Web Callback The World Wide Web is having a revolutionay effect on how businesses communicate with their customers and each other. In spite of this the telephone remains the primary business tool in most industries. Recent technology allows customers to "click to dial" from web pages, thus bringing these two very important technologies together. A customer clicks on a button, and the phone rings with a real person calling from the other end.
Click to Dial
Historically, creating this "click to dial" service for customers has been cumbersome and economically prohibitive, so only very large companies could afford to do it.
Now, however, several developers have come forth with services that require only that you have a website, or space on a website. This is the easiest and most reliable way to link directly from your website to your phone system. All that is required is that you add some HTML coding which links to the service provider, and very shortly you can have website visitors talking to your agents. The code asks the user for their phone number and a desired time for a call back. The user types in this information, clicks on the the "call me" button, and the service provider sets up a three way call between the user, and a designated phone number at your business site.
Internet Telephony/Videoconferencing
If your company has an H.323 compatible Internet telephony gateway, or are using a product like the "Quicknet Internet PhoneJACK" you can add a direct link to your website for internet phone users. This is just an URL, which Microsoft NetMetting recognizes. This is relatively easy, and it incurs 0 per minute in phone bills. If you and your customer both have video phones, video conferencing is an option.
There are disadvantages to this latter option, however, since the voice quality is not that great yet. Also, this technology is still costly and somewhat cumbersome.
See PhoneZone.com for more information about this. You will also find out about some companies that sell these services and get some discussion of their products.
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