You’ve probably heard of Skype before, and how it allows employees to communicate with each other for free, even if they are based throughout the world! With SkypeOut you can also call regular landline and mobile phones for low rates, direct from your PC wherever you have broadband internet connection. The success of Skype (and VOIP in general) is increasing every year, with approximately 25% of small businesses utilising VOIP for their telephony. As Skype becomes part of your mainstream phone package, you can also integrate it with call recording software for a variety of purposes. This article reviews the usefulness of Pamela Call Recording software and the benefits it can offer business users.

Call Recording For Training or Legal Reference

One of the most popular uses of call recording software in businesses is to review successful sales calls to train staff in effective ways of holding a sales conversation, and also what to avoid saying. Pamela Call Recording allows you to record Skype calls seamlessly and automatically without having to touch a button. The calls are stored within your Skype history for later access, and can be played-back at will. They can even be emailed automatically to a given email address – this is great for supervisors and managers who want a record of their employees calls to make sure the business phone isn’t being used for personal calls. As you probably know, however, too strict evaluation and performance monitoring can be detrimental to an employee’s work and motivation, so try not to be too over-bearing with call reviewing.

Another situation where Pamela comes in handy is when a customer is claiming a dispute, or you even want to check what price you quoted a customer – with all your calls recorded you have them there if ever they are needed for such an occassion. During calls one great feature is that you can type fully-searchable notes to associate with a call – so for example if you’re in a call, you don’t have to scrabble for a pen and paper, but can type into a box, where the note will be linked to the specific call.

Call Recording For PodCast Interviews

Podcasting refers to when an individual or organisation produces a publicly-downloadable audio file that is usually in MP3 format and provides how-to guides, interviews, audio articles etc.. In many Podcasts, interviews are conducted for the ‘show’, and as the Internet provides a global audience, interviews can also be conducted by people around the world. Using Skype with the Pamela for Skype Plugin allows you to call the interviewee on Skype and record the interview automatically onto MP3, after which you can edit it and publish it.

Additional Benefits of Pamela For Skype

Pamela for Skype also offers a range of other features and benefits, such as a free answering machine (compared to the paid-for Skype Voicemail service). Although it’s great that it’s free, unfortunately it won’t work unless you’re logged onto Skype, whereas the Skype Voicemail will work when you’re offline. Pamela can also be downloaded for free for trial, but limits the duration of calls that can be recorded and plays a message at the start of a conversation, saying “This call is being recorded”. As you’ll no doubt want to remove that message, the business version of Pamela is a very reasonable $36.95 or €29.95. You can also schedule Pamela to record calls only at certain times of the day. The quality of the recorded call is perfect, just as clear as the phone call itself.

Call Recording Legal Issues

You might be asking about the legality of recording calls without the other person’s consent. Rather than describe the legal issues on here, as we have readers from around the world I’ll just post some links to useful sites that talk about the legality of call recording:

• In the US – Legal Issues
• In the UK – Legal Issues

Get Pamela For Skype Call Recording Software Here!

Tags: call recording software, pamela for skype, pamela, skype, pamela review, record skype calls, record calls

As I mentioned in one of our previous telephony blog posts, Skype is a Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) telephone package which can be used wherever you have a broadband internet connection and a headset/microphone combo, or with a handheld USB phone. With many airports, service stations and even trains now featuring Wireless Access points, you can even access it when on the go.

One-Click Dialling From Your Browser

The Skype Add-In for Internet Explorer (or Firefox for that matter) is a simple toolbar that installs into your web browser, and any numbers that then appear on the website you are viewing are highlighted with a little Skype icon. Rather than having to type each number into your phone, or into Skype, if you click the phone number on the website then Skype will automatically call that number. This does however, require you to have SkypeOut credit, as described in a previous article. The add-in also allows you to display your Skype contact list on the left-hand side of your browser, so when you are visiting a website you are just a click away from calling your contacts as well.

Skype As A Cold-Calling Time Saving Tool

If like me you prefer not to be cold-calling, then why not reduce the time you spend doing it not by reducing the amount of calls, but by increasing your productivity. Alternatively if ‘distance selling’ is your thing then you can use the time saved to make even more calls, and hopefully get more sales! So how exactly is Skype useful as a cold-calling tool:

1. Call History Log – Rather than having to log all calls you make into your CRM system, Skype records these in its history log, which can be filtered to show either outbound or inbound calls or voicemails. What’s more, this history is ‘searchable’.
2. CRM Integration – If you prefer to go one step further, Skype can be integrated into your CRM package. Salesforce.com is one example of a CRM solution which offers Skype integration. See http://www.skype.com/business/skype-in-salesforce.html for more details about the integration. I’m sure that other CRM providers will also offer these plugins, but Salesforce is the most well known.
3. Low Call Rates – Whilst this one won’t increase your productivity, it will definitely save you money – with extremely low call rates with SkypeOut, you will probably save money with Skype rather than your existing landline telephone provider.

Skype Add-In for Your Browser & Spreadsheet Cold Calling :: The Golden Egg

If you currently call new leads or prospects from an Excel spreadsheet, and are manually dialling the number into your standard telephone keypad then you really should pay attention now. This little tip could potentially save you hours over the course of a cold-calling day!

In your Excel spreadsheet, go to “Save As” and then choose “Single Web Page” as the file type, and save it somewhere memorable such as your desktop. Then go to your web browser and click “File” –> “Open” and open the file you just saved. This will appear as a web page, and once you have installed the Skype Add-In for Internet Explorer as described previously, even if you have 1,000 numbers row after row, they will all light up with the Skype symbol, meaning that you can just click on them and Skype will connect the call.

This really does have the potential to save hours of time, and hopefully take some of the drudgery away from cold-calling. If you have any comments or experience using Skype for business applications then please feel free to leave a comment and let us know.

Download Skype now and start making productivity gains!

Tags: cold calling, skype cold calling, business phone, phone productivity, voip

If you’re familiar with Skype, then you’ll probably recognise the VoipCheapCom interface, as it’s quite similar. Even the ‘options’ menu seems to use the same or at least very similar icons to Skype. It features tabs for the dialpad, history, contacts, ‘direct call’ and SMS. Sending an SMS is also very good value, at 5 eurocents per text (that’s roughly 3pence).

The only caveat is that you’re limited to 300 minutes per week of free calls, and mobile phone calls aren’t included (except to mobiles in the US). Whilst we haven’t conducted extensive tests of the service, we have tested it for a short while, and our initial reaction is that local and national calls are quite high quality, however international calls can break up a bit every know and again. I haven’t got to the 300 minute limit, and I wonder what happens whether you do – does it warn you as you approach the limit or do you just get cut off mid-conversation? Hopefully not, as that wouldn’t be very good for business!

Despite not undertaking extensive tests, with free calls and no setup costs, VoipCheap .com is definitely worth a try!

Tags: free voip telephone calls, voipcheapcom, aerodesigns, free call costs

Unlike a regular phone service, so long as you have Broadband internet you don’t have to pay any extra line rental for using VoIP, as the voice communication data is sent via the Internet. Although there are a few major VoIP providers, Skype is the one with which I have had the most experience, and in my opinion the service provides many benefits to cost-conscious businesses and hence to improving cost efficiency. Firstly, for intra-company communication, if all your colleagues and employees have Skype installed then you can call them for as long as you want with Skype and not pay a single thing. In addition, if your employees are on business in far-away places you can communicate with them over VoIP once again for nothing! Gone are the days of long-distance call charges, if you both have a high-speed internet connection and the required software installed then your call costs will be zero. It seems too good to be true, right? Well in principle it’s a perfect solution, but there are a few limitations which you should be aware of:

Firstly, you may have worries about call quality issues or reliability of service. Well personally I have used Skype for about a year now and not experienced any problems beyond a few initial headaches whilst figuring out how to configure the headset microphone and sound card. For over 95% of the time call quality has been as good as over a normal landline, however if communicating with distant places half way around the world, then obviously the quality of the call depends on the speed of both party’s internet connection, and also the state of the telephone infrastructure in the other country. Secondly, for you to receive or place a call using VoIP, your computer must be switched on and you must be logged into Skype.

Going one step further, VoIP can also be used as a full scale replacement of your existing phone network. The first solution offered by Skype is SkypeOut, in which you can top-up your balance online on their website using your credit card, and this enables you to call regular phone numbers for extremely discounted prices. Currently, the call rate is roughly 1p per minute to call a UK landline from within the UK, and is only about 3p per minute to call the USA! How this works is that imagine you are calling Florida from your computer in the UK – you dial the number into Skype and it travels via VOIP over the Internet and your call pops out at the telephone exchange in Florida – hence the only call charges you pay are a local call charge between the telephone exchange in Florida and the person you are calling.

Another useful product is SkypeIn, whereby you can buy (and even choose) a telephone number in any one of about 15 countries. Anybody can then call this number, and so long as you are logged into Skype your call will be put through to you on your computer, wherever you are in the world. The only fees you pay are the annual fee for keeping that number (which is currently a small fee of about £20 per year), and you don’t pay any fees for people calling this number. This has the obvious benefits that you can take your phone with you wherever you go around the world, as long as you have access to high speed internet (even 512Kbs should be sufficient though to make high quality calls). Don’t worry about not having your computer switched on 24/7 – there is also a voicemail service provided free with SkypeIn for all those times when you just want to ‘switch off’.

With more and more businesses jumping on the VoIP bandwagon, it’s definitely worth considering to reduce costs and even increase flexibility!

Tags: voip, business cost savings, business telephony, small business, skype