Vocati Communications, Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Mar 11, 2010 – Vocati Communications released a low cost reliable calling card to Haiti today with calls as low as 17.5 cents to the Island Nation.

This marks one of the lowest cost premium services to Haiti from the United States.  Vocati Communications teamed up with over a dozen carriers to secure the routes and channels required to offer this high quality service to the many thousands of people using their service now.

“After the earthquake, we saw first hand the need for improved communications to Haiti,” said William McCarthy, Vocati Communication’s CEO world wide. “We were one of the first companies to have calls going into Haiti after the eathquake, but it was cost prohibitive at times.  Right then and there we decided to offer a premium service to Haiti from the United States that had exceptional quality and a low cost.”

After almost a month of working with dozens of carriers, Vocati Communications found the routes and channels they were looking for by leveraging just over a dozen companies and replacing their damaged equipment in the earthquake.

“At this point, we feel we have the strongest and most reliable network to Haiti available,” states Andres Acero, Chief Operations Officer of Vocati Communications and Director of Latin American Services. “Our testing has included many of our current clients and the results were unanimous…We heard over and over from people using the cards that this was the clearest and best calling card they ever used when calling friends and family in Haiti.  We can’t ask for better validation than that.”

Vocati Communications is well known in the wholesale and carrier Telecommunications market, but the release of this calling card as well as their “World Pass International” card marks a major step forward in the retail market.

“We are excited about this calling plan.  We expect this to have a major impact on our business model going forward,” said McCarthy.

Vocati Communications is releasing four more specialty cards to locations like Africa, South America, India and Mexico.  These cards are expected to hit the streets within 30 days.

For those interested in purchasing a calling card to Haiti, they can visit http://www.vocaticommunications.com/calling-cards/haiti-calling-card-starting-at-17-5-cents/

About Vocati Communications

Vocati is a U.S. based Telecommunication Service Provider with 18 locations world wide. It has a long history of responding to challenges and answering the call to action through their unique One World Program which serves to demonstrate the belief that communication makes the world a smaller place.

http://www.vocaticommunications.com

Calculating ROI for VoIP

It’s not just the cost savings. You can also expect efficiency gains, productivity increases and a reduced head count.

Originally, VoIP promised to help companies reduce international toll charges by allowing users to dial into a PBX, which would then switch traffic to VoIP. For example, experts estimate that companies can save up to 60 percent on call costs by routing interoffice voice calls over data networks. But as carriers slash long-distance charges and low-cost VoIP systems flood the market, more and more companies are looking to soft benefits to validate equipping a contact center with VoIP.

“The real gains that I’ve seen companies realize in IP telephony include improved integration, efficiency, effectiveness and functionality,” said Taylor.

From Toll Savings to Soft Benefits

In terms of improved integration, unlike TDM (time-division multiplex) based proprietary messaging solutions, unified messaging unites the worlds of phone and Internet over a single unified network, allowing agents to receive voice mail, email and fax messages in a single mailbox. This mailbox can be then accessed via the phone or from a desktop browser or an email client.

“It’s very sexy and quite cool to be able to have the phone system email you voice mail in your Microsoft Outlook program,” said Taylor.

Greater Efficiency Through Integration

Cool quotient aside, such integration can also lead to huge agent-efficiency gains. “A company can easily deliver contact-center services versus call-center services by integrating an agent’s emails and chat sessions into a call queue, which then makes them more efficient,” said Taylor. After all, every second a company can shave from its agents’ response times is a gain in productivity, plus a boost to customer service.

What’s more, Taylor says each time a company takes a single call queue and divides it into two separate channels, it reduces labor efficiency by 6 percent. However, “If you can take three discrete work groups and make them one,” advised Taylor, “you can gain labor efficiency and thereby reduce the number of full-time employees you need to service a volume of work.”

Calculating Upkeep Costs

Better yet, benefits such as efficiency gains, productivity increases and a reduced head count aren’t likely to be offset by a VoIP system’s maintenance and training costs. Whereas traditional PBX systems require companies to spend upward of $175 per hour on contractors to simply add an agent to the system, with IT telephony, Taylor said that an in-house IT professional “ … can probably make those changes himself in less than five minutes.” Not to mention the reduced cost to establish new contact centers, or the investment required to support contact-center moves, adds and changes.

Nor should companies expect to invest loads of money in training their agents on a VoIP system. While VoIP systems feature programmable soft buttons for functions such as speed dial and voice mail, Taylor said, “IP systems typically are easier to understand, use and manage than their TDM counterparts.”

Nevertheless, an ROI (return on investment) for VoIP in the contact center is never a guarantee. Substandard network readiness, failure to drive agent adoption, quality-of-service issues and security breaches are all potential obstacles to reaping hard — and soft — benefits from a VoIP system. So plan accordingly, and expect to see savings in some unexpected places.

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