Let’s Talk Telephony Overview: Basic Telephony vs. Call Center Services

Let’s Talk's telephony features empower your district to use our platform for calling and texting, helping you efficiently manage incoming and outgoing calls, agent queues, and more. This article will explain the differences between Let’s Talk’s two telephony services, Basic Telephony and Call Center, and will also provide information on Basic Telephony setup and routing, including Phone Numbers, Queues, Greetings, and Texting.

Basic Telephony vs. Call Center

The Basic Telephony feature allows you to:

• Organize phone management by handling inbound and outbound phone calls
• Use text-to-dialogue to send and receive text messages through the Let’s Talk dialogue interface
• Customize customer experiences by creating and assigning separate queues to different phone lines, with unique agents, greetings, and dialogue assignments.
• Answer calls without new hardware by using with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), meaning anyone with a computer and mic can start answering calls right away.

Note: Basic Telephony allows you to add up to 10 phone numbers with the ability to add additional phone numbers for an extra fee

The Call Center feature includes all of the Basic Telephony functionality, plus the following:

• • Round-robin phone agent queues, which ensure customers get to a human quickly and no one person is overloaded with calls
  • Interactive Voice Response (IVR) routing, which allows customers to interact with a multi-layered menu using the keypad on their phone to find the right department (click Let’s Talk Call Center Features: IVR Routing and Business Hours for additional information on setup and use)
  • Advanced Call Center management features that allow team leaders to easily manage queues, change phone agent statuses, and listen to or join an existing call with call monitoring features
  • Detailed reporting to help you understand call center operations, including customer experience (CSAT and wait times), agent performance, and call volume
  • Agent Status Report, which gives insight into patterns in agent call availability and call durations
  • Business Hour rules indicate which phone queues are open and available to take calls during specific days and times of the week (click Let’s Talk Call Center Features: IVR Routing and Business Hours for additional information on setup and use)

Basic Telephony Setup and Routing

• Phone Number Settings
• Queue Settings
• Greeting Settings
• Texting Settings

Phone Number Settings

With Let’s Talk, users can easily request and manage multiple phone numbers via the Numbers settings page. Here's how to get started:

Request/Create Number

Click on "Request Number" to add your first number. Choose a name for the phone number, which will be displayed throughout the application.

Call Routing

Decide how the phone number will route:

• Queue: Choose which queue to route calls to.
• Greeting: Determine which recording to play.
  • Note: This is not a voicemail box, but just a recorded greeting for your customers to hear. To set up a voicemail box, you can route calls to a queue that does not have any agents assigned to it.

Customer Feedback Message

Select a Cx Text Message from your list of Saved Replies for gathering feedback for calls, texts, inbound, and outbound calls from this number.

Call Recording

Choose whether calls are recorded for that number or not, affecting both inbound and outbound calls.

Available to Outgoing Calls

Decide if this number is eligible for outbound calls. Please note that live outgoing calls can be seen in the Call Center Dashboard under the Live Calls section.

Queue Settings

A queue is a location where you can route phone calls to ensure that calls are assigned to the right topic and agents and also that callers have the right experience (with the right greetings). You can now configure queues separately from phone numbers to allow for more advanced call routing capabilities. Here’s how to streamline your queue topics, assign agents, and customize other settings:

Create a Queue

Click on "Add Queue" to create your first topic queue. Enter a name for the queue, which will be displayed across the application.

Queue Topic and Agents

Assign a topic to calls in the queue. Select agents who will handle those calls, including both topic team members and additional agents from outside the team.

Initial Queue Greeting

This is the greeting that plays when a caller first enters the queue.

Call Priority

Toggle on the High Priority option within queue settings to have these calls answered before queues that do not have this option turned on.

Tips

• If agents are assigned multiple queues, they will be presented with calls from queues labeled as High Priority first.
• Calls in the queue management page will be ordered based on priority.

Voicemail Settings

Queues also function as voicemail boxes. When no agents are working, callers will hear a greeting message that can be customized in the queue settings. Then, if voicemails are accepted by the queue, they will be allowed to leave a voicemail message. That will log a dialogue that agents can follow up on once they’re available.

Greeting Settings

Enhance caller experience with personalized greeting messages, which allows users to create common greetings to use across multiple queues and other areas, reducing redundancy and making them easier to manage.

Creating Greetings

Click on "Add Greeting" to upload audio files for greetings. Each greeting requires a name and accepts mp3 and wav files.

Update Greetings

Click the Replace button to easily re-upload audio files to update greetings or change their names.

Texting Settings

Configure text settings and manage your library of saved replies.

Phone Number Text Settings

Manage text settings for each phone number associated with your account. Select a Topic, Auto-Reply Message, and Cx Score Text Message, and identify your Text Message Team.

Associating Text Dialogues with Topics

Assign a topic to text dialogues for efficient organization.

Auto-Reply

Choose an Auto-Reply message from your Saved Replies list or select "None."

Saved Replies

Create and manage saved replies for dialogues, Cx Messages, or Auto-Reply Messages. Add a Saved Reply by selecting “Add Saved Reply.” Edit the name and message for each Saved Reply.

Lifecycle of a Text Dialogue

1. A customer sends a text message to the Let’s Talk! Number and immediately receives the auto-reply (unless disabled in settings).
2. Their message will then land in the inbox of the selected texting team with no topic assigned.
3. A member of the texting team will review the dialogue and assign it to the proper topic.
4. Proceed as with any Let’s Talk! Dialogue.
5. If you know additional contact information about the customer who texted in, you can update it under Customer Information within the dialogue.
6. Replies will be sent back as a text message reply. The option to send an email response will be available if the customer’s email address is added to Customer Information.
7. When the dialogue is closed, the customer will receive a feedback form sent as a link through their text messages.

With these comprehensive telephony settings, you can optimize your communication workflow and deliver exceptional experiences to your stakeholders with phone lines and texting. If you have any further questions or need assistance, don't hesitate to reach out to our support team via the "Need Help" button on the left side of the page.