Telecom Testing & Monitoring: TelcoAlert Ensures Businesses Can Answer the Call

STRATEGIC SOLUTIONS SERIES.

Telecom Testing & Monitoring: TelcoAlert Ensures Businesses Can Answer the Call

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC  |  May 05, 2015

Every business seems to have a tale to tell about how its phone service or IVR system failed, and no one at the organization was aware of the problem for hours. Such outages might seem like a blip in the grand scheme of things, but the fact is that even a 30-minute failure can add up to big losses for a business.

The good news is that there are now telecommunications testing and monitoring services available that enable organizations to make sure their IVRs and phone services can and do work as expected.

“Few organizations seem to realize that telecom testing services exist and are readily available,” says Randy Pollestad, president and CEO at TelcoAlert. “This is an area in which a growing number of businesses are becoming interested, however. That’s because such services can prevent an organization from tens of thousands of dollars – or more – in lost business in the event a phone connection or IVR system fails to perform.”

Telecom monitoring and testing services can be especially valuable to organizations as they prepare to launch a new product or service – and want to be sure their phone system is ready to accept phone orders and related inquiries. They can be very helpful for businesses whose calling requirements vary by time of year. And they make sense for any entities that rely on IVR solutions to provide customer service.

TelcoAlert’s load-testing services enable businesses to ensure their telephone lines have the capacity to handle the number of calls they are capable of supporting. For example, say a flower shop adds phone capacity to help it contend with the onslaught of orders expected around Valentine’s Day, and the telephone company promises the new service has 500-call capacity. TelcoAlert can do load testing on that connection before the peak call period to make sure the service is performing as expected. Following TelcoAlert testing, organizations have peace of mind about their production launches, knowing their IVR and telephone lines are up to the challenge.

IVR testing and monitoring services cater to organizations that rely on IVRs to do business. That includes businesses like banks, which frequently employ IVRs to enable customers to check their account balances over the phone, and retailers that leverage IVRs to address customer order and service requests.

In this case, TelcoAlert calls the customer IVR at specific intervals to validate that IVR is doing what it’s supposed to do. That includes checking to make sure it answers calls, and (if the client company chooses) the IVR can be navigated as expected and used to enable callers to get the information about which they are calling. TelcoAlert can also let a customer know that the greeting on its IVR doesn’t match what it has on file, or whether the system is answering calls but doesn’t play a greeting within the first 10 seconds of the call.

Affordability, availability, flexibility, and simplicity are among the key differentiators of TelcoAlert’s testing and monitoring solutions.

TelcoAlert services are available for a monthly fee, with no upfront costs and no contract required. Pricing for these hosted services depends upon the frequency of calling required, whether navigation is involved, and whether they involve a toll or toll-free line. Organizations also can try out the services via free trials, which enable them to register and begin monitoring their lines in as little as five minutes.

The company’s services are also highly available. TelcoAlert employs a proprietary decentralized node infrastructure involving data centers in multiple locations across the U.S. to ensure that its services never goes down.

“The entire East Coast could go offline,” says Pollestad, “and we’d continue working.”

TelcoAlert is also flexible enough to do any kind of telecom monitoring, he adds, noting that’s important because different companies have different IVR systems in place and unique goals related to them. For example, some customers may have some lines that are IVR lines, and others that are just voicemail lines, so may want to monitor just a subset of their total lines. Other customers may want to do regular monitoring of their IVRs at the home office, but only do occasional monitoring of the IVR serving a remote office. And some clients elect to do IVR monitoring only after hours and on weekends when no one is in the office. TelcoAlert can design solution packages to meet such unique customer requirements.

With no upfront cost, no contracts, and a free 14-day trial on select services, TelcoAlert makes it easy for businesses to benefit from its telecom monitoring and testing solutions.




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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