A journey that began more than a decade ago with the Telviva Cloud Phone Service — regarded as the most powerful business phone system in South Africa — has culminated with the arrival of the Telviva One unified communications (UC) platform to integrate voice, video and chat.

The development of Telviva One was fast-tracked to make it available as a free add-on to customers during the lockdown and allow them to give employees a more effective way of communicating when working remotely — by liberating users from their desk phones.

Telviva One creates a single Web destination that delivers an integrated experience for users in the truest sense of UC.

The lockdown has highlighted how voice is not only about making phone calls but delivering communication across the Internet and in collaborative work environments. The digitalisation of the process has seen it become about delivering a better call experience regardless of the device used.

With this in mind, Telviva has consolidated PBX services into the Telviva One service, which is a unified communications service that is available in two flavours:

Telviva One Essentials, which includes feature-rich cloud PBX; fixed-line extension; mobile extensions; and webphone; and
Telviva One Premium, which is available until 31 December for R159/user and inclusive of Telviva One Essential, plus video conferencing; cvalendar and contact integration into Microsoft and Google; and individual and group chat tool.

Looking ahead, we will soon be adding the Telviva Touchpoint website messaging tool to the Telviva One service. This will allow your customers to either text, talk or have a direct browser to enable visual engagement into your business.

Doing things differently

One of the key features is to move the office extension to the cloud. Not only does this deliver a richer user experience than what a traditional desk phone can provide, but it improves the reachability of employees.

Irrespective of where they are, they can now answer a call to their office number using Telviva One. From a cost perspective, there are significant savings to be had. Inter-extension calls now take place over the office network and do not use mobile minutes or rates. Some customers are saving at least 100 minutes per user per month with this feature.

Furthermore, the Telviva One contacts database system is integrated with Google Contacts and Microsoft Teams. This means that all the contacts on the mobile phone are available within the Telviva environment. And by linking that to the company directory and backend databases, users have access to a comprehensive contact list. Telviva One also features a visual voicemail system that delivers a more compelling way of listening to messages that might have otherwise been ignored.

Beyond voice, there is also chat functionality where users can have one-on-one engagements or general meetings with multiple people. It features capabilities for image and attachment sharing and is designed to help distributed teams come together more efficiently.

A new business environment

The lockdown has irrevocably changed the business landscape. It is now all about flexible working environments and giving people the tools that help them irrespective of their physical location. Central to this is having access to an environment where document collaboration, screen sharing, meetings and communication can be done with as little disruption as possible.

This is where Telviva One comes in. And because it is a locally developed product, customers can request new features to be integrated as their environments evolve, assuming it is practical to do so. Telviva One has been engineered to be a Web solution. This ensures users do not have to worry about installing an app. It is as easy as logging on to the website and they are good to go.

User success story

Telviva One has given me the ability to maintain contact with my customers during the lockdown. I love the integrated contacts and the chat and calendar integration. It allows me to not only communicate with my customers but also arrange meetings all from one place. Provided I have a stable Internet connection, I can work. My office goes with me and my laptop.

The lockdown has given us the ability to showcase the product in a way that we never could before. The meeting functionality is a huge bonus. I can have one-on-one meetings with customers, share my screen if I need to, do a product demo via the meeting, and maintain my customer engagements during the lockdown in a safe way. — Andre Dorfling, customer experience leader at Telviva

Telviva is offering new clients a special offer of R159 per user per month for Telviva One Premium on a one-year contract. Terms and Conditions apply. Click here to find out more.

About Telviva
Telviva, formerly Connection Telecom, is a market leader in cloud-based communications for business. Seamlessly integrating voice, video and chat in one intelligent platform, Telviva enables you to have better quality conversations with customers, suppliers and staff. For several years we have presented a portfolio of brands, namely Connection Telecom, Telviva and Fat Budgie. These have now been consolidated under the Telviva banner to better align our product understanding and messaging, enabling our customers to maximise the benefits of consolidating all their general business communications into a single cloud application. For more information, please visit www.telviva.co.za.