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.