VOIP Made Easier - JaJah, Rebtel and TringMe

As VOIP technology has matured, many more ways to embed it, offer it, and use it have been developed. JaJah, Rebtel and TringMe are three companies whose products fit into the next generation of VOIP technologies by supporting Internet calling in a hidden manner with added productivity features, which will be especially useful to the small and medium size companies.

Hidden Number Call Back

JaJah provides an easy to implement legacy-phone-to-legacy-phone connection service using the Internet and at the same time hiding the identity of the called number; that is, the number being called. A JaJah on-screen button can be added to a web site or to the signature section of an e-mail. This button supports a click-to-call-back capability implemented as follows: The individual who wishes to call your company clicks the button on the web page currently being displayed by their browser and a short form pops up asking for the caller's land-line phone number. JaJah then initiates a connection between a phone in your company and the caller's phone, two traditional phones, via the Internet. Your company pays 2.9 cents per minute for the call.

These buttons can be placed almost anywhere - web sites, social networking sites, advertising sites (on-line newspaper classifieds, Craig's List), etc. Besides making it easy and cheap to establish a contact, VOIP phone and VOIP service compatibility on either end is not an issue as VOIP phones are not used. Also, the telephone number of the called party is never revealed, a feature with many advantages.

No PC, no problem. JaJah also supports direct-dial Internet calling. After establishing an account with JaJah, just call a local published number from home, dial the party's telephone number and get connected. That party will later receive a text message to their phone displaying a local number to be dialed in the future for a direct connection to the original calling party - they can call you back again another time directly using a local number. All of this takes place over the Internet at cheap rates.

Conference Calling Made Easy

Rebtel has a similar offering, called Group Talk, targeted at Facebook users who want to set up conference calls with Facebook and non-Facebook friends. By clicking a Rebtel button on Facebook and adding names to a Group Talk event list, users can create a private, closed group, or public, any friend can join, conference session. Non-Facebook friends are added to the list by entering their name, e-mail address and phone number. Everyone invited receives a notice, via e-mail or text message, of the local telephone number in their location to call to join the conference, from anywhere in the world.

There are several options to this procedure. After the first person in a group calls, Rebtel can automatically call the other participants to let them know the conference has started. Facebook users are able to see Group Talk conference sessions; calls that have been set up by their friends, by members of Facebook groups that they have joined, or organizer of events they've been invited to attend and by a click of their mouse receive a local number to call to join the Group Talk session.

Uses for this world-wide connectivity capability include people getting together to celebrate a birthday, to plan an event or to just set up a one-on-one call with someone abroad all for 1.8 cents per minute with no monthly fee or connection charge.

Who knew?

There are business applications for such services that would be particularly appealing to small and medium size businesses, ones that have limited IT staffs. JaJah offers business accounts the ability to embed the JaJah button into their web sites easily as well as into desk top applications in the office. Click the button in a desktop application; enter a customer's or client's phone number and your desk phone rings with the customer or client on the other end. Tools can be added, such as a link to the desktop's Outlook directory to allow similar connections to be made via a click in Outlook. Another productive feature is the ability to schedule calls. Calls to a customer or client can be scheduled to be placed at a date and time in the future. When that moment arrives, your phone rings with the customer or client on the other end.

Add VOIP to Your Call Center Easily

TringMe is a web-based calling service that allows enterprises to offer low cost, worldwide calling from a browser-based phone widget - a VOIP phone implemented on the browser page using Adobe Flash programming. Enterprises and call centers can easily implement a single click and talk capability from their web pages directly into the enterprise as a convenience to their customers. The service replaces toll-free number calling, reduces the expense of toll-free calling and can reach a variety of locations, phone types and even IVRs at the called enterprise. Calls from a customer's browser can be routed to the existing enterprise infrastructure, such as a SIP server or PBX, or to any phone directly via a hosted service as shown:

TringeMe also provides necessary features for enterprise-level call management including call hunting, call queuing, resource loading, alternate call routing, etc. plus related toll-free service features such, as music on hold. In other words, a small company can add a little code to their web site and be in the big leagues of VOIP, whether they are a VOIP shop or not or whether they have a phone system or not - click-to-call home (office).

Who knew?

Further Training

These types of insights can be found in all training classes provided by McGuire Consulting. The high quality nature of these courses is based on the many years of work and training experience of the author, Jay D. McGuire.