Exotel Product Updates: Enhancing Communication Solutions | July 2024

Exotel is a leading provider of AI transformation to enterprises for customer engagement and experience, continues to innovate and enhance its offerings to meet businesses’ dynamic needs. In July 2024, Exotel introduced several significant updates to improve communication workflow efficiency, flexibility, and security. This blog highlights the key product updates and features shipped in June, providing a detailed look at how they benefit businesses.

WhatsApp Authentication Templates

Exotel has introduced WhatsApp authentication templates, a powerful tool for sending One-Time Passwords (OTPs) and delivery codes. These templates offer several key features:

• Code & Preset Text: Customizable templates that include both the OTP code and preset text to ensure clarity and consistency.
• Security Disclaimers: Automatic inclusion of security disclaimers to enhance user trust.
• Expiry Warnings: Notifications for the expiry of OTPs to ensure timely usage.
• Buttons for Convenience: Options for one-tap autofill, zero-tap, and copy code to streamline the user experience.

These templates significantly enhance security, user experience, and flexibility, making it easier for businesses to implement secure authentication processes.

ECC Data Center Configurations

Exotel has introduced native support for Exotel’s Legs Platform, enabling businesses with inbuilt telephony failovers, streaming and a host of other features. Legs Platform Data Centers (DCs) can now be configured directly into the Contact Center, enabling- 

• DC Creation and Mapping: The ability to create and manage DC connections and allocate DIDs to each configured DCUser  Mapping: Map users to Data Centers to optimize connections and costs and ensure TRAI compliance
• DID Configuration: Map DIDs to particular campaigns to improve connectivity so that the configured number(s) appear on the customer’s caller ID.

These configurations help businesses control costs, increase connectivity, and ensure compliance with data management regulations, providing greater flexibility in deployment.

Contact Centre Features

Exotel has also introduced updates on contact centre features designed to improve business operations and enhance customer interactions.

→ Voice Toolbar Enhancements

The voice toolbar has been enhanced with new functionalities for manual notification triggers. Key features include:

• Configurable Templates: Templates can be uploaded once and then enabled for each individual campaign
• Configurable Channels: The ability to configure different communication channels to send notifications across SMS, Whatsapp and Email
• Notification Previews: Preview notifications before sending to ensure accuracy and relevance.

The feature enables your agents to service various use cases, during or after the call with the customer, such as sharing documents, links, appointment confirmations, product collaterals etc.

→ Manual SMS from Voice Toolbar

A new feature allows for manual SMS triggering directly from the voice toolbar. This feature includes:

• Template Selection: Choose from pre-defined SMS templates.
• Customisable Messages: Tailor messages to specific customer needs.
• Immediate Sending: Send messages during or after calls for timely communication.

This feature enhances communication capabilities, allowing for more personalized and efficient customer interactions.

WebRTC Geo Location

Exotel has added a failover feature to ensure optimum connectivity over WebRTC or browser-based callsr. This feature offers:

• Geolocation-based Routing: Automatically routes calls based on the agent’s and customer’s geographical location.
• GeoLocation Failover- Agents will automatically connect to secondary servers (usually over a secondary site) in case the primary media server is down.
• Reduced Latency: Ensures high-quality connections with minimal delays.
• Operational Cost Reduction: Optimizes call routing to reduce operational expenses.

This enhancement improves reliability and ensures seamless communication between agents and customers, providing a better overall experience.

Disaster Recovery (DR)

To support business continuity, Exotel has introduced basic disaster recovery (DR) features. These features include:

• Config Management through Git: Manage configurations using Git for version control and collaboration.
• Selective Replication: Choose specific data and configurations for replication to the DR site.
• Replication via RSync: Efficient data replication using RSync to ensure data integrity and availability.

These DR features enable rapid deployment, cost control, and enhanced recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO), ensuring businesses can maintain operations during unforeseen disruptions.

Unlike regular DR setups, Exotel DR can be scaled to full operational and functional capacity.

Tenant-wise Storage Configuration for Archived Call Recordings (VLA)

Exotel has introduced new features for tenant-wise storage configurations, offering more control and flexibility for businesses. Key features include:

• Tenant-level Configuration: Configure storage settings at the tenant level for better management.
• Near Real-time Call Recording Export: Export call recordings in near real-time for compliance and analysis.
• Multi-tenancy Support: Support for multiple tenants within a single system, ensuring efficient resource utilization.

These features allow businesses to manage storage requirements effectively, control costs, and improve compliance and analytics.

This feature further enables the ability for each Public Cloud (Emerge/ Engage) customer to archive these recordings in a location of their choice, for the duration they desire, further boosting compliance and cost savings.

Alignment and Programs

Exotel is committed to aligning its future enhancements with customer needs and industry trends. Key programs include:

• Enhanced Security Measures: Continuously improving security features to protect user data.
• Customer Feedback Integration: Incorporating customer feedback to refine and enhance products.
• Partnerships and Integrations: Building partnerships and integrations with other platforms to provide a seamless experience.

Conclusion

Exotel’s commitment to innovation and excellence is evident in the recent product updates and features introduced in June 2024. From enhanced communication tools to robust disaster recovery options, these updates provide businesses with the tools they need to thrive in an ever-evolving digital landscape. Stay tuned for more exciting developments as Exotel continues to pave the way for seamless and efficient communication solutions.