Telco advice for non-profit during Covid-19

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Pateke

11 posts

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#268486 21-Mar-2020 20:56

Kia ora,

I work for a low budget non-profit organisation, which is looking at how we can best provide our service during the Covid-19 outbreak. We have an 0800 number which clients use to contact us directly for help (the calls get distributed to many different locations). These calls get answered at different locations around the country. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak we're having to close all our offices, and I'm looking for suggestions about how we can best continue to help clients using our 0800 number. One option that I'm interested in is whether it makes sense to have all the calls going to voicemail, and get converted to emails and then we can distribute them to be answered appropriately.

I've got two questions:

1) Is there an easy/preferred way to do this?

2) Do people have any other suggestions for alternatives?

Thanks so much for any advice or suggestions!

jmp246

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#2443399 21-Mar-2020 21:48

I once phoned a company and they converted voice mails to tickets. I think they were using Zendesk.

rhy7s

624 posts

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#2443488 22-Mar-2020 06:45

I've been using https://hero.co.nz/ for a bit and they've held up fine so far, it looks like you could use their feature set to do what you want.

sbiddle

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#2443491 22-Mar-2020 07:57

Voicemail to email is super simple for many telcos to deliver if you're already on VoIP. Who are you with?

Pateke

11 posts

Geek

#2443511 22-Mar-2020 09:23

Thanks for the suggestions. We're not on VOIP unfortunately. Our current provider is Vodafone.

Ideally at this stage we're looking for a short term, easy to implement solution which doesn't involve changing providers. And then medium term moving permanently to a more flexible solution.

I'll check out Zendesk. I also came across www.vxt.co.nz has anyone used them before?

Thanks again for the suggestions.

cyril7

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#2443517 22-Mar-2020 09:35

Just setup a 2talk account to do the voice to email, and have the voda 0800 forward to that.

Cyril

Pateke

11 posts

Geek

#2873646 24-Feb-2022 09:41

A very belated thanks for these replies. We ended up following the advice to use 2talk and forward the voda 0800 number to this. Which worked well for what we needed, so thanks for that suggestion.

Pateke

11 posts

Geek

#2873650 24-Feb-2022 09:43

We're now looking at what a longer term solution could be for us and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for someone who could give us independent advice on the options, we're happy to pay for that advice, but I'm struggling to find independent advice which isn't linked to an existing provider, so if anyone has some recommendations that would be great.

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insane

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#2873722 24-Feb-2022 10:59

Pateke:

Thanks for the suggestions. We're not on VOIP unfortunately. Our current provider is Vodafone.

Ideally at this stage we're looking for a short term, easy to implement solution which doesn't involve changing providers. And then medium term moving permanently to a more flexible solution.

I'll check out Zendesk. I also came across www.vxt.co.nz has anyone used them before?

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I'm pretty sure Vodafone can pipe your 0800 to mobile phones etc, or even create a hunt group so that it can be farmed out to any number of individual mobile numbers. Have you spoken to them about a solution?

coffeebaron

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#2873788 24-Feb-2022 11:25

Or get a few basic VoIP phones, set them up each with a 2talk number. Port the 0800 to 2talk. Setup your IVR / ring groups etc in 2talk. The VoIP phones can then be plugged in to any internet connection where needed.

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Pateke

11 posts

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#2873907 24-Feb-2022 12:04

Thanks for the support and suggestions. The challenge is that we have a large pool of volunteers, so flowing them through to VOIP or mobile phones poses some challenges for us, although not out of the question. Ideally we want to route callers to their nearest location so looking for options around that.

insane

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#2873909 24-Feb-2022 12:07

Pateke:

Thanks for the support and suggestions. The challenge is that we have a large pool of volunteers, so flowing them through to VOIP or mobile phones poses some challenges for us, although not out of the question. Ideally we want to route callers to their nearest location so looking for options around that.

IVR message options for each major location/region? And then a hunt group per location?