Global Voice for Zoom: Enhancing International Telecom for Zoom Enterprise and Contact Center Customers
It’s no secret that Zoom has grown to great heights when it comes to video and now even voice.
When reviewing the market for unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and contact center as a service (CCaaS), Zoom is now seen as a mainstay, recognized by Gartner as a leader in both categories.
With enterprise customers and small businesses alike on its books, Zoom is now dealing with complex global requirements that involve the entire telecoms estate.
Planning international voice for Zoom rollouts can be one of the most challenging aspects. This is the key area we focus on in this blog post. But first, let’s make sure we understand the background behind Zoom’s global enterprise communications growth.
Zoom's Evolving Ecosystem
Far from being merely the video conferencing tool of choice during the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom’s portfolio now boasts contact center functionality, its own email product, and even its own word processor.
Putting it to the likes of Microsoft and Google, some businesses now opt for Zoom as their single provider for all communications and collaboration services.
Traditional enterprise communication use cases
The rebranded Zoom Workplace portfolio now covers a wide range of collaboration functionality:
- Meetings
- Team Chat
- Phone (UCaaS)
- Mail & Calendar
- Scheduler
- Documents
- Whiteboard
- Clips (asynchronous video)
- Notes
- Rooms
- Workspace Reservation
- Digital Signage
- Visitor Management
- App Marketplace
- Employee Engagement
This extended portfolio brings Zoom into new conversations when it comes to using Zoom. While most existing customers use Meetings as their primary product, and now over seven million users use Zoom Phone too, there are more complex requirements in play.
Zoom is now a fully-fledged UCaaS provider, billing for phone licenses, calling minutes, and even meeting room real estate. The use case has evolved from providing online meetings to being a single provider for internal communications and external calling.
Then there’s also the CCaas feature set to consider…
Zoom's expansion into CCaaS
Zoom’s “Business Services” portfolio includes the products that serve external customers.
The portfolio includes:
-
- Contact Center
- Virtual Agent
- Workforce Engagement
- Events
- Sessions
- Webinars
- Revenue Accelerator
- APIs and SDKs
While running online events remains somewhat popular, it’s the contact center side of this portfolio that’s really taken off.
In May 2024, Zoom reported a 246% year-over-year increase in CCaaS deals, worth $100,000 in annual recurring revenue.
This is thanks, in no small part, to the rise in popularity of multichannel customer service.
UCaaS and CCaaS as One?
With both UCaaS and CCaaS implementations under its belt, Zoom now enables contact center agents to stay in a single app environment, reducing the number of app switches per day.
Enterprises are now looking at the potential benefits of having a single provider to support both their contact center and business communications needs. (Some industry influencers are even referencing this combination of UCaaS and CCaaS applications on a single platform as ‘MultiCaaS’.)
The blending of these standalone tools to make one super tool, alongside Zoom’s vast contact center portfolio, now sees support for the following channels:
- Internal comms (UCaaS)
- Voice
- Video
- SMS
- Web Chat
- Meta Messaging
With these options to extend customer experience, combined with its extensive collaboration portfolio, Zoom is being considered by more organizations for CCaaS.
Voice Connectivity Options for Zoom
When rolling out a new CCaaS platform, however, it’s important to get the core things right. And there is nothing more core to the contact center than voice. that you must get the voice connectivity right upfront. Making the right choice for your voice solution can optimize your global sales and service capabilities, and conversely, a change in-flight often means downtime and reworking in processes.
Let’s explore the voice connectivity options for Zoom Contact Center.
There are three voice connectivity options for Zoom:
- Zoom native calling
- Zoom’s carrier program
- Third-party carriers with integrations
Zoom native calling
If you’re going all-in on Zoom (Phone and Contact Center), your first option is for Zoom to provide voice connectivity. This means you have a single bill for your UCaaS and CCaaS infrastructure and a unified SLA.
Benefits of Zoom’s native calling
- Single bill for voice and contact center
- Global, trusted brand
- Benefit from bundled pricing
- Unified SLA for voice and contact center
Zoom Phone provides domestic PSTN calling in 45 countries, with some restrictions that must be noted.
For example, in Australia and China, Zoom can only provide metered calling. It should also be noted that emergency services dialing is not supported in these locations either.
Here is a list of the countries that Zoom fully supports its native calling option.
| North America | Latin America | EMEA | Asia-Pacific |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States (including Puerto Rico), Canada | Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru | Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom | Hong Kong SAR, New Zealand, Singapore |
For countries not covered by Zoom, it relies on providers on its carrier program.
2. Zoom's carrier program
The bring your own carrier (BYOC) program opens up the global voice options for Zoom. Like Microsoft’s Operator Connect program, this initiative enables customers to keep their existing calling provider.
Supported providers include:
- Rogers
- Verizon
- Telstra
- BT
- Bandwidth
- AT&T
- CenturyLink
- Telefonica
- Vodafone
- T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom)
- Telecom Italia
- Tata
- Singtel
- NTT
Choosing this route to enable global voice for Zoom means you benefit from existing call discounts and bundles, while benefiting from Zoom’s CCaaS features.
You can choose to connect your carrier via the public cloud or private cloud. Administration happens in the Zoom admin center, with any supplier portals still available.
3. Third-party carriers with integrations
For countries not supported, or not fully supported by Zoom or its carrier program, choose a third-party carrier with a certified integration for Zoom.
By establishing SIP forwarding between Zoom’s cloud infrastructure and the third party, carriers can create a direct connection between voice provider and Zoom.
Using such a carrier means you get global support in the regions that can’t traditionally be reached by native calling or partners on the Zoom carrier program.
Without the help of a third party, options are limited to:
- Not using Zoom Contact Center.
- Configuring expensive, unsupported calling plans.
- Creating a workaround that hops between countries, introducing unnecessary performance issues.
Choosing the Right Voice Solution for Your Zoom Setup
To make the right choice for your Zoom voice connectivity, there are three major criteria in play:
- Size and global reach: Large businesses with complex routing requirements across multiple countries may need to carefully assess how they can most efficiently meet their coverage needs.. Small, single location businesses are often best suited to native calling if their coverage requirements are met by Zoom
- Balancing cost and functionality: When opting for the most economical solution, this may restrict plans for expansion and the types of customer experiences you can provide.
- Importance of scalability and flexibility: If you hire remote employees, acquire a business in a new location, or open a new office, you need the ability to add “more of the same” rather than buying a new solution that operates standalone and is disconnected from the rest of your business.
AVOXI's Integration with Zoom
SIP forwarding to Zoom provides a simple solution for companies to take advantage of AVOXI’s global voice coverage and exceptional call quality while operating out of their Zoom solution.
You can now route and receive external calls from over 150 countries to any SIP-enabled application.
AVOXI provides voice connectivity for Zoom in all the countries detailed here.
Aside from simply being available in these locations, AVOXI voice connectivity ensures Zoom users benefit from:
- Month-to-month contracts with no long-term commitments.
- Competitive pricing, even in hard-to-reach locations.
- Flexible voice bundles based on usage volume.
- Built-in fraud monitoring.
- Real-time traffic metrics.
- 24/7 customer support.
- Automatic failover.
Zoom customers can benefit from AVOXI’s established network of tier-one carriers to ensure redundant and high-quality voice call routing. Without the hassle of managing multiple carriers, you gain access to an expanded global network.
AVOXI’s long-term relationship with carriers in local markets means you are getting the best possible rates. Our integration with Zoom means it’s a simple setup that’s fully managed end-to-end.
Use Cases for AVOXI's Zoom Integration
Enterprise communications
Generally, the larger the business, the more calls you make both internally and externally.
Internally, these may be on-net or via different landlines to colleagues in different offices or countries. The consolidation of internal calling onto the same global network drives significant quality improvements and cost savings when you’re making calls at scale.
Externally, every telecom issue and call comes with an associated resource or financial cost. By having a single provider like AVOXI managing your global voice, these costs can be streamlined, and troubleshooting issues for enterprise users can be minimized
Sales teams
Global sales teams need to call prospects and customers all over the world. There can’t be restrictions on when and how teams make calls. This would put the entire sales process up in the air and both productivity and revenue generation would suffer.
To build as much trust with prospects and customers as possible, sales teams need outbound calling features like caller ID compatible with the locations they’re tasked with prospecting. Likewise, they must be supported by relevant country restrictions. Even the smallest contradiction can cause the sales machine to come to a grinding halt.
When on calls, or when receiving callbacks, you can’t understate the importance of premium call quality. This covers both the excellent voice clarity and no drops in connection (regardless of the distance between caller and salesperson) as well as supporting the full feature set of contact center features like auto attendant, automatic queue callbacks, and custom routing.
Contact centers and expert use cases
SIP forwarding provides a more affordable solution for call forwarding because you aren’t charged the typical termination rates related to PSTN or mobile termination. This makes AVOXI’s third-party integration for Zoom particularly desirable for small businesses.
It also provides the flexibility for occasional contact center needs. By only paying for bundles based on usage, and subscribing on a month-to-month basis, there are no upfront charges or long-term contracts to navigate.
If you need to add more contact center agents to cope with seasonality, you have the voice network ready to handle anything you throw at it.
Key Features of AVOXI's Zoom Integration
AVOXI offers two way voice services across many countries around the world. Some countries are local caller ID-capable for in-country services and others are appropriate for international caller ID service.
- With SIP trunking capabilities including high-quality voice, automatic failover, and genuinely international coverage, you’re best-placed for global rollouts at scale. You get unlimited concurrent calling so there’s no paying per SIP channel.
- AVOXI grants you access to a global number inventory. Add new and manage existing connections from a single platform.
- International compliance comes as standard. Benefit from AVOXI’s global partnerships, testing, and interoperability in every country.
- Complement Zoom Contact Center reporting with call analytics and reporting tools. Inclusive of MOS scoring, jitter, packet loss, and quality of service.
Getting Started with AVOXI for Zoom
If you’re implementing Zoom Contact Center and need truly global coverage, getting integrated is simple with AVOXI.
First off, we’ll book some time with our dedicated voice team to plan your requirements. Assuming we’re a good mutual fit, the project will start by gathering technical and business needs and formulating a network diagram for your future state.
From there, it’s all about numbers and connectivity. With a little input from you, we will take care of preparing the service ready for your go-live date.
We’re all about global quality. That’s global coverage and consistent quality across all your regions.
With coverage in over 150 countries, if you’ve been there, we’ve probably made a call there.
Ready to take Zoom Contact Center global? Learn more about our Zoom integration here.
