Welcome to Internet Customer Solutions

IP Telephony enables you to make voice calls via your Local Area Network (LAN), your Wide Area Network (WAN) and the internet. The voice calls travel over the internet using the IP protocol very much like your Instant Messages do. No more phone wires. Only data wires. As a consumer or a very small company you can sign up with IP Telephone carriers such as Vonage, AT&T, Verizon, your cable company or some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to obtain an IP Telephony service and a digital phone adapter for about $50/month per phone number with unlimited calling in the USA and Canada. As a larger company you may opt to have Direct Inward Dial (DID) numbers with a large amount of minutes, and your own IP Private Branch Exchange (IP PBX) which can supplement or replace your current PBX. An IP PBX is needed when you have more than five employees who want to communicate, and when you want to pop up your current computer applications when a phone call comes in. As a consumer or a company, you need to have a broadband internet connection such as DSL, cable, or T1 for IP Telephony to work. A dial up line and modem is not adequate. An example of a possible IP PBX architecture is illustrated below:

The benefits of IP Telephony are such that your investment is paid back in about a year, and from then on you just save about 50% on phone operating costs. IP Telephony offers you a lot more major features such as Instant Messaging, “Follow Me” (Forwarding of calls to where you are), making/receiving calls from home, a hotel, or any office as long as you have a broadband internet connection, conferencing, presence based replies (busy, out of office, blocked), etc. An example of a possible softphone screen is given below.

InterCS has selected and implemented IP PBX solutions that are integrated with computer applications.

In order to offer you the right IP telephony solution, InterCS offers the following services:

Professional services covering requirements analysis, planning and design
Implementation services covering the implementation of the following main components:

IP PBX with proper routers and router set up
IP Telephony applications such as:

Unified Messaging (Text mail, voice mail, faxes)
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Applications
Instant Messaging
MS Outlook Integration
Live chat, collaborative web browsing, white boarding

Integration of IP Telephony Applications with computer/web based applications

Each service is described next in the "Features" section.

Professional Services

Professional services consist of the following services

Requirements Analysis and GAP analysis
Exploration Services
Planning Services
Design Services

Each professional service is described next

Requirements Analysis and GAP analysis:

InterCS will examine your current phone and computer application setup. It will determine with your help your short- term and long-term requirements. The GAP between your existing system and your requirements will determine what type of IP PBX and integration with computer applications is needed. Checking your existing data network and its routers and switches for VoIP compatibility is crucial. InterCS has done this analysis for several companies, and knows what to look for.

Exploration Services:

Given the set of minimum requirements and your budget, InterCS will explore alternative IP PBX solutions and integration approaches. It will recommend the best solution. InterCS has done this for several companies, and knows what IP PBX to look for. The wrong solution could limit severely your growth.

Planning Services:

Once the best solution has been agreed upon, InterCS will help you to plan the rollout. A rollout plan will help you to get the most important features work first. Without a plan, users will be overwhelmed with the changes, and may reject the whole project.

Design Services:

Once the rollout phases are planned, each phase has to be designed properly. The design consists of setting up the different groups of phone users with their privileges and extensions, the forwarding, the voice messages, the queuing setup, the wiring, the integration with computer business applications, etc. InterCS cautiously designs the set up so that a smooth transition can take place.

Implementation Service

The implementation service consist of setting up the following solution and/or components:

IP PBX
Predictive Dialer
Interactive Voice Applications

Each component is described next.

IP PBX:

An IP PBX consists of the following main components:

Call management server and router with DHCP service

The call management server is the PBX. It has basically all the features that your current PBX has, plus a lot more. The call management software has a web interface so that a network administrator can move, add and change phone numbers and extensions, and do call detail reporting. This interface enables the administrator to configure the IP PBX.

Softphone for a client PC, or an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA codec) to which an analog phone can be connected, or an IP Phone with an USB cable

The softphone has a web interface so that the user can call or receive calls from any PC that is networked with the IP PBX. A headset, that is attached to the PC via a USB wire, has a micro and speakers. The user can manage his/her calls, and have access to any IP Telepony applications and web enabled business applications

To enable VoIP in an office you must have the following hardware and software:

A router with a firewall and DHCP server. Router must support VPN and QOS.
An IP PBX
A Local Area Network (LAN)
IP Phones, softphones and/or analog phones

To also enable VoIP in remote offices, you must have the following hardware and software

A DSL or T1 line between each pair of offices
A router with a firewall and DHCP server. Router must support VPN and QOS.
A Local Area Network (LAN)
IP Phones, softphones and/or analog phones

InterCS has setup VoIP for several companies. The clarity of the voice calls is now good, and is no more an issue.

Regarding medium size IP PBXs, InterCS has experience with a selected list of vendors. The medium size IP PBX ranges from 50 to 500 phone stations. Some of the selected vendors are:

Predictive Dialer:

A telemarketing group does outbound calling. A predictive dialer will dial customers based on a given dialer list, and connect the customer service representative when the customer picks up. The telemarketing person can note the customer needs, order, interest or feedback on his/her PC screen. Call statistics can be reported.

InterCS has selected the right predictive dialers for its customers. It has integrated the predictive dialer with computer customer ordering applications so that customer interest doesn’t have to be entered twice. InterCS has enabled the automatic dial up of a customer phone number from the computer customer application. InterCS has integrated the predicative dialer with the customer application such that the customer feedback is automatically stored in the customer application database.

Interactive Voice Applications:

Interactive voice applications consist of possible items such as:

Interactive Voice Response (inbound calling)
Automatic Announcements (outbound calling)
Text to Voice (listening to email, customer orders and jobs)
Voice to Text (creating and sending email, orders, jobs)

Interactive Voice Response:

Pressing the numbers of a menu item, connects you to the right person, or service group or information item.

Automatic Announcements:

Using a dialer, the customer is called and upon pick up, is informed of an event. Such an event could be as follows:

Delivery date of a package, a service, etc
Activation confirmation of a service
Notice of an over due customer bill

InterCS has implemented automatic announcements for several companies. Such announcements were based on the customer application database. This is very effective and cost efficient.

This is a true integration of computer (application DB) and telephony (IP PBX and predictive dialer)

The savings of VoIP are enormous, and are as follows:

Cost Savings

Part Savings: About 50% in a new building.

If all phones are IP phones, then a voice network is not needed anymore. No more voice wires, phone patch panels, and traditional PBX. The wiring nightmare is past.
Acquisition cost, support cost and maintenance cost of an IP PBX is much less than that of a traditional PBX. An IP PBX runs on a low cost server.
No more a PBX at each remote reasonable size branch or plant. One IP PBX may sufficiently serve the headquarters and those remote branches or plants. This is a huge savings!
No more new business cards and stationery when employees move to a new area code since an IP PBX can forward calls to their existing phone numbers.

Labor Savings: About 50% in a new building.

Less installation costs. No more time spending on purchasing voice wires. No more voice wire installation, testing and maintenance. Existing data wires should suffice. The phone wiring nightmare is past.
Less maintenance costs. No more telecommunications department since the data networking group can take care of all IP Telephony. IP telephony maintenance is much easier than with the traditional phone set up. Moves, adds and changes of a phone set just involve a change in the IP Telephony database.
Less expensive development of screen pop up or data directed call routing applications.

Phone service savings: Dramatic savings.

No more surprising phone bills. However, you may need to upgrade your internet connection to a T1 to accommodate the additional IP voice calls. Telco cost for 8 phone numbers is about $300 and provides you with 12,000 minutes. This is 2.5 cents per minute! You only need a few of your existing phone and fax numbers, and still make 50 simultaneous calls when you have a data T1.
No more toll or domestic long distance call fees and no more T1 voice channels to remote branches when properly networked. An intranet data network enables your IP PBX to reach all these branches while bypassing phone companies.
Less travel phone costs since IP phone or PC softphone can be hooked up to the internet in a hotel or hot spot for a low fee or for free.

Revenue generation
Higher work productivity for employees.

Integration with MS Outlook or Webmail enables your employees to dial from MS Outlook or Webmail, to send and retrieve text email, voice mail and faxes all from the same application. Incoming calls could pop up automatically the callers information that is in your MS Outlook or Webmail or any other business application. All information will be now at my fingertips and eartips so that I can make faster a decision and avoid the creation of delays and errors.
Integration with Instant Messaging enables your employees to communicate with customers instantly while present, or leave a message while busy or away.
Integration of IP Telephony with business applications enables the following event driven features and benefits:

Trigger automatically an email to a customer after a certain number of unsuccessful calls to a customer took place. The email can have the detail of the proposal or service schedule or invoice. Instead of an email, the case could be automatically forwarded to another department or person. In this way piles of pending jobs or unpaid invoices will be processed sooner.
Combine in a contact center performance report the number of calls placed by an agent to a customer in a month, and the booked sales amount. Low sales performance or other issues will be reported on time.

Conferencing can be done by employees without any help
Voice recording has now become easy to do. Recorded voice clips can now be easily forwarded to others so that they can listen to it anytime anywhere.
“Follow Me” enables an employee to have the IP phone call be forwarded to the phone at hand, be it the office phone, cell phone or home phone. An employee will never miss a call if this is needed.

Better customer service.

Virtual contact centers can now be set up much easier and cheaper. Calls can be forwarded based on the required skills to the right agent anywhere in the world via the internet. Complex issues will be handled timely by the right expert even when he/she is on the road.
On websites, you will be able to just click on a phone number to dial that phone number. Of course the website has to enable this.
On websites, live chat or Click to Phone Me will be much easier to implement

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