Dealership Phone Systems? From apps to CRM Integrations, what you got?

[Dan Sayer]

Most VOIP systems lack the functionality and deep customization capabilities of stand alone call management platforms. Ring Central also is not known for their customer service prowess.

You can certainly build your own phone system with Twilio APIs but you will lack a usable UI and customized reporting. However, Twilio provides an excellent backbone to manage the connections. Our UI sits on top of Twilio and we run rings around other phone providers when it comes to customized setups and routing logic.

Enter texting. With the enforcement of FCC rules launching this month, every business needs to formally register their phone numbers in order to send texts. Most all the call management providers provide a pathway to do so. Why would you want to tackle that yourself?

Proper integration with a CRM also takes some forethought and planning. You don’t want to ingest every call for the store. The “what time do you close?” call doesn’t provide much value to the CRM. We just completed a deep integration with Salesforce and like other CRMs, there’s really no such thing as plug-and-play.

Jeff Scherer, I think it would help if you used your name on your profile instead of the company name. Vendors are welcome on the forum but your post is merely stating information that is known and doesn't bring value to this particular thread. Write a blog and post it if you want traction. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with the above? I have no time or interest in building my own solution at this point. Existing relationships with industry experience are what I need.
How are you deriving your opinion about Ring Central support/customer service? Firsthand knowledge or hearsay? Firsthand would be helpful or steering me to real-world documented issues would also be helpful. Thanks.

 

[Jeff Scherer1]

Jeff Scherer, I think it would help if you used your name on your profile instead of the company name. Vendors are welcome on the forum but your post is merely stating information that is known and doesn't bring value to this particular thread. Write a blog and post it if you want traction. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with the above? I have no time or interest in building my own solution at this point. Existing relationships with industry experience are what I need.
How are you deriving your opinion about Ring Central support/customer service? Firsthand knowledge or hearsay? Firsthand would be helpful or steering me to real-world documented issues would also be helpful. Thanks.

Hi Dan. I submitted to change my profile to my personal name. Thank you for the advice.

Ring Central (RC) is huge and certainly has its place in the industry. It is, however, a bit limited for businesses that might want to really customize their communication flow. I have several clients that have moved off of RC, citing challenges to get the proper support they needed in a prompt manner. During these transitions I have personally managed their RC accounts and have often experienced slow responses and resolutions. Having been in the space for >20 yrs, I understand that bigger icebergs move slow, so while I may share my client’s frustrations, I’m never surprised.

 

[Dan Sayer]

Hi Dan. I submitted to change my profile to my personal name. Thank you for the advice.

Ring Central (RC) is huge and certainly has its place in the industry. It is, however, a bit limited for businesses that might want to really customize their communication flow. I have several clients that have moved off of RC, citing challenges to get the proper support they needed in a prompt manner. During these transitions I have personally managed their RC accounts and have often experienced slow responses and resolutions. Having been in the space for >20 yrs, I understand that bigger icebergs move slow, so while I may share my client’s frustrations, I’m never surprised.

Would you say that RC, and GoTo, has the advantage of development within their own platform vs our current provider Momentum, and candidate provider Nextiva, that are sitting on top of a BroadSoft/Cisco platform? The RC team I've worked with specifically partitioned their support team for medium-size dealers and the GoTo solutions seems to be more self-service friendly from my peers that are using them. Thanks for putting a name on your profile. You're a human!

 

[Jeff Scherer1]

Would you say that RC, and GoTo, has the advantage of development within their own platform vs our current provider Momentum, and candidate provider Nextiva, that are sitting on top of a BroadSoft/Cisco platform? The RC team I've worked with specifically partitioned their support team for medium-size dealers and the GoTo solutions seems to be more self-service friendly from my peers that are using them. Thanks for putting a name on your profile. You're a human!

While I am not as familiar with GoTo and Nextiva, I would guess that they (as well as RC) will all offer the same core functionality that most businesses need. I guess some questions I'd think about are 1) what are my goals for the new phone system beyond making and taking calls? 2) how much integration do I need/want with my CRM? 2) do I want to record outbound calls? (consent laws still apply in some states, NE is not one) 3) do I need a third-party tracking company to help accomplish what I want? e.g. customizations for routing, tagging, IVRs, automations, and 4) how hands-on do I want to be with managing my various communication channels?

 

[Tallcool1]

I'm the main dev for our group. There are a number of providers lately. Many using twilio in the backend of their offerings. Some are fractionally cheaper then twilio. Twilio though has reached escape velocity on breadth of product offerings and dependability. they are overall hard to beat.

I will second this. There may be some solutions that are slightly cheaper, but the stability and dependability of Twilio is worth the small difference in price.

 

[Jeff Scherer1]

I will second this. There may be some solutions that are slightly cheaper, but the stability and dependability of Twilio is worth the small difference in price.

“I know a guy that can do it cheaper.”

 

[craigh]

I will second this. There may be some solutions that are slightly cheaper, but the stability and dependability of Twilio is worth the small difference in price.

We sell and support a small range of telephony products and they're all backed by Twilio.
Using them as the SIP trunks, SMS channels, etc is not only easy, but highly reliable and cost-effective.

The reason you don't see more dealers taking that approach is because the in-store component is tough - dealers still want a phone on their desk, BDC functionality, phone activity on a TV in their office, etc. These things are all possible with Twilio, but require dev work or a heavy customization of the Flex system. Alot of what we do now is an open source phone server running in the dealership - all the SIP trunks from Twilio go into the server and then the server goes into a switch, which powers all the phones in the dealership over PoE. Everyone still gets a phone on their desk, a paging system, voicemail emailed to their inbox, but the backbone is all Twilio services.

There are only a couple areas where we don't pay Twilio:
- Call recording - it's cheaper to record on the server than pay them to record and transfer
- Voice intelligence - again, with our own recordings on linux boxes we don't need to pay them to process calls

 

[Todd Thompson]

I will second this. There may be some solutions that are slightly cheaper, but the stability and dependability of Twilio is worth the small difference in price.

absolutely

 

[Todd Thompson]

@Todd Thomspon what are you using for the in-store infrastructure?
Are you sending every call to something in-house like Asterisk/PBX or are you just using a custom web client to handle the calls?

Sorry just seeing this. Do you mean

I want to make 100% sure on that so i will let you know in the morning if that's okay.

Never heard back from you on this one. I'm going to guess your sim provider isn't able to allocate area code specific. Thats the crux. Some weird phone area code from india is what they typically look like. No one will pick that stuff up.

 

[Ryan Everson]

I've been impressed with Invoca. They aren't a complete phone system. but are a call-tracking provider that can provide some actionable insights, especially if you have a centralized BDC.

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