Marketing has always been one of the key elements to good commerce. Where a normal business-man would sell 10 of his products without marketing, a smart business-man, with marketing, would not only sell 16 of his products but also make a customer pool for him. Marketing involves obtaining customers, retaining them and further creating new customers.
In today’s world where everything goes ‘E’ every second day, commerce has matured to e-commerce. Where transactions happen at the speed of thought. E-commerce, which was completely dependent on the telephone, brought with it a need for change in the way things were marketed. Emailing, calling clients and potential customers, providing sales advice and services. All of it required a dedicated telephone line. This is when the online business was badly hit. Due to pricey calling rates, the telephone bills soared, thus adversely affecting the business.
Come 2004. The high scale development of the VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) began. VOIP is also known as the Internet Telephony or the IP Telephony. To mention, VOIP was there around, since 9 years. This technology involves transport of voice/message/facsimile packets via the Internet instead of the traditional telephone network. In other words it relieves the telephone line. The change brought in with it a lot of good news and relief for the online retailers. The benefits noteworthy would be
1) VOIP provides inexpensive calling rates. Long distance as well as international calls. The reason being, that internet bills are much lesser as compared to the telephone calls. The telephone calls are billed per minute, where as the internet usage is billed per megabyte, i.e. amount of data transmitted.
2) Since VOIP carries voice and data communication over a single network, the infrastructure cost is further reduced.
VOIP also provides a whole new set of advantages. Telephone companies charge call-conferences, IVR, call forwarding. But thanks to the open source VOIP implementation like Asterisk, these facilities can be used for free. VOIP can also be used for secure calling using encryption and authentication.
Implementation of VOIP phones is very simple. The cheapest being the computer-to-computer implementation. Widely used operating systems, like Microsoft’s Windows XP, support VOIP. Some messenger applications like Gtalk and, Yahoo Messenger 9 and later, provide the calling option. All that is needed is a headset. The other way of implementing the VOIP would be the IP Phones. Which look no different than the traditional phones.
VOIP offers a plethora of options to enhance e-commerce. A customer can begin a chat-conversation as and when required. All the issues being faced by him can be looked into faster. Queries being fired by potential customers can be attended quickly. This would not only boost sales but also lead to long term customer satisfaction.
VOIP also allows smarter web browsing through chat and video conferencing. This would give a customer the feel of a face to face talk.To sum up, VOIP is the technology to look for. It is the future of calling. The smarter, cheaper and better way to do business.
