Meet Webex Go: Mobile-first business calling
With widespread adoption of hybrid and remote work, enterprise mobility is core to all businesses. It is even more critical to offer the best communications experience—usability and quality—to the users on the devices they know and love.
The global Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) market will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.7% to reach U.S. $180.8 billion by 2027, according to ResearchandMarkets.com. At WebexOne 2021, we announced “Webex Go”, a mobile-first capability in Webex that allows users to make and receive calls using your Webex Calling phone number, over the cellular voice network, using your mobile phone’s native dialer, ensuring calls are secure and compliant with enterprise policies such as compliance call recording.
As an add-on to Webex Calling, Webex Go is ideal for businesses embracing hybrid work, including companies that have a mobile sales force, on-call knowledge workers or even contact center agents. No matter where your workforce is, they have enterprise-grade calling in the palm of their hands—and customers can reach them anywhere.
In my WebexOne demo, I show how users can use this capability on their personal devices to make and receive business calls using the business number they already have associated with their desk phone.
Setting up your users for Webex Go
Webex Go can be easily provisioned for your users with a few clicks in Control Hub. Once provisioned, the user will receive an email with QR and activation codes to initiate a quick setup process. Once completed, the user will see their Webex phone number added as second line on their mobile device and can make/receive business calls using this line.
Benefits for your users
1. Use familiar native dialer on your iPhone for consistent calling experience
Lots of communication applications on mobile devices provide a software dialer inside their app. It can be challenging to get all your users to download an app to make business calls instead of being able to use the native call button on their mobile phone. Webex Go leverages that familiar experience on the devices they love, so employees don’t have to be trained on how to use it. Employees do not need a separate or new mobile calling plan or mobile number, Webex Go works with the existing Webex Calling number. If the Webex App is also on the mobile device, it will enhance the overall calling experience with quick access to additional collaboration capabilities.
2. Make and receive high quality business calls over mobile network
Cisco has proven strength in networking. Our ecosystem with leading mobile network operators will provide a high-quality network on users’ mobile devices for their business calls. When a call is made using Webex Go, it’s routed over the Cellular Voice (5G/LTE) network, back to Webex Calling service and then Webex Calling routes the call to internal or PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) phone numbers. This results in higher quality and fidelity than the calls that are made “over-the-top” using Voice over IP (VoIP). This also ensures end users experience exceptional quality when driving or commuting on a train and even in areas of poor cellular data connectivity (for example, Mobile Edge network areas).
An inbound call rings the user’s Webex desktop app, their desk phone (if there is one) and their mobile phone dialer. Users can pick up a business call on their mobile phone while traveling and when they are at home or at work, by simply pulling the call to a supported Webex device to continue the conversation.
3. Personal identity and privacy are never compromised
Employees who participate in a BYOD program tend to use their personal mobile phone for work tasks because it’s more convenient and easier. Webex Go builds on this premise to provide convenient business calling, while ensuring the business phone number is used as the Outbound Caller ID and the user’s personal cell phone number is not
Business voicemail and call history is stored in the secure environment of the business phone system and the company administrator does not have access to the employee’s personal voicemail and call history.
4. Enterprise-grade calling capabilities at your fingertips
With Webex Go, users can leverage all the business-grade calling capabilities provided by Webex Calling. The same business number is used across Webex Devices, Webex App, and the mobile phone. When your users want to reach another colleague or a department (for example, Security) using their extension, they can dial that from the native dialer on their mobile device. The employees can also be reached via the Auto Attendant menus. Employees who participate in the help desk call queues never have to miss an important customer call if they step away from their desk. The availability status is reflected on all these endpoints—making it easy to see when colleagues are placing a business call on their mobile phone.
Benefits for your business
- Apply compliance policies to business calls made on personal mobile devices
Administrators can apply enterprise policies such as compliance recording, ensuring the business remains fully compliant regardless of how or where a phone call is taken. Webex Go does not store any company or customer data into the employee’s personal phone. Thus, there is no need for employers to monitor or put controls on employee personal devices. You don’t have to worry about employees using their personal mobile phones to make business calls, not tracking this usage and risk leaking data unintentionally. The recording, retention, call logs, analytics and other compliance policies continue to apply to business calls made by employees using the Webex Go line on their phone. You can continue to get insights into employee communication with customers using Webex Calling’s rich analytics and reporting capabilities.
- Provides cost savings
Many businesses buy corporate mobile phones and mobile plans for their employees. At the same time, businesses also have a phone system for their offices (historically a PBX) along with corresponding phone lines, phone numbers, and desk phones for every employee. If you are a business that’s making a transition from hybrid work to full remote work, you have options on providing the best set of devices that enable employee productivity whether that’s a desk phone, Webex Go or both. You can provision Webex Go on user’s Webex Calling number and link this number to the user’s mobile phone over the cellular voice network. This allows businesses to give a single, unified calling plan to their employees that works equally well wherever they are—at home, in the office, or on the road. Coupled together with Webex Calling, employees get the power of a business-grade calling solution, with no compromise in quality of experience on the mobile phone.
- Ease of administration
Webex Go enabled mobile smartphone shows up as another device in the Control Hub providing central administration of all the devices used by the employees.
To summarize, Webex Go is an add-on to Webex Calling and provides users with a mobile-first calling experience on the mobile network through use of a native keypad with seamless access to both their personal and business identity on a single device.
Learn more by visiting Webex Go, or by contacting your partner/account manager
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