A Step-By-Step Guide to Migrate From GSM Infrastructure to Cloud Telephony

Many businesses, particularly contact centers, have been using GSM gateways as a cost-effective way to make calls.

These devices allowed them to take advantage of mobile service providers’ unlimited calling offers, significantly cutting down expenses.

However, GSM gateways cannot be used for commercial purposes per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Department of Telecommunications (DoT) regulations.

These two organizations have cracked down on multiple contact centers and pulled them up for using GSM gateways for their calling needs.

With the enforcement of these regulations, many businesses are now being forced to shift from GSM-based setups to compliant systems, like cloud telephony.

In this article, we will explore the benefits of migrating to cloud telephony and how organizations can migrate swiftly.

The Migration to Cloud Telephony

While the cost of cloud telephony is definitely higher than using GSM gateways, it offers a range of undeniable benefits that GSM gateways cannot.

So, cloud telephony is the logical choice for businesses to comply with regulations and optimize operations.

Some of the Compelling Reasons Why You Should Consider Cloud Telephony:

Regulatory Compliance

It doesn’t matter whether you’re making local or international calls; cloud telephony adheres to TRAI and DoT regulations.

The cloud telephony systems are entirely transparent, allowing proper traceability and ensuring that businesses remain compliant with telecom laws.

Scalability

One of the significant limitations of GSM gateways is scalability. Every gateway can handle only a limited number of SIM cards and channels, which makes expanding a call center operation cumbersome.

Cloud telephony, however, offers seamless scalability, and it is easy to add more users at the click of a button.

For instance, if you scale up your agent numbers by 50 during the peak season, you can add them without having to worry about adding additional hardware. Besides, everything is managed virtually, making expansion very simple.

What about scaling down?

With cloud telephony, you can scale down without breaking a sweat, as there are no contractual or minimum commitments.

Better Customer Service

Cloud telephony is not just a simple replacement for traditional calling systems – it comes with a bunch of advanced features – call analytics, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), intelligent call routing, and CRM integrations.

This will allow you to provide personalized customer service.

For example, a contact center handling customer support for an eCommerce platform can integrate cloud telephony with their CRM, inventory, order tracking, and shipment systems.

This would allow agents to access customer data from across systems and provide faster resolutions to customer queries.

Cost Transparency

When you look at the actual costs, cloud telephony might sound more expensive than using GSM gateways.

However, when you dig deeper, cloud telephony allows businesses to pay only for the minutes they actually use, without any hidden costs.

Besides, cloud telephony provides you with detailed call analytics that would allow you to optimize and avoid unnecessary costs.

Migration From GSM to Cloud Telephony – A Step-By-Step Process

Step 1: Take Stock of Your Existing Communication Setup

Take stock of what hardware and software you’re using, call volumes, and any integrations with other systems.

Identify the gaps in the GSM system that you would fill with your cloud telephony solution besides the issues with compliance. 

Step 2: Choose the Right Provider

Evaluate providers based on scalability, support, features, and cost. Ensure that the provider has a strong reputation for uptime, security, and customer support.

See if you can speak to some of their existing customers about the support they provide.

Step 3: Define the Plan

Identify your busiest periods to minimize disruption while migrating.

Define if you want to migrate fully in one go or approach it in a phased manner, where both GSM and cloud telephony systems run in parallel during the transition.

Besides, migration to cloud telephony also means you need to train your agents. So, having both systems running in parallel for a period would help.

Step 4: Setup the Internet Infrastructure

Ensure that you have enough Internet bandwidth to carry voice traffic.

If needed, upgrade your Internet connectivity. Also, you should implement quality of service (QoS) rules to prioritize voice traffic.

Step 5: Configure the Cloud Telephony Systems

Please discuss your customer workflow needs with your provider and have them configure the cloud telephony system.

The provider would help you configure call flows, routing protocols, IVR menus, recording, analytics, and other custom features and integrations.

Ensure that everything is in place per your business needs.

Step 6: Train Your Team

Ensure you train your team and make them comfortable with the cloud telephony system.

Your team should be comfortable with every feature – from call transfers to accessing call analytics.

Step 7: Test the Cloud Telephony System

Conduct thorough testing of the cloud telephony system. Make test calls, check call quality, and ensure all integrations are working smoothly.

Involve your IT team and customer service representatives to test every possible scenario and use case.

Step 8: Monitor and Optimize

Regularly monitor the performance of the cloud telephony system – monitor features like call performance, call quality, and customer satisfaction.

Optimize your setup to ensure the system is meeting your business needs.

How Can ClearTouch Help With the Transition?

ClearTouch has been a pure-play cloud contact center solution provider for more than 20 years now, and we understand the space like no one else does.

Our solutions are fully compliant with DoT and TRAI regulations, besides being compliant with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FDCPA, Reg-F, TCPA, CCPA, SOC2, FedRamp, and ISAE 3402 Type-II specifications.

Some of the other reasons why ClearTouch is the ideal choice for your transition from GSM to cloud telephony:

Scale Up and Down Easily

The infrastructure does not tie you down, and you can scale up and down easily at the click of a button.

Depending on your work spikes, you can add as many agents as you want and scale them down after the spike.

The best part is you only pay for the minutes you use, and there aren’t any contractual commitments or minimum guarantees.

Integrations

ClearTouch has pre-built integrations with industry-leading CRM and helpdesk software like Zendesk, Salesforce, Zoho, Freshworks, and ServiceNow and can easily integrate with custom-built solutions as well.

Besides, all the customer service channels are integrated with our platform, allowing your agents to have a single view of your customers. This ensures they provide the best possible experiences to your customers at all times.

Support

Support has been the biggest differentiator of ClearTouch in all these years.

Would you believe that we haven’t had a customer churn from us in the last eight years of our operations in India? We attribute this to the support services we offer.

Would you agree that you would be thrilled to have your provider available on voice, email, and messaging apps 24×7?

We are just an interaction away, and that makes our customer’s lives easy. We handled more than 85% of our customer queries during the first interaction itself.

These are some of the reasons why we have been successful in the market, and I am sure that these reasons would also make your migration from GSM to cloud telephony successful.

While the use of GSM gateways has long been a cost-saving practice, the regulations have put a spoke in the process and have made it unsustainable.

As a result, businesses are now looking toward cloud telephony as a compliant and future-proof solution.

With cloud telephony, you will have better scalability, improved call quality, advanced features, regulatory compliance, cost optimization, and enhanced customer service.