E510, E520, E530, E540, 80, 310, 360, 380, 450, or 470.

“Digium has been a trusted supplier for years, with the consistency we’ve come to rely on. The 7.0 release takes the best value in Unified Communications to an even higher level. How can you better all-inclusive software? Add more features and that’s exactly what this release has done. This new release reinforces Sangoma’s commitment to Switchvox. I look forward to offering Switchvox to our clients for many years to come,” said Jim Anderson, President of Unitel Inc.

For more information about Switchvox, please visit sangoma.com/switchvox.

Ringless Voicemail is set to become the next great marketing success by achieving higher response rates at lower costs, using a customer-friendly technology which is easy to track and optimize. Ringless Voicemail gets opened more often than email, is more engaging than SMS, cheaper than direct mail and much more convenient than cold calls, for you and your customers.

What is Ringless Voicemail?

Ringless Voicemail is a technology which can send voice messages directly to your recipients’ voicemail inboxes, without placing a call or causing their phone to ring. This service allows you to send voice message marketing in bulk the same way you conduct your email and SMS marketing campaigns.

These are the 3 most important reasons Ringless Voicemail is a game-changing marketing tool:

1. High Open Rates

Voicemail messages are much less likely to be ignored than other forms of direct marketing.

The average consumer today is exposed to so much marketing via direct mail and email that often your recipient won’t even bother to read the subject line, let alone open the message – potentially missing out on products, services and deals that would appeal to them. A voicemail with a compelling pitch is not only more attention-grabbing than a text or email, they also can’t be subconsciously dismissed in the same way by skim-reading an inbox.

2. Sales agents can use their time more effectively

Using outbound calls to generate and follow up each and every lead is extremely time-consuming. Even existing customers often won’t pick up the phone for an unexpected call, and many recipients will immediately say no or hang up because they don’t want to feel put on the spot. Making these calls can sap your agents’ energy and keeps them from more productive tasks.

By sending out Ringless Voicemails instead, recipients can process the information and call back when they are ready, and you can reach customers who just don’t answer the phone. From this point you can use an automated IVR to qualify interested leads, provide more information and connect those ready to buy with an agent. Your agents can then spend more of their time speaking to interested and qualified leads.

3. Easy to track and optimize

Ringless Voicemail makes it easy to optimize your marketing messages and strategy, with automatic tracking of open rates, and other statistics. Voice messages can be recorded, scheduled and sent to segmented lists in a matter of minutes. This allows you to test the performance of your pitches to each group of leads, create variations of messages and optimize the timing and content type.

Ringless Voicemail delivers a direct and engaging marketing message while respecting the customer’s privacy and convenience. Not only are customers more willing to listen to a voice message than read an email or receive a cold call, with more time spent talking to interested leads and less time just hoping someone picks up, your sales agents will be happier and more productive too.

When it comes to organizing and promoting your events, SMS broadcasting offers a multitude of benefits which can promote your event and boost ticket sales, as well as enhancing the presentations and assuring the event itself runs smoothly.

Here are three simple ways SMS broadcasting can have a major impact on the success of your events:

1. SMS Reminders

Printed schedules, and even schedules posted online or sent via email, can be a hassle to check in a busy conference center. Furthermore, every event has at least one or two unexpected changes to the schedule or presentation locations and it can be difficult to keep your attendees and presenters informed of alterations using these methods. Sending schedule reminders and update alerts via SMS keeps everyone instantly updated. SMS reminders can also help improve punctual attendance by providing attendees with directions to the event and each presentation area.

Event staff and speakers can also benefit from the use of SMS broadcasting to provide status reports letting them know about unexpected issues and presentations running over their time, helping them to keep the show running smoothly.

2. Enhancing your event with SMS

Asking attendees to confirm their attendance for each presentation allows you to organize the event more efficiently, giving each presentation a space appropriate to its attendance numbers and making sure the most popular presentations don’t clash.

Your speakers can also make great use of SMS during their presentations, as it enables them to conduct live polls of their audience and display the results in real-time. This is faster, more flexible and more appealing than an informal ‘show of hands’ where often audience members can’t really see the results for themselves.

Finally, SMS is a convenient method of conducting exit surveys and collecting feedback to improve your future events, as attendees can receive a request for feedback instantly as the event ends, or even after individual presentations.

3. Increasing Ticket Sales

To start with the most obvious, send out texts to your existing mailing lists letting them know you have an upcoming event is a great way to spread awareness and generate some early interest and sales. By inviting subscribers to a separate mailing list for the event, you can easily segment your most interested leads for targeted marketing.

Additionally texts alerting your subscribers that tickets are about to be sold out or that the event is happening in a few days can drive last-minute sales and give customers one last chance to avoid missing out.

SMS broadcasting also allows you to offer discounted tickets to important clients and leads that are ready to become customers, as well as provide referral links attendees can text to their friends and colleagues for a discount.

SMS broadcasting can help plan and promote your event, and provides a more streamlined experience for attendees, speakers and event staff. Not only can it assist in organizing and managing the event and your attendees, it can even enhance the presentations themselves as well as generate more ticket sales.

How IVR Surveys Improve Customer Satisfaction

IVR surveys can increase your business’ customer satisfaction by providing clear and immediate feedback on customer interactions you can use to improve your processes, policies and employee training. Dynamic surveys select questions based on previous answers, or based on information about customers already in your CRM, enabling you to get more useful information with fewer and more relevant questions. This can increase survey completion rates and provide more of the data you need to improve service based on feedback.

Collect Customer Feedback

It should be obvious that the sooner you can ask for feedback, the more valuable the information you will receive. Not only will customers remember their interaction with you in more detail and more accurately, they will also better remember how that interaction made them feel. Being able to remember these in more detail is also why more immediate feedback requests such as IVR surveys can achieve higher response rates from both satisfied and unsatisfied customers.

By providing an immediate avenue for feedback that responds to the customer’s answers, IVR surveys have the potential to flag issues and sticking points faster than other feedback methods, and also have the potential for less biased responses. This is because your IVR can ask customers to complete a post-call survey in advance of them speaking to an agent, meaning they have agreed to do this before being influenced by their interaction with an agent. When feedback is requested post-interaction, this can skew the results and paint an unclear picture. On the one hand, customers are generally more likely to leave feedback when they have had a negative experience, however if requesting feedback is left down to agents, it is only natural they will prefer to ask when they can be sure of positive feedback.

Another advantage of IVR surveys is that customers are still on the phone to you as they complete the survey and you can ask to connect them back to an agent after they complete it. This can be useful when the IVR survey receives highly negative responses from a customer. Not only does this show your customer you really do care what they think and lets you take another opportunity to resolve the issue and turn the situation around, opening a dialogue with your unhappiest customers can bring the areas you need to improve into focus.

Exit Surveys

IVR exit surveys are a great way to follow up with a large volume of leads or attendees after an event or conference, in addition to collecting feedback you can use to improve the next event and work on future presentations. Thanks to the ability to survey hundreds of attendees at once, you can collect feedback within days of the event closing while it is still fresh in their minds. By offering to connect respondents to a live agent or leave a voice message instead of selecting a pre-recorded answer, this can also be an effective method of collecting a large number of testimonials.

Medical Surveys

IVR surveys can be used by medical professionals to improve efficiency and reduce waiting times by evaluating and updating patients via an automated phone system. Surveys can be used to assess symptoms using branching questions, or enable patients to check on the results of their tests without waiting on hold. This lets medical professionals spend more time with their patients and less on routine phone calls, as patients can be connected to a member of staff based on their symptoms or survey answers, and can provide doctors with their symptoms and background via the IVR while they are waiting on hold.

Market Research

IVR surveys aimed at your target demographics are a great way to conduct fast and cost-effective market research. A dynamic survey allows you to collect critical information about the needs and opinions of your ideal customers. This could include gauging their awareness of the problems you solve, whether they already use a competitor and what they are currently unsatisfied with, as well as the services and features they want in the future.

Recognize and Reward Customer Satisfaction

In addition to providing actionable feedback, incorporating customer satisfaction IVR surveys into your evaluation of agents can have a direct impact on employees’ performance and job satisfaction. Contact center agents are typically assessed primarily on hard statistics like the volume and duration of calls they handle each day. While it is undoubtedly important to track these metrics to ensure efficiency, it is also important to remember they don’t tell the whole story. Even metrics like callback rate don’t give much indication whether customers finished the call satisfied or not.

When there is no clear evaluation of customer satisfaction, your agents’ performance will reflect this, as they are being incentivized to prioritize speed over satisfaction to hit their targets. With post-call IVR surveys your agents can check reports of their recent feedback and overall satisfaction score and can be evaluated with this in consideration. This can allow you to get a more complete picture of agents’ performance and makes agents feel more comfortable going above and beyond for customers at the expense of their stats.

IVR surveys enable you to improve customer satisfaction by providing highly relevant feedback on an immediate basis. Implementing these as part of how you evaluate your contact center agents incentivizes a more customer-first approach, as well as giving more recognition to your most customer-friendly employees.