European start-up Zingaya offers its VOIP-based click-to-call service in North America.
Digital communications and Voice over Internet Protocol specialist Zingaya announced the North American launch of its
click-to-talk services, which enable voice calls through any computer
via a widget embedded on any Web page. There is no download, and no
phone is required for the caller. A visitor to a Website simply clicks
the "Call" button on the widget, which forwards their VOIP (Voice over IP) call to
landlines, mobile phones, Skype accounts or other computers--whichever the Website operator has specified.
The company is targeting online retailers looking to make incoming
customer service and sales calls more efficient and cost-effective,
social media sites with a need to more easily connect users with one
another and large distributed organizations that can use Zingaya with
their existing internal phone directories as a way to more seamlessly
connect employees.
Alexey Aylarov, project manager and co-founder at Zingaya, said the
real story behind Zingaya is the Flash-client and the back-end server
technology. He noted users don't download software: They just click
the "Call" button and are automatically making a phone call through
their computer using Flash. Aylarov said sound quality is paramount
with VOIP services, and Zingaya's software supports a wide range of
technologies, including TCP and UDP protocols, acoustic echo
cancellation, adaptive jitter buffer, noise reduction, automatic gain
control and others.
The company has also developed software that provides optimized
performance for the service's main tasks, such as handling
signalization protocols and transcoding audio streams. Widgets can be
used on Windows, Mac and Linux systems, and Aylarov said Zingaya would
soon give Web developers API access for sites that want to make the
click-to-talk technology part of their service.
"Through the growth of Skype and now Google voice, consumers are
becoming increasingly accustomed to making phone calls from their
computer," said Aylarov. "We have created the first enterprise-grade,
highly scalable, secure, cross platform click-to-talk solution that
offers the best sound quality available today."
Click-to-call, which is also called click-for-talk or
click-to-dial, is a technology that converts Web traffic into voice
telephone connections using VOIP. A true CTC service offers immediate
voice connectivity in real time. This is in contrast to
click-to-callback, which is a CRM (customer relationship management)
technology that enables a person browsing a company's Website to leave
a phone number for a representative to call back. A CTC service can be
used with any computer that is connected to the Internet through a Web
browser.
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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