Emergency alert by pager and phone

As a company provides real-time information service for emergency or fire alert by pager, we look for a solution to inform our customer, in case that the page wireless network is temporary not available. With your product BroadcastByPhone, we think it is the solution for us. We also download trial version for test; we used the Skype with high speed connection for test. After testing, we are convinced to purchase, but need your precise answers to following questions:

1. Despite the explication inside of your help file, There is a long silence before main message (with your advertisement recording, it’s the same, about more than 5 seconds silence) which can make people hung up the phone before the message delivered. It’s too long for us.

It will be too long for anybody. The normal delay is about 2 seconds, which is the time needed for detecting answering machine from live human pickup.

One problem with Skype is that it does not always transfer phone audio soon enough on some computers. Since playing message is voice activated, any delay by Skype adds to the total initial delay. When you use BBP auto dialer to make a call through Skype, and if you hear someone say “hello” over the computer speaker, then you know the audio is not forwarded to Voicent program yet. Without that audio, Voicent software cannot know someone has answered the call. For emergency service, we recommend using SIP based VOIP service instead of Skype.

One major factor that influence the detection algorithm is the line quality. If there is a lot of background noise, then the system takes longer to detect the human answer, and it is likely to make mistakes. So the second thing to do is make sure your internet connection is reliable and have enough bandwidth, and your VOIP service is of good quality.

2. Would it possible to eliminate or reduce this silence before the main message? Is this only trial version we can have this silence longer than the other version, or all version have same delay?

All version should have the same delay. Besides switching to SIP based VOIP service, you could also try to start the message play as soon as human voice is detected. You can shorten the initial delay if you turn off the detection for answering machine and live human pickup. To do so, go to Voicent gateway main menu > Setup > Options > Detection tab, and set the mode to “most aggressive”. However, if you do so, all calls will be treated as live human answer.

3. Another issue, if the receiver hung up by 5 seconds, the call is consider as successful whatever if the message is delivered or not. This could be very serious result for us. Is there any more reliable message to know if the message has been all delivered?

The best way to make sure the message is delivered is to ask people to press a key. You could design a message such that people has to press a key first in order to hear the message, or at the end of the message, ask them to press a key to confirm. This is the most reliable way to make sure your message is delivered. You could take a look at Voicent IVR Studio to see how to design fully customized interactive messages.

4. We need to use multiple channels to improve the time to call all customers. Can you provide information which VoIP offer this kind of service? Which is the best partner for you to suggest us? Does it mean only one SIP number can handle multiple channels? Or each channel must be assigning a SIP number?

Most VOIP services offer multiple channels. But even they offer single channal per account, you can get multiple accounts. So either way you can set up simultaneous calls for Voicent software. Also, for outbound calls, it is not required to have SIP number (DID number). But if you do not have a DID number, your caller ID display is not going to be correct.

There are a lot of VOIP services, each offer different plan. So the “best” service depends on your usage and budget. To start, you can try Call centric VOIP service.

5. Can you give an example of a SIP Capable PBX system mention in the FAQ SIP on your Web site? Thank you in advance to provide us answer to these question, we’ll be very happy to purchase once we get answers satisfying our needs

You can try some of the new Avaya PBX systems. Most major PBX vendors should support VOIP now.