E9: Teams Calling and Dialpad

In this episode, I'm talking with Rob Ellis from Dial Pad around phone systems and teams calling. While many businesses are moving to teams calling, there are some 'gotchas' that catch people out and ways to ensure your phone systems keeps working, even when Microsoft does not!

We also cover how to save money when staff use international roaming for while travelling.

Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor, the podcast where we explore how the right technology can create better business outcomes, everytime. I’m Leanne Taylor, founder of Taylor Made Sales, and I’m passionate about helping Australian businesses connect with the tech solutions that drive success.

For more details contact [e-mail] or visit www.taylormadesales.com.au 

Full Episode Transcript:

[Intro Music]

Leanne Taylor: Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor, your host of 10 Minute Tech Talks where we cut straight to the heart of tech for Australian businesses.

In each session, we'll spend only 10 minutes with an industry expert unpacking the latest products, services and solutions to help your business achieve great technical outcomes. Let's get started.

Rob Ellis: Too nice to meet you. I uh, work for Dialpad as a channel manager. Here in Australia, my role is to work with partners who are looking to provide unified communications, UCaaS as a service to their customers as well as contact centre and also AI as well and AI related sales tools. So, you know, there's a lot going on in the industry at the moment. AI is a big buzzword. I remember it wasn't that long ago when UCaaS and unified communications, contact centre was a big buzzword. and now AI is is just sort of taken off. But a lot of people don't necessarily know, you know, things like how it's going to affect them in the business, whether they need it, whether they need to be aware of it and all those things. And that's where I guess uh, Dialpad comes in. You have three main pillars of our business which is unified communications or or or basic telephony services which can also be referred to as as as, you know, an MVP product a message, video and phone. Uh, we also have a messaging platform, think of uh something in the way of like WhatsApp. our own messaging platform and then you obviously have a phone platform. telephone basic phone communications and whether the customer wants a desk phone and be able to pick something up and make a physical call, whether they want to be able to use a headset and have a soft phone or whether they want to actually do everything on their on their mobile device. with a provider like Dialpad who's a global provider, you should pretty much be able to pick up your device, go anywhere in the world, make phone calls, videos, and messaging and be able to do it on any device anywhere you need to.

Leanne Taylor: No, that's an interesting one. It just has jump in there because I've got a a customer at the moment that's having no end of issues with global roaming and Telstra charging X dollars for when people go overseas and things like that. So, how does that work just as a little sideway?

Rob Ellis: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, when you have the app on your mobile device or you might take your laptop with you, I guess when you connect up to an internet connection that's going to give you access to a real world IP, so something you can actually browse and use like a proper internet connection. Basically your your telephone app or the Dialpad AI app will allow you to uh connect into their local uh services and be able to make calls in and out. Mind if I if I go over there with an Australian number, okay, so for example, let's say I'm you know, well I'm in Melbourne, so I've got an 03 number right or a mobile I've also got a mobile attached to my uh Australian app. Um, so if I go overseas and I make a call back to Australia, it will dial out from that Australian number. Um, now you can select some international ones. So let's say for example, you had a business where you did a lot of business out of France or something like that. You travel over to France, you might actually have a you know, a French number uh activated on your service so that when you're to France you make phone calls out of France, being in France if that makes sense, right? and calls in and out. But if you're wanting to make a call back in through Australia, then you just make that call. It just hops off on whatever local presence you have selected or what local uh direct dial number you have. So yeah.

Leanne Taylor: So customers would still need to have the global roaming for instance unless they're on a a Wi Fi service. So if they're out in the middle of somewhere and they still need Telstra 4G, 5G or what have you, they still need to pay for that.

Rob Ellis: Yeah, that's right.

Leanne Taylor: international roaming. I guess.

Rob Ellis: Yeah, they've still got to have some sort of connectivity. That is correct. Or they pop in a SIM card, you know, going to give you data, uh then you can make your calls out and back through Australia, which is having uh a mobile phone number attached to the service because you can still make calls in and out like it or as an Australian mobile number. you just use a cheap SIM overseas. If you're calling back through Australia, then you're then there's no charge for that that call effectively. So let's say I'm in New York or something like that and I I don't know what Telstra charge to roam out of New York and make a phone call back to Australia. I'm assuming they charge a bit. but uh what

Leanne Taylor: Through Dialpad, it's not

Rob Ellis: Yeah, it's just a local call because I'm dialing out of my 03 number or I'm dialing out of my mobile number or whatever.

Leanne Taylor: Right. okay. Sorry. I've I've co boshed your around three pillars there, we're back on the first pillar of phone service. the second pillar.

Rob Ellis: Yeah, yeah, so contact centre um with some AI and analytics wrapped around that. So think of and and people used to think of a contact centre as something that, you know, 100 people or 200 people are in and they've got headsets on and they've got a an outbound dialer and that that may be the case. that still may be a contact centre but think of a contact centre these days, someone that have a car business, for example, the service centre when people are calling up and calls are coming in to that service centre, they're booking services, they they're, you know, inquiring about parts or that sort of stuff. might only have five or 10 staff. That's actually a contact centre. okay? the the customers are are having inbound calls. they probably need to put some analytics around those calls like, you know, how where the calls are coming from, are they being serviced properly? and things like, you know, is the rep saying the right things on those calls. That's sort of contact centre of features. So we have those from basic contact centre features in that in that pillar right up to the advanced stuff which is like, you know, web chat and what we call Omni Channel, so multiple channels coming in, multiple digital channels. so it might be people on the website sending chats in, might be people using Twitter or Facebook or something like that to come in with their communications. and you might have things like, you know, tone and intent, but also you may utilise AI so that when you're on a call and you're talking to your customer and might be talking to you and getting a quote off you about solar, and then the uh the AI will be coming up and talking to you and giving you some information whilst might be interested in a battery attached to their solar or did you know, you know, we've got promos on this month, you know, mention this, mention that. And the AI will actually live coach you on some of the things that you might want to talk to your customer about or be aware of or not discuss, you know, there be a whole heap of stuff in there that it that that it could learn about your business. You know, you've got obviously the call recording in there and you've got um the ability to uh you know, go back over those calls to see what was said, what wasn't said. integrate to CRMs like Salesforce and Zen Desk and all those sorts of things as well. Then you've got AI for sales, which is which is your kind of top end sales coaching. Um and that will give you information and insight into things that you've spoken about with your customers. Uh it'll give you really managerial analytics on what's happening in the business, what what your customers are talking about. It also gives you the ability to do surveys and NPI and those sorts of things as well. And that's really where it is. It's supercharging your um your conversations, your organic conversations with customers and it's helping you to drive, you know, better outcomes in your business and give you some visibility on what's going on. The other side I guess is that we own our own stack. We're not utilising uh any third party organisations for part of our our core functions, which is which is important because a lot of uh businesses out there or a lot of other players out there, you know, are using third parties. so you have that situation. Okay, where's my data going? who else is getting access to my data if all this call is being recorded?

Leanne Taylor: You Australian based or

Rob Ellis: No, we're a US company. Yeah. We we obviously are an Australian entity as well. A US company. pre IPO currently. Uh, it's a $2 billion company, thousands of staff, been around about 12 years. you know, really well vetted in the in the US and in global markets. Yeah.

Leanne Taylor: So tell me about this uh, team's calling comparison because that seems to be a lot of customers that are heavily invested in Microsoft are going, yeah, I'm going to team's calling and

Rob Ellis: Yeah, yeah. Tell me how that works because

Leanne Taylor: Sure, sure.

Rob Ellis: So team's calling is something that's, you know, a lot of people they they look at the price and they go, okay, this is really good. I can, you know, I'm already using teams. Team's a platform for me. Uh I like it. I got free licensing with Telstra three years ago. and and it does most of what I want. But then they go, okay, I need some calling on this. I want to make some calls out because I want to get rid of my redundant phone system or whatever. And then they find that there are there are things that team's calling just doesn't do. like like some of the really core telephony functions that it doesn't do and you can only use certain handsets. It's got to be team's calling handsets as an example. the recording and the analytics side is really clunky and those sorts of things. So, there are a couple of ways that we can integrate to team's calling as we can do a thing called direct routing, which effectively is at a stack level, uh not an application level. We also do have an application that that integrates with teams as well. Generally we would do at the stack level. so that the look and feel uh on this side of teams is exactly the same. It looks exactly like teams but there'll just be like a plug in from us. we'll actually be driving the telephony communications. they're actually coming out from teams and they're hitting our stack and going out. Um, yeah, look, a lot of customers do go down the path of teams and then they go, it's a great idea but it doesn't quite fit what we need. Yeah.

Leanne Taylor: So in terms of the the cost per call, how does the actual call cost work?

Rob Ellis: It'd be a licensing cost. so it's a per seat cost to the customer. and then they they can add things on. they can you know add on contact centre or they can add on other other, you know, AI services or individual things. but generally

Leanne Taylor: So this is on top of their team's cost as well. so

Rob Ellis: That's that's correct, yeah. with us to have the telephony like if you just want to have a direct routing, you would have a telephony component. so you would just get a basic license with um with dialpad. depending on the side of the customer depends on the amount that might cost cost anything from, you know, 12 bucks a month to 25, 30 bucks a month or something like that. Um it it all just depends uh on what they're doing on the size of the customer contract term and all that sort of thing. Um but so you don't have that cost with us. everything is inclusive. so your calls are included, your voicemail is included, your your base license to get the feature sets are included all of that sort of stuff.

Leanne Taylor: Well, I've got a couple of opportunities that, you know, people go, oh, I want to go to teams calling and then, you know, I'm kind of going, okay, well, let's just stop for a minute. Let's have a chat, understand what you're trying to do, how that works, what your options are. So at the end of the day, it's about giving the customer the best outcome possible.

[Outro Music]

Leanne Taylor: Thank you for listening to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor and here at TaylorMade sales, our mission is to keep you our valued customers up to date, informed about the latest technology innovations that can support and elevate your business. Stay curious, stay connected and we'll see you next time.

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