Cloudli wants to solve two small business call struggles

Business

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The company’s virtual system allows you to increase the ability to text and screen calls with customers to minimize interruptions.

Image: Andy Wolber/TechRepublic

Small businesses, freelancers, and solopreneurs often struggle with legacy landline systems or manage business communications from a personal smartphone. Relying on a traditional landline often means business people miss out on modern features like text messaging. And with spam phone calls these days, unwanted callers can distract you from serving customers.

See: Feature Comparison: Time Tracking Software and Systems (TechRepublic Premium)

Adopting a virtual communication solution like Cloudli can help you minimize interruptions and maximize customer relationships. Plus, if you’re still using a personal smartphone for work, switching to a virtual business phone system can make vacation easier.

Cloudli call display

Cloudli aims to stop spam calls with AI-powered call filtering. When activated, the system will ask for the caller’s name and reason for calling. The system converts the caller’s speech into text and provides the information to the Cloudli client, which can either answer the call or send it to voicemail.

Best of all, you can choose to filter all calls or just calls from people who aren’t already in your contact list. Screening all calls can make sense for businesses where most customer conversations are non-urgent: this allows you to speak with callers of your choice, while sending others to voicemail. Alternatively, you can configure the system to only display calls from contacts who are not in your contact list. This ensures that calls from people you know, such as customers, suppliers and colleagues, are always showing up as unknown callers. This configuration helps to significantly reduce the time wasted on calls from spammers, scammers and sales bots.

Business writing

Cloudli also supports business writing feature. Cloudly’s research shows that most people prefer to write than to speak. People at Cloudly Research love texting health and wellness organizations and personal care companies like salons, spas, and hair salons. Business texting can be a great way to schedule an appointment or answer questions.

You can send directly or to customer groups. One-to-one texting works as you’d expect: When a customer sends a text message, they can text back in a conversation thread – or vice versa. Cloudly offers message broadcasting, which allows you to send messages to a group of contacts at once. Then, when the contact replies, their message creates a one-on-one conversation between the contact and your company. Unlike a regular group chat, messaging allows you to text multiple customers at once and then continue the conversations individually.

Cloudly Business Text can also be configured with shared numbers, allowing your team members to respond to customers by phone or text. The application offers a unified conversation view, so team members can identify whether a text message is, for example, a number from the person who recently called.

Shipping, platforms and pricing

If you’re in Canada or the US, you can send your current phone number to Cloudli. This allows your business to benefit from call screening and business texting capabilities without having to change your phone number. Or you can choose to get a new US or Canadian number to use with Cloudli. Many small business owners, freelancers, and consultants who initially use a personal phone number for work find that as business expands, it makes sense to transition to a new work-only number.

Cloudli lets you speak and write across multiple platforms with apps available for iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows. Based on data from app stores, the Cloudli apps on macOS, iOS, and Android all seem to receive regular updates, with apps on Apple platforms generally rated higher than the Android app. Starting in mid-2022, people who want to use Cloudly on Windows will need to install Java.

A small business can start with Cloudli TalkNText plan, AI-powered call display, SMS, business text and shared phone numbers, for $10 per user per month.

The company provides communication solutions for large companies. Specifically, in June 2022, Cloudly announced the company’s acquisition of ConnectMeVoice, a business-focused provider of hosted VoIP, UCaaS and CCaaS offerings. Combined with a team of more than 80 employees and contractors, the Cloudi and ConnectMeVoice organization serves more than 8,000 North American customers. The company is owned by private equity firm CPS Capital and is headquartered in Montreal.

What is your experience?

If you own or manage a sole proprietorship or small business, what kind of phone and text messaging do you use? Do you find it helpful to communicate with clients through text? How do you screen or otherwise deal with scam calls during your day? Message or mention me on Twitter (@Awolber) to let you know what voice and text messaging you use in your small business.



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