In my previous blogs entitled “IoT and VoIP Are Talking To Each Other” and “SMBs Making Work Lives Smarter in 2016,” it was reported that the Internet of Things is becoming essential in our every day work and personal lives and continues to evolve as speak.
It’s moving at such a fast clip, that those SMBs who are in the market to replace their landline telephone system with a VoiceOverIP service should only consider those, which include IoT functionality. The reason being is that if they don’t, they’ll be missing out on a much more robust VoIP experience for themselves and their staff members.
Synergy between two tech firms
Telzio’s cloud based, business grade VoIP service has had a long history of servicing the SMB market. They understand their needs and are always seeking out new innovative tech advancements to add to their arsenal of tools they can offer their clientele.
On March 2, they announced a partnership integration with Amazon and one of their latest IoT devices. The Echo is a speaker unit that reacts to voice commands, such as answering questions, playing music and controlling other smart devices. With this successful interface, Telzio customers can now talk to Alexa, the Voice of Echo from anywhere in the world hands-free – without the need for the physical device present.
Echo and Telzio easing SMBs work loads
In this informative and humorous YouTube video, Telzio’s cofounder and chief executive officer, Peter Rank Schrøder offers up a first-hand sneak peak at just how easy it is for users to communicate with Alexa while on-the-go. They can add items to your “To Do” list and turn off their lights at home, just by hitting two buttons on their smart phone, namely: ‘star and zero’ (*0).
Amazon Echo from anywhere
Additional Echo tasks include finding weather forecasts, checking on traffic reports, obtaining sports scores, ordering products from Amazon and even the ability to reserve your next Uber pick-up or your next Domino’s pizza order.
Telzio and Echo working together also provide users with hands-free voice control for Amazon Music, Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. And, you can also stream other popular music services like iTunes from your phone or tablet.
There are many additional uses for Echo for SMBS that so far Amazon has not advertised, suffice to say the specs on their Amazon store page note: “Always getting smarter and adding new features and skills – over 100 added since launch.”
Alerting you to pressing issues in real time is a useful feature. Items such as prompting Echo to follow a user’s news topics, and their Twitter and Facebook feeds (with keyword searches) can be requested at different intervals throughout the day. It can also be set to sort through one’s emails, either by sender or key words or both.
In the new IoT world, your smart office will have many devices with will communicate with each other, which is a perfect opportunity for Echo to act as ‘command central’ in coordinating all of those communication exchanges.
For instance, you can tell Echo you’re quitting work for the day, and as soon as the door closes the lights go out, the computers go to sleep, and the door locks behind you. When you return the next day, the reverse can occur. Now, how cool is that?
From Telzio’s perspective
“The Amazon Echo is one of the best new smart devices to hit the market in years,” said Schrøder. “Within a few days, we were able to go from ideation to a live deployment integration where our customers were talking to the Echo through Telzio.”
With these two state-of-the-art companies partnering, Telzio has made the Echo portable and accessible, adding greater utility and value for both work and home use.
“The Echo device isn’t something you can easily take around with you,” added Schrøder.
“We wanted to enable the owners of the Echo to get more use out of it, and enable them to use Alexa from anywhere. Given Telzio is based in Los Angeles and Angelinos spend so much time in their cars, the integration was another way to derive greater value from the Echo, and to further differentiate Telzio from the sameness trap seen in most VoIP companies,” added Schrøder.
Start having Alexa talk back to you today
Normally if you were to purchase the actual Amazon Echo device for your office from Amazon directly, you would be spending on upwards of $180, at the going rate.
Now, when users subscribe to Telzio’s VoIP service, they can connect with their Amazon Echo not only ‘hands-free,’ but also free of charge as part of Telzio’s attractive bundled service. New customers can sign up now at Telzio.com with one of their flexible plans which include all features, plus you’ll be able to start dishing out orders to Alexa on Day One!