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Avaya, one of the largest telecom manufacturers and Cloud Services providers in the world continues to partner with Smart IP to bring the most exciting solutions to the Canadian market. Avaya Cloud Service (ACS) is a Cloud Phone System That Works Where and How You Do The way you communicate should be able to fit the way you work. With everything you need always handy on any device, in any location, Avaya Cloud Office lets you simplify the way your business communicates. Call, chat, meet, and collaborate no matter where your employees might be. Stay on task and on schedule with file sharing, task management, and virtual team rooms. Bring together 100+ business integrations, like Google Drive and Salesforce, to customize a true cloud unified communications experience. Avaya Cloud Office gives your employees and customers the features and options you want, all in one app. Click here for more information:

THE RIGHT CLOUD SOLUTION WITH UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES
Backed by NEC, UNIVERGE BLUE ® benefits from the company’s 120 years of real-world experience and substantial investment in advancing communications and infrastructure technology. NEC maintains a global reputation as a leading and trustworthy solution provider that is committed to the success of its customers, their customers and those that depend on them. Call Meteor today and talk to our Cloud specialists about quickly and easily migrating your business to the cloud. For more information, click here:

Now available for any customer in Canada. This is a premium quality Cloud PBX running on the largest and most secure data network in Canada. This includes an expansive feature set and some great LD plans over a massive coverage map. For more information go to: www.smartip.ca/hosted

Smart IP is now authorized nationally in Canada to provide Bell services to it’s new and existing customers. These include, Bell Fibre Internet services, SIP trunks, PRI trunks, Toll Free lines, Long Distance service, 1FL, Dry loop service. Some of the services are available in 1, 3 and 5 year contracts. Lock in your price and be secure knowing that you are on the LARGEST Fibre Optic Network in Canada. Click here to find out more information.

Avaya Contact Center Solutions are designed to work alongside several Microsoft products to provide a better, easier-to-manage point of contact solution for businesses. As a multi-channel contact center solution that integrates email, instant messaging, and VOIP, it makes sense to extend that functionality to other popular digital communication platforms. The intent of Avaya integration within Microsoft products is to preserve how the Microsoft products work instead of trying to adjust those programs for Avaya. By integrating with Microsoft products like Skype and Outlook, Avaya is able to provide a cohesive call or contact center experience for your staff to better address customer and client needs.

Integration with Skype

Avaya supports integration with Skype for Business via an API. This enables Skype contact between customers and call center staff. This is important because it allows people to reach out to your business through additional platforms. In particular, Skype works well with allowing a conversation to shift between text, voice, and video communication on a wide range of compatible devices. Skype for Business Avaya integration extends this beneficial functionality to the call center platform.

There are further use case benefits to integrating Skype with Avaya. The Skype system can be used to easily create ad hoc conferences between multiple customers and support staff if the need should ever arise. Additionally, Avaya’s IVR and call recording features make it easier to keep track of and document Skype interactions. The integration benefits extend to both platforms. Avaya also supports integration with Microsoft Lync for similar functionality to Skype for businesses still using the platform: Microsoft replaced Lync with Skype for Business in 2014 as its flagship video conferencing product.

Integration with Outlook

Avaya can also augment Microsoft Outlook with integrated calling features. With Avaya, support staff can utilize “call-to-click” functionality with contacts in the Outlook platform, making it easier for call center employee to respond to an email-based contact with a phone call. Additionally, the integration supports “call-to-video” functionality in Outlook to allow support staff to reach out to customers through a video call. The real benefit to this integration is it eliminates the time needed for call center staff to switch programs when responding to contacts; it streamlines the response process across multiple channels and multiple modes of contact.

Avaya provides the backbone of an enterprise call center solution while being able to integrate with existing infrastructure to add functionality. It also uses integration to reduce costs for businesses by enabling you to use much of your existing hardware and conferencing technology. SmartIP can help your business address its call center needs with the Anvaya Hosted IPO solution. The cloud services solution can be scaled and adapted to fit the unique needs of a business.

Carehawk® Paging Systems offer a state-of-the-art solution to augment or replace communication systems in school environments, healthcare facilities, correctional facilities, industrial settings, and commercial operations. In particular, school boards find what Carehawk® Paging Systems have to offer as an affordable, practical solution to improving communication at both the individual school and district level.

About Carehawk® Paging Systems

Carehawk® Paging Systems are a flexible phone, paging, and safety alert administration system that can be adjusted to meet a given facility’s unique needs. These systems implement software solutions that change a traditional school intercom system into a mass notification system that supports pre-recorded audio files for announcements and emergency pages. Carehawk® Paging Systems can work with existing legacy intercom systems in use at schools, making the installation affordable and not intrusive. The systems use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to minimize how much cable is needed to connect the system across a building, which offers both financial and practicality perks. Additionally, the paging system can work with existing security systems for additional functionality.

Why are Carehawk® Paging Systems Great for Schools?

Carehawk® Paging Systems major selling point for schools is they work as both a building-specific and cross-district intercom and communication system. Unlike older systems which needed to be run on a by-building basis, school boards and district administrators can send emergency alerts across the entire district without needing to individually contact schools. The system can broadcast live across an entire school district to send lockdown alerts, tornado warnings, and other important information. This paging system is a much faster way of getting important information out, which can make a huge difference in getting safety information out in less time.

Additionally, the classroom telephone technology offers its own set of perks. The phones feature authorization options for both “by phone” and “by user” to work with individualized security. The system can support a virtually unlimited number of classroom phones and uses minimal cabling to connect everything. The system also supports off-hook transfer and duress features for added safety for crisis situations. Carehawk® Paging Systems support legacy paging/intercom systems by converting IP audio to analog audio, so schools can use the system to extend existing paging system functionality instead of undertaking an expensive replacement process.

The VCALL™ system takes things a step further by eliminating the need to use a classroom or administrative telephone to use the system. CareHawk® Virtual Call Point software can run on classroom computers as an unobtrusive toolbar. Staff can quickly and easily access the system with a traditional keyboard and mouse interface. When running on laptops, the system offers portability to go with the user instead of being tied to a cabled terminal.

Working with a Vendor

SmartIP can help your school district customize and implement the Carehawk® Paging System to meet your unique needs. SmartIP’s cloud services hosted solutions are an Avaya Hosted IPO solution.

The XIMA Call Recording solution, Chronicall, provides an impressive collection of tools to help a business manage phone records. The system stores and organizes records of every call for monitoring and reference use. It is an ideal solution for call management, particularly for call centers, customer support, keeping legal records, and for general record keeping purposes. The system is built for tracking and evaluating both individual and group performance.

The system is generally used for high-level management, but it has other uses. If you forgot what someone said on an important call or lose your notes this system will help you out. Your organization may opt to use the system to simplify staff call evaluation or to get an easy reference method for following up on customer complaints about a call.

XIMA Chronicall

The XIMA Chronicall system includes two parts in the standard license: Standard Reports and Cradle to Grave. Standard Reports is an administrative system that lets your organization acquire specific information about every call. The Standard Reports system features real-time monitoring, agent dashboards, and alerts on top of generating reports. The real-time reporting system builds on the Standard Reports system and allows administrators to see what employees are doing through widgets, dashboards, and other statistical displays. Administrators can filter through missed calls, abandoned calls, and call durations within the system. The system can generate alerts for things like a change in average call durations or a change in call frequency.

The Cradle to the Grave system is the archival side of the package: it records and stores copies of each phone call from pick-up to hang-up. The system creates a complete audio archive of every bit of information from each phone call. Whether your organization is looking to keep call records for reference, evaluate employee call performance, or keep a legal record, this system has you covered. It creates a recording library of all phone calls and compresses the calls so they fit into a reasonable amount of storage. The system uses the SPX file format. Compression also simplifies and expedites the backup process. The system has built-in encryption features if your organization is concerned about security–which is extremely important in cases like a medical service keeping patient records safe. This system offers call filtering to help an administrator find specific calls. Users can distribute call recordings via email and download if needed. The system also keeps track of notes for calls and offers playback speed adjustment.

The Contact Center solution provides additional functionality for high-volume call management. This solution is an ideal option for call center management. It utilizes a uniquely designed call flow pattern, Intelligent Highest Skill First system which helps pair callers with the most qualified agent to answer their question. The Queue Callback system adds the ability for callers to be put on a callback list.

SmartIP offers online hosted solutions through cloud services to help improve how your organization operates. XIMA Call Recording is one of many solutions we provide.

Avaya Hosted Contact Center features a robust set of tools to help small-to-midsize businesses enhance customer interactions. A hosted contact center system leverages cloud services to manage call and contact routing throughout high-volume telephony transactions. However, it’s more than just routing calls to the right agent, it also features real-time contact management system.

Streamlining the Customer Experience

In particular, the Avaya Contact Center Select system can help your business provide a context-sensitive, collaborative customer experience via voice and multimedia interactions. The tools in the system help anticipate customer needs and accelerate their process towards a resolution. This gives your support staff an edge through customer insight to give a better experience. The customer management system provides your support staff with a complete view of the customer’s interaction experience which helps with better customer engagement. It also helps customers have a continuous experience over multiple points of contact with complicated problems.

The Technology

The Avaya Contact Center uses the Avaya IP Office telephone system technology. The system is both scalable and flexible, allowing it to be tailor-fit to your business’s unique needs. The IP Office system can support as few as one and as many as one hundred agents to address your business market needs. It uses SIP and CTI interfaces to communicate with the IP Office platform. Furthering its versatility, the system supports a wide range of phones and devices giving your business the freedom of choice.

Additionally, the system offers reference-ready call recording, intuitive skills-based routing, and multichannel conversation capabilities. Call recording creates a record of interactions your agents can reference when helping customers while the skill-based routing systems helps match customers with the best agents for the job. The multichannel conversation capabilities mean customers can have a shared experience through email, SMS, fax, webchat, and telephone calls.

What does Avaya Hosted Contact Center Include?

• Tools for integrated multichannel customer contact: Offer your customers a shared experience over multiple points of contact from multiple content methods.
• Smart agent routing: Leverage the technology to send your customers to the best-suited agent to handle their problem.
• Telemarketing and Outbound Campaigns: Maximize your employee time by having your agents make outbound marketing calls during slow support times.
• Record Keeping: Record calls for training purposes. Use real examples to show workers how to best handle solutions and identify places where agents are struggling.
• Comprehensive Real-Time Historical Reporting: Analyze customer interactions on the fly to make adjustments as needed. Use historical reporting to identify improvement areas.
• Integration with Salesforce and SAP: The Avaya CRM integration system can work communicate with your existing Salesforce and SAP integrations. Sharing communication between platforms creates a more personalized, better informed customer experience.

SmartIP offers the Avaya Hosted Contact Center solution for businesses looking to improve customer interactions. It is a cloud services-based platform.

There’s no escaping the need for full-service voice and data communication services for businesses functioning in the fast-based, technology permeated environment of the digital age. Because of how important technology has become for companies across all industries, it’s important to ensure you are working with a quality provider for your products, systems and services.

Unfortunately for many Cisco customers, they are getting more than they bargained for – and not in a good way. Burdensome license fees and product End of Life (EOL) policies are presenting issues that detract from the support and convenience technology is intended to provide.

Cisco’s smart licensing pitfalls

A couple years ago, Cisco started shifting its licensing strategies and rolling out a new smart licensing system. The new entitlement system changed licences to be subscription-based, rather than perpetual, leading to more administrative costs and challenges for network management. Subscribers have to connect their devices to the Internet, often, for entitlement validation or risk a problematic loss of functionality, which decreases end-user control over the infrastructure.

Not only does this disproportionately put functionality under Cisco’s control, but this style of licensing also can restrict your ability to use third-party maintenance or buy refurbished hardware, and your hardware purchases will no longer maintain residual value. Additionally, Cisco has the power to simply turn off functionality when devices reach the Last-Day-of-Support (LDOS) stage of their lifecycle. This creates a binding situation for companies and network administrators using Cisco products. Compliance with smart licensing is essential without suffering potential business downtime or having to write and follow new processes and procedures for manual workarounds. Adding to this is the mass confusion that customers, and VAR’s alike, and at times CISCO representatives themselves are having explaining and dealing with this licencing model.

Opting for a different network hardware vendor

Avaya and NEC continue to be industry-leading brands when it comes to unified communication solutions. NEC is the ideal platform for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking to grow their presence and impact within their industry. Likewise, Avaya systems and hardware provide across-the-board solutions that empower, rather than restrict, employees, companies, and network administrators.

From a consumer perspective, Avaya is rated higher than Cisco in several areas, including features, support, integrations and plans. Their products are scalable to your business’ budget and operational goals, giving you more control over your information technology.

Smart IP’s portfolio includes both Avaya and NEC systems, along with those from other industry-leading partners. Smart IP not only provides communications deployments to companies, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies throughout Canada, but their services also include support and maintenance to ensure your technology works for you.

When it comes to running a business, organizations in every industry have access to a plethora of communication technologies and systems to perform a variety of job-related processes and functions.

However, you can implement any number of business solutions that support the communication necessary for performing daily tasks, but if your employees aren’t properly trained on using your communication systems, it significantly decreases their value. That’s why providing in-house training for your staff on how to use the equipment they communicate with can be a worthwhile investment.

Under-utilizing resources

Technology is constantly changing, and depending on your business or industry, you may be frequently implementing new applications, processes or systems in the workplace. While business tools such as telecommunication systems, cloud communication solutions, and fully converged voice and data networks have the potential to add convenience and efficiency to your employees’ work days, that will not be the case if they don’t receive proper training.

With new communication systems, programs, and software, certain functions are often obvious and easy to figure out. However, to make the most of the technology, employees need to become deeply familiar with it. You could leave the accumulation of knowledge up to trial and error, but in the process, you lose efficiency and productivity while simultaneously not capitalizing on the immense capabilities and value of your communication resources. Meanwhile, trying to learn how to use a new communication tool can be frustrating and distract your employees from the more crucial aspects of their professional roles. That’s where training comes in.

Investing in your business’ future

With a dedicated training session – offered in-house or at a training facility – you can expedite the learning process and help your employees make the most of your communication systems sooner.

During a training session, your employees will learn why a certain software, program, or piece of equipment benefits them and can make their job easier. This increases buy-in from your employees, motivating them to become more comfortable using the systems to their fullest capacity.

Additionally, the experts leading the training can answer questions, demonstrate the less obvious features of the technology, and explain how to troubleshoot various issues. The enthusiasm and knowledge from communication specialists can eliminate the frustration employees may feel having to acclimate to a certain system.

Smart IP has more to offer than delivering communications systems, applications, and services to businesses throughout Canada. They also can help train your employees on how to use these tools properly so they become optimized for your company. Smart IP holds sessions at their training facilities in Brampton or will come to your business to train employees right within their own work environment and on the communication systems they use every day.