Calling at the heart of hybrid collaboration with Cisco Webex

At the recent Cisco Webex annual conference, a slew of new features was announced for Webex. At the heart of these and while leveraging Webex’s strength were the calling features powering hybrid collaboration. What follows is a summary of what’s new and coming soon to Webex.

Calling is the backbone that connects every business to its employees, customers, and partners. In this hybrid work era, calling has become even more critical than ever. Cisco Calling powers moments that matter by connecting over 45M users and serving more than 8B calls a month. And today, we are excited to share that Webex Calling now has over 7M business users, doubling the growth from last year. Now that’s momentum, and that won’t stop!

Innovation and inclusivity are at the heart of everything at Webex. As more businesses build long-term hybrid work strategies, Webex will provide in-office, remote and hybrid workers with the intuitive collaboration tools they need to get work done. For many, the path to greater collaboration begins with a need for a robust phone system. Webex Calling offers an industry-leading cloud phone system that’s as powerful and flexible as your hybrid workforce.

Webex features elevate any environment—in the office, at home, or on the road—into a personalized collaboration workspace. The Calling vision of Hearing to Seeing to Doing aims to remove communication barriers so every call is just as productive, efficient, and inclusive as a face-to-face conversation. True to Cisco’s vision, Webex continues to bring thoughtful capabilities to market, empowering customers to drive business growth, deliver superior customer experience, and optimize business operations.

As Cisco and IP4B connect more people from anywhere with Webex—we support workers across transportation, financial services, retail, education, and more. IP4B offers a powerful enterprise-grade, next-generation cloud calling solution on the proven Webex platform that works from anywhere, on any device, including support for third-party devices. To help transition your organization to the cloud at your own pace, IP4B provides flexible migration options and easy-to-use administration tools.

Here are the new Webex features, some available now, some coming soon.

• Group Call Management, an out-of-box call center included with Webex Calling at no additional cost, bringing advanced call routing and analytics to elevate the performance of inbound call handling teams.
• Business texting enables employees to text (SMS) with customers and partners directly from within the Webex App, supporting organizational compliance policies and regulations.
• Microsoft Teams integration with Webex Calling offers a powerful way to communicate and collaborate inside Microsoft Teams so that you can stay in your flow.
• Multi-line support for Webex Calling enables administrators to assign multiple lines to a single user or define shared lines for many users without additional calling entitlements.
• Next-generation hot desking with Webex Calling on the Cisco 8875 video phone delivers a more personalized return to the office experience.
• Webex Calling for Chrome delivers the enterprise-grade Webex Calling experience within the Google Chrome browser.

Unleash the power of rich collaboration and calling features.

Group Call Management, a free call center elevating the performance of inbound calling

Many IP4B customers have set up calling teams or groups to handle specific business topics or functions. Think of internal help desks, for IT, or HR, for example. Or these could be outward-facing groups handling calls from customers or clients.

In each case, the calls get routed using hunt groups or call queues. Group Call Management helps customers bring operational excellence to these call groups by adding key features. Also, core real-time and historical call queue analytics ensure customers can consistently deliver the best service to customers and have the metrics needed to track progress. High-valued agent and supervisor features include basic priority and skills-based routing for call queues, and callers can make a callback request, so they don’t have to wait in the queue.

These features are easy to use and built into the Webex App and Cisco MPP phones. And the best part is Group Call Management is included out-of-the-box, with Webex Calling, at no additional cost. How cool is that?

Business texting for Webex Calling

More than 23 billion texts are sent daily worldwide, and texting is an essential channel for immediate conversations with business connections. Business texting has been a top request from customers and partners over this last year.

Business texting for Webex Calling enables person-to-person texting directly from Webex App to a phone number and vice-versa, so you can now communicate with your customers immediately through the mode of communication they prefer while maintaining full regulatory compliance. Business texting will be available in the coming months.

A more powerful Webex Calling and Microsoft Teams experience

Cisco believes in an open ecosystem, and Webex Calling is dedicated to delivering calls anywhere, on any device, and in any productivity environment, our customers choose.

We know that many of our customers use Microsoft Teams, and our native Webex Calling integration provides an enriched calling experience without switching between apps. You can easily place a call with the dial pad or use our speed dialer for important contacts; your call history and voicemail are just a click away.

In addition to these existing features, Cisco has invested in a wholly redesigned landing page for a fresh user experience with features such as live presence, access to Call Settings, and mid-call controls, including Cisco’s built-in Audio intelligence capability. Customers can enjoy these features at no additional cost in the coming months.

Multi-line support for Webex Calling

Power-calling users, like receptionists, executive administrators, and call queue or group managers, keep the gears of your organization running smoothly. These users must efficiently manage a high volume of calls across multiple lines. We’re excited to announce that multi-line support for Webex Calling will soon be available.

Multi-line support enables IT administrators to assign multiple lines to a single user or define shared lines for many users’ without additional calling entitlements. Users can select lines directly from the Webex App multi-call window or Cisco IP phones.

Next-generation hot desking with Webex Calling on Cisco 8875

Back in June at Cisco Live, Cisco announced the flagship Cisco Video Phone 8875, which delivers a complete Calling and Meetings experience through a modern desktop phone with a 7-inch touchscreen and 1080p HD camera. We’re excited to announce that Cisco updated this device for return-to-office environments with next-gen Webex Calling hot desking features.

Users can now easily personalize the 8875 with their business number, call history, voicemail, and one-button-to-join meetings, by simply scanning a QR code with their mobile phone. This capability will be available in early 2023.

Webex Calling for Chrome

A growing number of businesses have embraced the Google Workspaces productivity ecosystem and rely on Google Chrome as their primary browser and Chromebook as their main laptop. Webex Calling for Chrome now brings the Webex Calling experience directly to the Chrome browser through a convenient Chrome extension. A floating softphone looks and feels like a desktop application and delivers calling features, including click-to-call, extension dialing, directory integration, and live presence, all through a Chrome extension, with no additional download needed.

Want to know more?

If you want to know more about the new and upcoming Cisco Webex features, please get in touch with us at sales@ip4b.ca to start a discussion. Also, please do not hesitate to forward this article to a colleague.