If you lived on an island that had only one bridge that connected you to the mainland for all of your food, water, and supplies, you would want find backup solutions in the event that the bridge was knocked out of service. You might get a boat, or a plane, but the most stable solution would be a a second bridge that connected you to another island. With SD-WAN and a second internet connection, we are basically doing the same thing.

Five years ago, only large business and enterprise customers had redundant networks and internet connections, because the monthly cost and the equipment and service was way to high for small and medium-sized businesses. Now, all of that has changed, and we recommend that all of our clients consider implementing SD-WAN and a second internet connection regardless of size.  

SD-WAN makes your business more resilient

With the rise of Office365, Google G Suite, and everything other cloud-based services you're using in your business, it is more important than ever to have have strong and reliable connections. SD-WAN allows you to have multiple Internet connections, ideally from two different providers,  managed by modern SD-WAN routers that don't require you to do anything. SD-WAN is the safest, most reliable, redundant, disaster-recovery-enabled Internet-access management scheme for business.

We help our customers find solutions that make their business more efficient and/or more resilient to interruptions in business. We with within our client's budgets, which sometimes means we recommend dual, less-expensive broadband Internet connections rather than one expensive connection, or finding savings in other areas to beef up your internet reliability. 

SD-WAN budgets are within your reach

Typically we see SD WAN pricing from a number of providers start around $130/month and business internet connections (cable, DSL, etc) around $100/month. So for under $500/month, you could have redundancy and reliability that will allow your business to operate, even if there is an issue happening with one of the providers.

You can self-manage SD-WAN without being an expert

One of the neat things about SD WAN is it is pretty much plug and play out of the box.  We set it up, you plug in your internet connection(s) and the box does the rest. It will automatically route traffic across the best path, so that you don't have to touch anything. You can be notified when a connection is down (or having issues), so that it can be reported to the carrier, but most likely your users won't be impacted. This is huge for businesses that need to have everything up and working all the time, like medical offices, sales organizations, or...just about every other business that is out there.

I have only one small office, why do I need it?

If your office uses services on the internet such as hosted phone service, accounting, video conferencing, or any other web service that you need access to throughout the day, then the internet is your lifeline. If that lifeline is cut, you are left calling into customer service and hoping that they aren't having a larger issue that is affecting multiple customers. Because when that happens, customers calling in about problems with their $80/month service do not get the highest priority.  It is better to plan redundancy across different carriers and across different types of Internet connections.

Should I just buy SD WAN from my phone company?

We evaluate the options on a case-by-case basis. In general, we like the idea of having multiple connections from DIFFERENT service providers, using DIVERSE transport connections (such as copper, coax cable, fiber, or wireless).  If you have two connections, both coming into your building on the same copper cable and riding in the same conduit, provided by the same carrier, you haven't really bought yourself any redundancy.

If you would like to talk about implementing SD-WAN and a second internet connection, or anything else we offer, please schedule a virtual meeting below.

We often get asked to, "send me a one-pager about what you do". Since we do a lot of things within the business communications and IT segments, I decided to put together a quick "menu" of services that will hopefully help you better understand what we can help with. If you need something else, we can probably help you find a solution for that as well.  Here are some of the main issues we can help with:

Connectivity
Internet, MPLS, Fiber, Coax, Wireless
Business connectivity from over 150 carriers nationwide to provide internet access and to connect locations together.   

• Get competitive quotes for Internet and/or MPLS.
• Add redundant connections.
• Save money on current connections.
• ​Have us manage it all.

TEM
Telecom Expense Management
Manage all of your spending, contracts, tickets, quote requests, and more for all of your telecom services. 

• Your entire telecom inventory in one easy to use location.
• Save money by eliminating over-spending and waste.
• Easily view and manage telecom services and contracts.
• Easy process for dealing with mobile devices and plans.

SD Wan
Software Defined Wide Area Network
Make the internet better, view and manage what is using up your internet, connect multiple offices, and get notifications and reports on how your connections and network are performing.  

• Connect locations together without a big IT staff at a low cost.
• Easily add redundant Internet you can use.
• Manage what's eating up bandwidth on your network.
• See how your connections are performing in real-time.

Mobile/Wireless
Mobile Phones, Devices, Plans
Aggregate your spending across multiple carriers, easily review and manage your usage to help reduce and avoid overage charges. 

•    Need to save money on mobile phones, devinces and plans?
•    Want to manage usage and spending across the company?
•    Like have support for ordering and replacing devices?
•    Like to lock down end-user devices when accessing the network?

UCaaS
Unified Communications as a Service
Hosted phone systems that easily allows employees to work from home or the office.  Low cost, easy to deploy, with tons of features that let you setup your offices however you like and easily connect your employees from anywhere.

• Move to hosted solution for work from home?
• Quickly and easily allow people to work from home?
• Save money on managing and updating premise-based system?​

CCaaS
Contact Center as a Service
Hosted Call Center seats and solutions that allow you have a simple or complex group of agents with the ability to make and/or receive calls as well as use advanced routing technologies such as "bots", "speech analytics", "skills-based routing", and more to maximize productivity and minimize costs.

• Setup a contact center or replace your existing one.
• Add features and functionality to your group.
• See real-time activity and reporting on agents.
• Reduce costs associated with contact center.

Misc
We have a wide range of products and services from hundreds of providers across the country and 

• Office365 and GSuite licenses setup and support?
• Billing and support for all of your Office365 and GSuite needs and projects.
• Telehealth "in a box" that allows doctors to connect with their patients using a provided tablet device, blood pressure cuff, heart rate monitor, and more.  It allows them to voice or video chat with the doctor or nurse and allows them to monitor their health remotely.

We have heard from businesses across the country complaining that their internet connections at home and the office are horrible during the quarantine. Poor internet access is affecting their ability to communicate with customers and be productive while working from home. Salespeople and technicians from competing providers are quick to tell you that if you switch to their service, everything will be better.  However, depending on the CAUSE of your issues, switching providers may not solve the problem. City Communications is here to help you get to the root of your issues and implement a real solution.

What Problems Are You Experiencing?

Internet Bouncing Up and Down

• Check with the provider to make sure they aren't having over-subscription or equipment issues on their end.
• Add a redundant connection such as Cable, DSL, Fiber, Wireless, or whatever is available within your budget and aggregate them together using SD WAN. 
• Check internet connections at every point between where they come in from the provider and where they terminate.  Make sure that the wires are plugged in and connected tightly.  Make sure that there are no kinks, breaks, or places where you cat may have chewed on it.  Intermittent issues are sometimes the result of loose wiring.
• Reboot your modem, router, etc.  Sometimes rebooting equipment can clear issues.
• Once you have eliminated any issues on your end, and the connection is still bad and the carrier isn't able to fix it, then we might need to look at replacing the provider (depending on what options are available).

Poor Call Quality

• Make sure that voice traffic is prioritized over internet traffic and streaming services such as Netflix, Xbox, etc.  We can do this easily using SD WAN.
• Check the quality of the connection including the amount of "jitter" and "latency".  If it is a carrier issue, then we might consider other options or supplementing it with a secondary connection and SD WAN.
• Check with the phone provider to make sure they aren't showing any issues on their side.  It is rare that the hosted VOIP provider is the issue, but it is worth eliminating that as the reason.  If it is part of the problem, we have a number of other options for you to consider.

Poor Video Conferencing 

• Make sure that the video traffic is prioritized after your voice traffic and before all other internet and streaming services.
• Check the quality of the connection including the amount of "jitter" and "latency".  If it is a carrier issue, then we might consider other options or supplementing it with a secondary connection and SD WAN.
• Some of the conferencing services have been performing better during the pandemic than others.  We have access to all of them and can help you get into the right solution.

If you are having any of these issues with your business or work-from-home employees and would like our expert help, schedule a FREE Virtual Meeting below with one of our specialists.  With solutions available from our over 150 providers, we can help you alleviate the issues for good. Contact us today to discuss your situation. 

Everyone has been impacted by the shutdown and we are receiving tons of calls from customers asking what they can do to reduce their monthly expenses.  Here are the top 7 things that we are doing right now.  Contact us today to discuss your situation and how we might be able to help you out.  Or get started by completing the FREE Technology Assessment.

1.  Request credits and/or relief from vendors.  If you are in a business that is shut down right now, many of the carriers are rolling out linkprograms and processes for suspending charges or giving credits during the shutdown.

2.  Do a FREE CityCare Technology Assessment (currently offered for FREE).  The assessment will allow us to look at all of your services and make recommendations will reduce your costs while meeting your needs now and after the shutdown.  Start the Assessment Now.

3.  Telecom Expense Management.  We have a few great TEM (Telecom Expense Management) options that allow are a great way for organizations to save money by having all of their invoices automatically loaded into the system, analyzed, and even paid.  Typically the cost is 2-4% of your monthly spend, but the savings found from unneeded services, billing errors, accounting time, and more will typically yield a 10-15% return.   

4.  Migrate to an SD WAN network.  If you are using MPLS or private line connections to connect your offices and people, we should look at moving your to an SD WAN network.  You can use cheaper connections, have more visibility and control, and best of all it is simple to deploy.  You can even add devices to some or all of your work-from-home employees to help them prioritize business traffic like phone calls and video calls over Netflix and Xbox streaming.  

5.  Migrate to a Hosted Phone System for your office workers and contact center personnel.  All of our providers are offering special incentives, low or no term agreements, and fast-start options to get your people connected and working from home.  Best of all, when the shutdown is over, you can continue to use the solutions in the office or at home.

6.  Consider Carrier Aggregation.  Some of our customers have found savings in switching carriers and/or aggregating their services with one of our carrier aggregators.  Typically you can aggregate things like:  Broadband Internet, POTs lines, and mobile devices and plans.   

7.  Review cell phone and mobile device options.  It is painful to migrate everyone over to a new carrier with new devices.  We can do it if your current carrier(s) aren’t working for you, or we can look at one of our aggregation carriers that will help you set limits, manage usage plans, and handle upgrading and replacing devices.  The service typically pays for itself and then some, by reducing overages and soft-cost time of dealing with all of it.  You can also lock down devices to only be used for business applications as we continue to evolve in this work-from-home environment.

City Communications can be a resource for dealing with the mandated work-from-home situation that we all face.  Many clients are scrambling around to implement a new strategy or shore up the one that they had in place.  Below are a few of the things that we might be able to help with:
​
Video Conferencing Meetings Collaboration
We have a number of stand-alone solutions available including:  Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts,  If you have (or are interested in) a hosted phone solution, many of them include a conferencing option with the seats. We work with top companies such as:  FluentStream, CityHosted, Nextiva, 8x8, Jive, and many more.  There is a ton of promotions out right now and a lot of support.

Work-from-home Kits
We also have some providers that can provide turnkey solutions to working from home for your employees.  The solutions could include:  mobile wifi devices and plans, tablet devices, laptops, etc.  Even more important is the fact that they can configure them and lock them down so that your employees are only using them for work functions and not other stuff.  They can be pre-configured and dropshipped to your employees for an easy touch-free deployment.  Typically there is a minimum of 25 devices for this type of service.  

Contact Center
We have a number of solutions that would allow you to turn up a new group of agents working from home using their own internet connections while still giving you visibility, reporting, and remote listen and barge capabilities.

Backup and Restore
As we are having more people work from home, it is more critical to make sure that you have your services backed up and that they are easy to restore if you have a user accidentally (or intentionally) delete files.  We have a number of providers that can help you with the configurations and policies necessary to work in a remote environment. 
​
Bandwidth for VPN, MPLS, or SD-WAN
If you have an existing solution extending your local network, you may find that it was not built to have 100% of your employees working remotely.  If you need to upgrade your current bandwidth or add additional redundant connections, we can help.


If there is anything else that you are working on that I might be able to help with, please let us know.  We would be happy to help try and run down a solution for you.

So many of us are navigating how to remain working and keep ourselves safe (and do the right thing for the greater society). When face with any of the three significant business impacts of our new working reality, there are numerous technologies and services (sometimes free or low-cost programs) to help you.

1. A sudden shift to remote work. When you allow employees to work from home, you need to provide them with the business communications tools (remote extensions off your business phone system, collaboration tools, file-sharing files, secure remote computing, and desktop video conferencing) they need to do their jobs?
2. A sudden spike in volume. Some businesses - specifically companies with customer service or support call center - are experiencing massive peaks in demand. How do they scale their communications infrastructure to handle new traffic? Do you run your call center on premise-based equipment? How do you expand it? Could you add cloud capacity to expand your agent workforce? Do you need to connect with an outsources? Want to explore automation (self-help IVR and AI tools) that can take some of the load? 
3. Sudden contraction of the business. Unfortunately, the Coronavirus pandemic is going to hurt some companies. And any potential economic downturn or recession could cause us all to take a close look at our expenses. Some of the biggest challenges businesses face in downturns is managing the costs of critical infrastructure while at the same time, maintaining vital service levels. You may need to review contracts, turn down services, change the types of service you use to ones that work better in your new reality.

​​
We are available to help you.  All of City Communications is available to help you.
​
Call us, email us, or request a 30-minute call with us about anything related to your communications, remote-worker, call-center, or expense management concerns. We're here to help.

Call Us at (800) 289-1828
​or

With the recent concerns about the impact of Coronavirus on businesses of all shapes and sizes, we have been getting calls and emails from customers asking what they could do now to prepare.  We put together a few things that you can do to help your employees continue to be productive while working at home, and to minimize any impacts to your business or customers while they are working at home.

Get a Hosted Phone System
Hosted phone systems allow you to plug your phones into the internet and work from anywhere.  You might use it for your entire organization or just a specific group such as customer service, sales, or a contact center.  We represent a wide range of hosted phone providers and can help you find the solution that meets your needs and fits your budget.  New systems can be implemented in as soon as 2-4 weeks.

Have a Call Center?
If you have an existing call center, your agents are often working in close proximity to each other and therefore potentially more at risk of community spread.  We recommend setting up a least a few work-from-home seats set up in a queue and then be able to point traffic to the queue for any agents that you will have working at home.  We have a number of providers that can handle this type of situation with out needing to replace your existing call center solution.  The cost per agent is typically under $50/month/agent and will allow you a viable solution should you need it.   

Already have a Hosted Phone System from CityHosted?
1.  Download Mobile App
Each employee that may be working at home can download the the Mobile app to use on their mobile devices or computer.  This will allow them to continue to make and receive calls as if they were in the office and also to be part of hunt groups and queues. 

2.  Bring Phones Home
Employees can take their hosted phones with them and plug them into their home broadband connection.  They will need to power the phones by plugging them into a PoE (Power Over Ethernet) adapter or an AC power adapter.  If you need to purchase additional power adapters, please contact your sales rep.  Most brands are approximately $25 per adapter.

3.  Order Additional Phones
Some employees may want to have a phone at the office and one at the house rather than bring their exisitng phone back and forth.  Their phone number can then be setup to ring both phones so that regardless of where they are, they are still connected.

Hopefully you won’t be impacted, but we want to be prepared in case you are.  Please let us know if there is anything else you need help with including internet access, wireless access, networking offices together, and more. 

Are you trying to figure out how to leverage AI for your organization or select the best solution?  If you are, I think I can help.

Here's what can AI do for you?

1. Automate Customer Care- The goal with any AI/Bot project is to have a system that can assist (automate) as many customer interactions or processes as possible. The more interactions that can be automated, the higher the return on investment in the technology. Our AI solution has achieved automation levels as high as 96% (in this case, two-way chat conversations between customers and the company) and the average is over 80%. That's an industry record!
2. Reduce Average Handle Time- By blending AI and agent conversations, companies have been able to reduce AHT by over 60%.
3. CSAT Improvement- Clients have seen up to 300% improvement in customer satisfaction going from a 1.8 to a 4.6 on a five point scale.
4. Intelligent NLP- with effective response rates as high as 92%. 
5. Predictive Analytics-  AI’s language understanding ensures you're delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time. Predictive Analytics are ensuring your team has the best outcome from the beginning. 
6. AI Analytics - A plug-and-play AI model that understands business logic to offer insights into the elements that drive the most engagement. Test assumptions, explore options, and drive optimization for your business

City Communications has an AI partner that has consistently delivered the industry's leading results. Their team comes from Google, Oracle, Amazon, and are award winning CX leaders with proven case studies in conversational commerce, customer service, and consumer sentiment understanding, to deliver meaningful results.  Their success comes from experience as does ours and they have processed +20 billion messages that align enterprise or SMB objectives with effective AI for companies like Netflix, Facebook, Toyota and Capital One. The ‘smart’ system delivers tangible results by taking care of the integration entirely or turning your team into AI experts.  So why not talk to the Experts?

And the best thing is our partner can easily implement a low cost pilot into your existing infrastructure in four to six weeks!

Schedule a meeting to discuss your current environment and see how we can work together on any of your upcoming projects.  

Tuesday, June 25th
8:00pm-11:00pm
Mirage VIP Suite
Las Vegas, NV


If you are attending Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas, come join us in our luxury suite in The Mirage for a VIP Cocktail Social.  AND Agency, City Communications, and Assero Security, are hosting this VIP, invite-only, event.  Enjoy free cocktails and snacks, peer networking in a casual environment.

Please RSVP below to be added to the guest list. You will be entered to win a $25 Starbucks Gift Card just for registering, even if you do not attend the VIP Social.

For attendees, there will be drawings and winners will receive Amazon Gift Cards, Starbucks Gift Cards and other exciting prizes.

We will email and text you the exact Suite # when it gets assigned to us at check-in.
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Not currently registered for CCW? 
Register today and get an additional 20% off your pass when you use the code 20CCW_PACE.

Can't make it?
If this time doesn't work for you, let's make sure and touch base regardless.  Simply fill out the form with some days and times that would work for you so we can discuss any upcoming projects you have.

When we build scopes of work for client projects, Artificial Intelligence (AI) inevitably comes up. It’s typically phrased as a requirement. “Any new system must use AI.” But what exactly does "It has to have AI" mean? 

​What makes an AI-powered technology special in comparison to other software programs is that it can ‘think’ for itself. ​In business, AI is being used to enhance and supplement human interaction between customers and businesses; to provide automated self-help in customer support and service centers, to create a web or chat-based sales platform, to mine data sets and provide the kind of rich intelligence a business can act on.  

​Just like any computer program, AI receives input, and then does what it’s programmed to do with that input, and creates an output. Type the word ‘hello’ on your keyboard into a word-processing application (input), and ‘hello’ appears in a document on your screen wherever your cursor was at the time (output). The difference between AI and a standard computer program is that standard computer programs require their input to conform to the rigid structures it has been programmed to expect. AI can take input that doesn’t follow a strict set of rules and first interpret it into something meaningful, then execute against that understanding. Think of how you interact with Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant versus a phone menu where you have to press a number key to select an option. That's AI.

​AI is so powerful because rather than it being a single software program called AI with limited capabilities, the technology is a set of computing capabilities that when bundled together create the simulated natural interaction experience. 

​These key AI components allow integration into present systems and also can work independently to create the capabilities Call Centers are looking for today. 

​Here’s a summary:

​Natural Language Processing/Natural Language Understanding - Natural Language Processing (NLP) is just as it sounds; computing technology that takes input from a human being, in the form of speech or text, and interprets its meaning into something useful. Making NLP computing work involves recognizing speech, understanding natural language, and being able to generate natural language responses. Allowing customers to navigate automated self-help using commands in their natural language rather than have to follow strict response rules is an example of NLP in the business AI stack. 

Sentiment Analysis - Sentiment Analysis detects, classifies and analyzes the tone, wording, volume, pitch and other characteristics of a human speech (voice or text). Sentiment analysis is widely used in the contact center world to analyze recorded calls between customers and agents for quality assurance and training purposes. Sentiment analysis is also being used to drive routing and service decisions during live interactions (transfer callers who are exhibiting frustration with an automated system to a live agent, for example). 

Machine Learning – Straight from Wikipedia: Machine learning (ML) is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models computer systems use to effectively perform a specific task without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. Machine learning algorithms build a mathematical model based on sample data, known as training data, in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform the task. AI is fed examples of interaction to follow, then ‘learns’ the most successful responses so it can achieve greater and greater success at handling the interaction.

Object Recognition - Object recognition allows the camera (and other sensors) on any device to recognize and categorize objects. It is the genesis of facial and fingerprint recognition. Human beings are object and pattern-recognition machines; we can recognize all kinds of objects without much effort, even objects in differing conditions, lighting, orientation, distance, motion, etc. Computers equipped with cameras and other sensors can ‘see’ objects, but still struggle to interpret what they’re seeing. Object Recognition is a discipline in computer science that tackles this challenge, a vital component to replicating natural human interaction in the AI stack.

Augmented and Virtual Reality – Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive computing experience laid over the top of a real-world environment. Objects that reside in the actual-world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information. Imagine pointing your phone’s camera at a shopping high street and seeing offers and deals floating above the shops in view. Virtual reality is a fully-immersive simulated environment that replaces the real world. Both are being used in the AI stack to create richer digital interaction experiences for customers. 

​We hope this brief rundown of the computing power that’s driving the business AI revolution has been helpful. Next, we’ll walk you through products and services that are available now through our vendor partners so you can leverage the AI stack to create all kinds of automated workflows. 

If you’ve been contemplating the implementation of AI technology into your contact center, contact us at City Communications. We can help you make the right decisions to maximize your return on investment and explore new technologies for your contact center