What if you could have customers call in to your call center from directly within your web browser? No "click to call" that calls them back on their cell phone... but literally just press a button on your web site and start talking? And get connected directly to the team appropriate to the web page rather than a generic inbox?
What if you could do this with more than just voice... but also video? screen sharing? with better audio quality than the legacy telephony network (the PSTN)?
What if you could also add in live chat sessions directly from your website? Giving you true multi-channel interaction with your customers?
And what if you could do this without any downloads by the customer?
Even better... what if this could be done with your branding? and connecting to ANY IP communications system?
Announcing Phono
Today at the JQuery Conference in Boston, the Voxeo Labs team is announcing Phono a new software development kit that lets you create apps just like the ones I mentioned. It's free, it's "skinnable" and it works with any systems that use SIP or XMPP (Jabber). More info here:
The Phono SDK is free to download and use. You can also naturally follow Phono on Twitter or Facebook.
You can use it to connect to your IP-PBX... to applications on platforms like Tropo... or really any other IP communications / Unified Communications platform.
FAR More Than Just A Softphone
That last part is really the point... the Phono SDK being shown today is far more than "just" a softphone. Sure... that's what some of the first reference implementations are all about. Things like Twelephone that let you easily call all your Twitter friends... or Facebook Telephone that lets you call your Facebook Friends. You'll see some more apps like that in the coming weeks.
But Phono is more than that...
Phono is a toolkit for Rewiring the Real-time Web
We as an industry need to drop the shackles of the legacy telephone network... we need to move beyond the PSTN in true rich collaboration between people... wherever they may be.
Voice, chat, video, screensharing... whatever mode they want to work in... from basic web browsers to mobile devices...
Phono is our contribution to that... and to taking away friction from developers wanting to build communications apps that make the most of the new tools and media we have available to us.
We're excited to see what you'll do with it!
Extra bonus... here's a video intro:
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