Monthly Archives: December 2011

Changing Your Voicemail Greeting – A Holiday Special

December 29, 2011 - Jonathon Moody

Use Versature's Dashboard app to change your greeting easily!

You are headed away for New Years or out of the office for a day to enjoy all that Canada has to offer.

But, you are dreading the usual voicemail system phone maze and decide that your current voicemail greeting should be just fine – besides you are only away for a couple days right?

That was your old phone system! With a modern Hosted IP PBX from Versature you can record your greeting (or change between greetings) all from Versature’s Dashboard web application. That’s right, don’t bother with the phone maze and instead simply log in and select your alternate greeting (or record a new alternate greeting!) using your web browser.

Personally I always have two greeting messages pre-configured. My primary greeting says that I am in the office but missed your call while my alternate greeting says I am out of the office and will get back to you as soon as possible. This allows me to quickly change between messages, even at the last minute or from the road.

To change between greeting messages I connect to dashboard.versature.com, enter my username (usually extension@domain.com), select “Greetings” across the bottom menu then change my “Active Greeting” from “Primary Greeting” to ”Alternate Greeting”.

Need to confirm your greeting message? Click “Play” next to the greeting you wish to hear – your Versature phone will ring and when answered your greeting will be played. If you’re not at your desk make sure to check mark the option to use an alternative phone number and enter your mobile or home phone number.

The great thing about using the dashboard application is that switching your greetings can be accomplished from anywhere. If you forgot to change your greeting before leaving the office, make that change from home or even from your smartphone.

All this to say that updating your greeting or moving between a Primary and Alternative Greeting is not the pain it once was. Of course our staff are available to help if you have any questions or run in to trouble using the Dashboard to update your greetings.

Happy Holidays!

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Business Line Local Number Portability in Canada

December 22, 2011 - Paul Emond

We provides our business phone service here, eh.

When you call or contact us through our “Get a Quote” form on our website, one of the first qualifying questions that we ask is “What is your business phone number”. We ask this because although we cover a fair bit of this great country, there are areas that currently we cannot service. We actually have a page on our website dedicated to providing details about our current footprint, and there is a tool on that page that allows you to enter your phone number to see if it’s portable to our service.

If you live in one of the major urban population areas of Canada, there’s a good chance we have you covered. If the tool tells you that your number is portable, that means that Versature is able to port your number to our service, and we can then proactively manage the phone number and the quantity of lines that you need. The number port process is still a bit archaic but it’s a process that we know very well. We’ll even give you a temporary number to forward your calls to while we wait for the number port to go through, which, depending on the provider, can take as little as 3 days or as long as 1 month. We are unfortunately at the mercy of the big telcos on this, and as you probably know from personal experience, they sure don’t move very fast.

If it turns out that your business is in an area that we don’t currently service, you will receive a message similar to this :

Your number does not appear to be portable to our service at this time, but please contact us to confirm. (This is an automated system, and occasionally there are errors). Even if the number is not portable, there may be alternative options available for you that we can discuss.

Alternative options you say? What kind of alternative options are you talking about? Let me explain.

When a number is confirmed to be one that we cannot port, depending on the business, there are a few other solutions that we can propose.

1- If the business is one that has a national or international scope, and mostly uses it’s toll free (800 number) to receive calls instead of it’s local number, then we can still service this company as effectively as we could if we could port the local number. If the business requires a local number because it needs a local presence, then this toll free number option will not work. In that case, move on to option 2 …

2- If the business number is not portable, but the business is in an area adjacent to one that we service, there might be a way that we can do a fancy call-forward and still service this business. For example, if you have a business in the rural area outside of Calgary, we probably won’t be able to port your number. In this case, we can provide you with a local Calgary phone number that you can use in addition to your rural one, and since it’s a local call to Calgary from your location, we get you to forward your calls to the new Calgary number. In this way, you get to keep your business number, and you can decide if you want to advertise your Calgary number as well as your rural one.

An important caveat here – your business must be within the local calling region of an area that we service for this to work. This is one of the many reasons to work with a Canadian company that knows the difference between Kamloops, Grande Prairie, Newmarket and Galt. Never heard of Galt, Ontario? You’re not alone. Galt, along with Hespeler, Ontario were amalgamated into a new city you may have heard of called Cambridge, Ontario in 1973. That’s fine for us folks who live here in 2011, but if you’re talking number portability with the telcos you’d better know that they use the old names or else you’re not getting anywhere. Sorry, got off track there a bit…

3- If your business can’t get by with just a toll free number and you are not within a local call to an area that we service, I’m afraid that your options for signing up with Versature are limited. You can always get a new number in one of the 900+ cities and towns that we service, but I know that most businesses wouldn’t even consider changing their phone number. At this point, what we can do is put you on a list to contact when we do open up your area. We are adding new areas and growing the footprint each and every year.

Lastly, just a few more things to say with regards to local number portability in Canada. We are now able to port cell phone numbers to our service, so if you’re a small business who has been running your operations from your cell and need to upgrade, we’ve got you covered. Also, as mentioned above, ALL toll free numbers whether they be 800, 855, 866, 877, or 888 are portable, no problem.

Oh, and one more thing. If you’re still doing business with one of those old telephone companies that are stuck in the 70′s, isn’t it about time that you upgraded to Versature? I’d love you to check out our free whitepaper, entitled “Top 10 Things to Consider When Choosing Hosted PBX”.

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Why your call could end up in voicemail

December 14, 2011 - Jonathon Moody

Jonathon Moody, VP Operations

A quick introduction: I’m Jonathon Moody, VP Operations at Versature. My day-to-day usually has me working between our Sales, Support and Provisioning teams to make sure we are everything we can be for our clients.

In my first post to our blog I’m going to review an often overlooked approach to providing top level customer service.

While more and more of our clients are working with our teams via email, phone calls still remain our most common means of contact. This means we need to make sure that when we receive a call, that we find an available staff member with the right skill set to help out as quickly as possible.

Big businesses, such as the traditional telephone companies, gave up trying to provide quality or quick responses years ago. Instead ,far too often, they subject their clients to endless menus and long waits to reach even the lowest level technician.

At Versature we use a mix of Queues and Ring Groups to help our clients reach knowledgeable staff without a long wait. We use a short menu to help make sure we track down suitable staff but rely on all staff during busy times to try and answer all calls. If we can’t answer a call within two minutes we send the call to voicemail.

Yes, you read that right; Voicemail. But let me roll back a few years to explain where this comes from.

As a growing business our executive team has always believed that the best experience for a caller is to reach a staff member from any team instead of an endless array of Queue music or messages saying how we value your business but can’t answer your call.

For this reason, we avoided introducing hold music or any repeating message that clients associate with the long Queue waits used by our competitors. The problem with a Ring Group, where callers hear ringing instead of music or a custom message is that most will only wait so long before they hang up, assuming that their call has been mis-routed.

However as our teams grew in size it became clear that in some cases we really needed more than 20 seconds to find an available, knowledgeable staff member to answer your call. With this in mind we revamped our setup and introduced up to 2 minutes of music so that an available staff member could be tracked down. A caller listening to music or a message rather than ringing is much more likely to wait beyond 20 seconds for their call to be answered.

How we group our staff and distribute the call is a post for another day but the basic idea is that under normal circumstances no call should go unanswered and if it did you should go to voicemail after 2 minutes instead of waiting indefinitely like you might with one of our competitors.

The result is that most of the time your call will be answered by a member of the team you are looking for; but if not, most likely a member of another team, and failing that, go to voicemail. We won’t keep you on hold for a half hour (or two!), but we will call you back as soon as possible since voicemail messages are sent directly into our trouble ticket system and assigned to a technician for the follow up call.

Of course the Queue and Ring Group functionality we use to manage calls is the same as the service we offer our clients. Please get in touch with our staff if we can help you improve the level of service you offer to your clients.

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Versature’s Dashboard – Rendering Old Phone Systems Obsolete

December 09, 2011 - Paul Emond

Versature's Dashboard Application, displaying Active Callers list

It’s just about 2012, and consumers are demanding and expecting online access to the devices and services that they use on a daily basis, for quality of life and convenience purposes.

It starts with your online banking application but it doesn’t stop there. Take for example home security systems. Yes, you can access your home security system remotely, over the web and on your smartphone. Arm and disarm the system and even see who’s knocking on your door – amazing! What about your PVR? Yes, as the commercials make clear, it’s easy to make sure you don’t miss that important television show because you now have online access to your PVR. And don’t forget your home thermostat .. yes, even the lowly thermostat is going online to allow you to change the home temperature while you’re at work or on vacation.

Versature’s Dashboard Application takes those concepts and applies them to your office phone system. Log in to the Dashboard from anywhere there is an internet connection (home, work, vacation property, cottage) on whatever device you want (computer, smartphone, tablet). Update your voicemail greeting, make changes to where your calls are routed, as well as see who’s on the phone at the moment in your organization. It even includes login/logout capabilities that allow staff to join Call Queues. It’s a powerful tool, and it’s a web application that was developed in-house at Versature, exclusive to Versature’s Hosted PBX.

Versature's Dashboard Application, currently displaying Call List

If you’re on our V2 platform, you most probably have already been introduced to Dashboard by our Provisioning team. If not, you soon will. Most routine changes to the system are made through the Dashboard interface. We’re continuing to add new features to Dashboard and envision it as our one-stop shop for interaction with all Hosted Voice services. If you’re evaluating Versature’s Hosted Voice services and comparing to on-premise systems or even other hosted providers, is there really any comparison any more?

Dashboard is available by visiting http://dashboard.versature.com. If you don’t know your Username or PIN, please dial 611 from your Versature phone or use any of the support options available through 611Online, and we’ll be happy to provide those for you.

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Virtual PBX vs. Hosted PBX vs. Hosted Voice

December 06, 2011 - Paul Emond

Versature's IP Phone manufactured by Polycom

An example of an IP Phone which is required for Hosted PBX

What’s the difference? Don’t get me started!

Search for any of these terms and you’ll see them used interchangeably on websites, blogs and within search engine results. Having been deep in the trenches of this industry for the past 10 years, the differences are crystal clear to me and it’s a shame that they’re not always used in the proper context. If we all stuck to these definitions, I think it would allow consumers to more easily compare offerings from different vendors.

A Virtual PBX service answers calls for the business and provides routing options. The calls are forwarded on to employees or locations anywhere in the world. With Virtual PBX, the various employees and locations each require separate phone service, whether that be a cell phone or land line. As Virtual PBX services only handle the incoming aspect of the businesses’ telecommunications needs, there is limited value here, which is why the service is normally priced extremely low. There are few barriers to entry which means there is a ton of competition in this space. In my opinion, this service is well suited for micro-businesses of less than 5 employees, startups working out of their home offices, or for those rare businesses where the bulk of the employees are on the road. As the business grows, it is inevitable that it will outgrow the Virtual PBX service and will need to replace it. Examples of this kind of service provider are Google Voice, Grasshopper and eVoice.

Hosted PBX services are designed to provide a full replacement for a company’s need for an on-site PBX device. Employees are outfitted with IP phones and are able to receive AND place calls through the PBX software, which is usually hosted in a data centre, although some have a hybrid model with equipment on site and off site. There is no need for employees to have land lines or cell phones, although if you do have a cell phone it can most often be integrated into the call flow of the system rather easily to provide an alternate contact method when you are not at your desk. Barriers to entry are moderate, and levels of service between providers vary considerably depending on the way their Hosted PBX is engineered. There remains a large group of regional focused providers that only work within a certain geographic area, but that is becoming less and less common. Examples of this kind of service provider in Canada include BroadConnect, BluArc and EasyOfficePhone, and I’d still consider Versature as part of this group, although we are quickly evolving into the next stage of cloud-based telecommunication services called Hosted Voice.

The evolution of Hosted PBX is called Hosted Voice. Hosted Voice, as with Hosted PBX, will provide a full replacement for a company’s need for on-site PBX hardware, but is usually geared towards companies of at least 10 seats, and up to 1000 seats. Going over and above the pure-play PBX replacement, Hosted Voice service providers deliver extra services such as fully managing the number of lines that the business requires, advanced call centre capabilities such as ring groups and call queue’s, call recording and call analytics (business intelligence) to allow you to make informed business decisions using the information from your calls. As well, Hosted Voice providers are true “cloud” players, operating out of multiple data centres with full geographic redundancy and fail over capabilities. Hosted Voice providers also have a footprint that spans the country and beyond, and this is really a necessity when dealing with larger accounts. Hosted Voice is the next generation of cloud-based phone services for larger businesses. In Canada, Versature is aspiring to be THE example of a Hosted Voice service provider and will have the last piece, full geographic redundancy and data centre fail over, within a few months.

Any questions, feel free to check out our Glossary of Terms or the “All about Hosted Voice” mini-site within our website.

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Developer Position Open

December 05, 2011 - Adam Sherman

A great new software developer position just became available, read below and forward to all your friends!

Who we are

Versature is a voice service provider based in Ottawa and providing service Canada-wide. We’re looking for an experienced developer to join our growing team designing and building the software that powers our growing list of features. We are not technically a start-up, but we’re pulling 50% growth year over year which makes things rather exciting.

What we offer

Versature offers flexible schedules, soon to be a brand-new custom designed office and we go the extra mile to support our team members so they can focus on building great stuff. We’re making smart decisions to build a service that is reliable and leverages third-party infrastructure from the likes of Google and Amazon. We try and be on the cutting edge without bleeding! It’s a fun ride.

Who we want

Someone who is motivated to learn new technologies, can tell the difference between a new tool that will make our offering better and a useless over hyped new trend that everyone is blogging about so they can feel important. We’re looking for a core member of a growing team, not someone who will just be another cog in the machine. If you can communicate with our customers to better understand their needs, we’re on the same page.

What we want

Solid foundation in Java development is required
Knowledge of Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an asset
Experience creating and working with web services and integrating with third-party systems is an asset
Familiarity with Unix and network systems and/or having worked in an integrated development and operations team is an asset
A few years real work experience is required
Experience using processes like TDD to increase the effectiveness of the team

How to apply

Email something convincing to hr at versature.com.

Adam Sherman - Chief Technology Officer

Adam is a co-founder and CTO of Versature and is responsible for the company’s technological direction and product development. He has over 15 years of experience in the hosted service industry, which is way back before anyone cared to call it the cloud.

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Alternate Contact

December 02, 2011 - Adam Sherman

Adam Sherman, CTO

A quick introduction: I’m Adam Sherman, CTO here at Versature. My team is responsible for developing and maintaining the infrastructure that powers Versature’s Hosted PBX service.

In my first post to our new blog, I’m going to explain what I think is one of our most useful features: Alternate Contact.

If you are frequently on the road or down the hall and would like to be reachable, Versature has a great feature called Alternate Contact. We recommend that clients use this feature instead of the more conventional call forwarding or simultaneous ring setting and I’ll explain why.

If you simply setup call forwarding to your mobile phone, all your calls will get redirected whether they are important or not. By using Alternate Contact, you are giving your callers the choice of being forwarded to your mobile without actually giving out your number. This is how it works:

Callers dial your extension or direct number the usual way
Your desk phone rings as it would normally
When you do not answer, the caller is sent to your voice mailbox
Your greeting should sound something like this: “You have reached Adam Sherman, CTO. If your call is urgent, please press 2 now and the system will attempt to locate me. Otherwise, please leave a message.”
The caller now has the choice of pressing 2 or simply waiting and leaving you a message
If they press 2, the call is forwarded to the number or extension you have configured

This way, when that annoying sales guy who keeps calling you decides his call is “urgent”, you can give him a piece of your mind. Plus, it is included with all our plans at no extra charge.

To configure this feature, simply login to your Versature Dashboard and visit the settings area. You can then specify that callers have the option to reach you on another extension or phone number. Don’t forget to record a suitable greeting that lets callers know to press 2.

Please also feel free to contact the Versature customer service team, they can walk you through setting this feature up and answer any questions you might have.

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