Programmable Voice Flashcards
What is an SDK?
Software Development Kit - provides a set of tools, libraries, relevant documentation, code samples, processes, and or guides that allow developers to create software applications on a specific platform.
What is WebRTC?
Web Real Time Communications - free, open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via simple application programming interfaces (APIs).
What is SIP?
Session Initiation Protocol - call setup protocol that operates at the application layer. Let’s 2 internet-connected devices share audio signals and other media.
A mutually agreed upon set of steps in order to share data (e.g. audio) between devices over the internet in real time.
Setting up, modifying, and tearing down communication sessions.
The signaling everyone uses to make a phone call
What are 2 use cases for Twilio Voice for Marketing?
- ) Call Tracking - measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns using phone numbers
- ) Lead Alerts - Alert Sales reps about new inbound leads.
What % increase will companies see in lead qualification if they reach out within 5 minutes?
80%
What are 2 use cases for Twilio Voice for Operations?
- ) Alerts & Notifications - Dispatch/Account Notifications, Appointment Reminders, Order Confirmations, Shift Scheduling, Billing Alerts, Arrival Alerts, Service Alerts, Incident Alerts
- ) Masked Phone Numbers/Anonymous Communications - Facilitate private communications between a buyer and seller.
What are 3 use cases for Twilio Voice for Customer Service?
- ) IVR - Greet and direct your customers with a call menu when they dial your business.
- ) Contact Center - Once an IVR has done its job, patch customer service calls to an agent.
- ) Phone System - Connect customers with employees and employees to each other.
What is IVR?
Interactive Voice Response
Programmable Voice Customers
Zendesk - customer service
Duke - connecting tutors & students
Marks & Spencer - IVR
What are top Disco questions for business?
- ) What bottom line business metric do you hope to improve with Programmable Voice?
- ) What does your ideal solution with us look like?
- ) Who would be involved in a go/no-go decision?
- ) Do you operate domestically? Internationally? Where would users of this voice solution be located?
What are top Disco questions for Tech?
- ) Is this a new use case or one you have in place today?
- ) What volume of inbound and outbound calls are you sending or expecting per day?
- ) What databases or CRM’s do you work with that would interface with Twilio?
- ) Can you walk me through your current call flow?
- ) In an ideal world how would your solution work?
- ) What technologies are being used to make or receive calls?
- ) What kind of call routing and logic are you trying to build?
- ) What do you care most about when it comes to implementing your use case?
- ) What is your organizations general process for building technology?
- ) What’s your process for reshaping your current voice flow? How easy or difficult is it?
Who are Twilio Voice’s Top 3 Competitors?
RingCentral
Avaya
Nexmo
Nexmo - Strengths & Weaknesses?
Strengths - Cheaper
Weaknesses - Adding capabilities and functions to customize the voice or SMS flow is complex for non-developers
Avaya - Strengths & Weaknesses?
Strengths - Large on-premise customer base who are loyal to the solution, omni-channel capabilities
Weaknesses - Lack cloud strategy, had to acquire to get into cloud. Went bankrupt in 2017 and integrations are tough to build - professional services required for maintenance and changes
Why is Twilio Voice modern?
Usage Based
Flexible, experiment
Cloud-based
How many API calls does Twilio handle per year?
100 Billion
What was daily peak in call volume in 2020?
33 Million
How many carrier redundancies are built in on average?
4
How many cloud data centers does Twilio have?
28 data centers in 8 regions
How many data points are monitored for uptime and quality?
7,000
What can you do with Twilio Voice?
Forward calls
Create a conference
Put calls on hold
Transfer calls to the right call center agent
Play media or text to speech
Collect either speech or digital inputs
Record
Parse what a call has said with AI
Accept payment
Send data about the call to the customers application
What are the 3 ways to make and receive Voice calls?
- ) Programmable Voice
- ) Browser with Twilio Client
- ) PBX or VoIP phone system with SIP
Explain making calls with Twilio Programmable Voice
Leverage Twilio numbers and Super Network
Explain making calls with Twilio Client
Same capabilities of Programmable Voice, but connects over the internet to make calls (No Super Network).
Explain making calls through a PBX or VoIP phone system with SIP
Leverage programmability features and Super Network so they get feature set without ditching hardware.
- ) Customers can choose to use just the connectivity of our Super Network with their phone system.
- ) Customers can also choose if they want to use just the programmable aspects of our APIs with their phone system.
What is Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking?
Customers use just connectivity of Twilio Super Network with their phone system’s programmability. Uses VoIP to connect to the PSTN from a private network such as a PBX - it is a virtual phone line.
SIP trunking is not programmable (no TwiML). It is for PSTN connectivity only. Customer needs to have a PBX or communication server such as Asterisk, Freeswitch, Avaya, or Cisco.
Because of redundancy, expect better reliability, high quality, deployment-ready, and low latency.
What is SIP Interfaces?
Customers use just the programmable aspects of our API’s with their phone system (No Super Network).
What are the 2 categories for SIP Trunking services?
- ) Traditional wireline telecommunications providers (telcos)
- ) Communications platforms as a service (CPaaS or cloud companies)
What is a Telco?
Companies that own and operate local and/or long distance telecommunications networks - AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, NTT, BT, Telefonica, etc.
What is a PSTN?
Publicly Switched Telephone Network (Carrier Networks) - combination of telephone networks used worldwide that helps telephones communicate with each other.
Includes telephone lines, fiber optic cables, switching centers, cellular networks, as well as satellites and cable systems.
What is MPLS?
Multiprotocol Label Switching Services - routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one node to the next based on. short path labels rather than long network addresses, thus avoiding complex lookups and saving time.
What is a CPaaS?
Cloud Communications Platform - companies offer cloud platform that software developers use to add communications services to their own applications.
Twilio, Plivo, Vonage/Nexmo, etc.
What are the 3 main challenges with SIP Trunking services?
- ) Poor Velocity
- ) High Cost
- ) Fragmented Global Services
What are Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking advanced features?
- ) Increase Agility with On-demand Services
- ) Dramatically Reduce Costs with Simpler Services
- ) Extend Reach with Uniform Services in 100 Countries
- ) Twilio Interconnect Provides Flexible Network Connectivity - private, secure connection.
- ) Understand Changes in Call Behavior with Voice Insights
How does Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking increase agility with On-demand services?
- ) Enable service in minutes
- Self-service provisioning through easy-to-use management UI or API - ) Eliminate capacity planning and blocked calls
- Auto scaling call paths with unlimited capacity - ) Improve user experiences
- Rapidly add advanced features
How does Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking dramatically reduce costs with simpler services?
- ) Simplified pricing
- Usage-based pricing with no commitments - ) Don’t pay for capacity
- No port/channel fees - ) Reduce overhead
- Consolidate regional trunks on a single vendor with global services
How does Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking extend reach with uniform services in 100 countries?
- ) Provision service anywhere
- Unified management interface - ) Reduce fraud
- Geo-permissions, anomaly alerts and call authentication on SHAKEN/STIR framework - ) Improve security and QoS
- Strong encryption and optional private connections
How does Twilio Interconnect provide flexible network connectivity?
Optional private SIP trunk connectivity delivers enhanced security and QoS
- ) VPN Tunnel
- A point-to-point connection to a Twilio Exchange via IPSec tunnels - ) BYO MPLS
- Connect via your MPLS provider’s cross-connect in a Twilio Exchange - ) 3rd Party Exchange
- Private connection in select hosting centers - ) Cross-connect
- Physical connections in Twilio Exchanges
How does Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking understand changes in call behavior with voice insights?
Traditionally telcos are a black box, customers have very little access to information about their calls; Voice Insights changes that, which is a platform differentiator.
- ) Hundreds of metrics gathered for every call
- View call metadata captured by Twilio sensors at our SIP and carrier network edges - ) Powerful aggregation and analysis tools
- From individual metric samples and call progress events to account-wide performance on multiple dimensions - ) Programmatic access to the data
- Decorate your internal records with Twilio sensor data with API access to call events, metrics, and summaries
Who are some companies who leverage Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking?
Pittsburgh Technical College - stood up in 2 days
Twitter - saved 72% and scaled worldwide offices
Ruby Receptionists - 66% increase in reliability
What are Geo-permissions?
Guardrails on which countries can be called on your network to save money on fraud and abuse.
What is the SHAKEN/STIR framework?
STIR = Secure Telephony Identity Revisited SHAKEN = Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs
Suite of protocols and procedures intended to combat caller ID spoofing on public telephone networks.
What is an IPSec tunnel?
An Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) tunnel is a set of standards and protocols to support secure communication as packets of information are transported from an IP address across network boundaries and vice versa.
What are advanced features of Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking for Contact Centers?
- ) Seamless call transfer
- ) Cloud-based recording
- ) Messaging-enabled phone numbers
- ) Caller name lookups
- ) Voice Insights
What is a CNAME Directory?
Used in the Domain Name System (DNS) to create an alias from one domain name to another domain name.
A common example is the www subdomain which is provided as an alias to the root domain name - users accessing “www.example.com” are referred to the root domain (or DNS zone apex) “example.com”.
What are advanced features of Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking for Telephony-Enabled APPS/ISVs?
- ) Multi-tenancy
- ) Provisioning APIs
- ) High call set-up rates
- ) Cloud-based recording
- ) Voice Insights
What are advanced features of Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking for UC & VoIP?
- ) Global trunks
- ) Emergency calling
- ) Voice insights
- ) Seamless call transfer
- ) Disaster recovery
What does VPN stand for?
Virtual Private Network is a secure tunnel established between Internet-connected devices.
It creates this secure pathway using Internet Protocol Security protocol (IPSec) and encrypts all communication between your Programmable Wireless SIM-connected devices and servers.
The Programmable Wireless VPN creates a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. This allows for constant Mobile Terminated (MT) and Mobile Originated (MO) communications between your server and your devices.
What are features of a Twilio VPN?
- ) Block devices from requesting unauthorized sites and services.
- ) Connect SIMs to your local network.
- ) Secure, encrypted data.
- ) Access a device (mobile terminate), anytime.
What is a VPN Gateway?
A network device, such as a router or a firewall, which supports the IPSec protocol suite. The device needs to be assigned an IPv4 address routable on the Internet.
What is a Firewall?
The system that monitors and controls your incoming and outgoing network traffic. This is usually the same device as your VPN gateway.
What is Elastic SIP Trunking?
Elastic SIP Trunking is an entirely new approach to SIP Trunking that uses the power of the cloud to bring instant provisioning, global reach and data-driven routing to the world of SIP Trunking.
SIP Trunks connect IP based communications infrastructure to the PSTN. If you are a customer of Twilio Voice, you probably don’t need SIP Trunking – SIP Trunking does not have all the TwiML control of Twilio Voice.
However if you have your own IP Communications infrastructure – whether a cloud based communications platform, or enterprise-premises based equipment like a call center or PBX deployment, then SIP Trunking is for you. Trunks can either connect that infrastructure for terminating calls out to the PSTN (known as termination), receiving calls from the PSTN (known as origination) or both.
What are some common challenges with SIP Vendors?
- ) Poor Velocity
- ) High Cost
- ) Fragmented Global Services
How many companies use Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking?
6,000
Twitter, Netflix, Aircall
What are some upsell options for Twilio SIP?
- ) Flex offers more programming control than legacy call center solutions
- ) Voice offers a failover if their PBX ever fails
- ) Voice + TaskRouter can be a stepping stone to Flex
- ) Phone numbers are needed to forward calls to and from their PBX
- ) Interconnect gives SIP customers their own private, secure connection to Twilio.
What is Twilio Interconnect?
Twilio Interconnect Provides Flexible Network Connectivity. Interconnect is an Optional private SIP trunk connectivity delivers enhanced security and QoS
- ) VPN Tunnel
- A point-to-point connection to a Twilio Exchange via IPSec tunnels - ) BYO MPLS
- Connect via your MPLS provider’s cross-connect in a Twilio Exchange - ) 3rd Party Exchange
- Private connection in select hosting centers - ) Cross-connect
- Physical connections in Twilio Exchanges
What kind of customer typically look into SIP Trunking?
Not developers, looking for access to a better network
What is VoIP?
- Voice over Internet Protocol
- The “media” that is being shared (i.e. voice)
- VoIP replaces traditional circuits (T1, PRI - fixed bandwidth copper wires)
What is a PBX?
- Private Branch Exchange
- Private communication exchange used within a company that can be used internally or externally
How many regions does Twilio operate?
8 in total, 2 in U.S.
Virginia, Oregon, Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Frankfurt, Japan, and Singapore
What’s the main differentiator of Twilio Voice?
The Super Network
- 100+ countries
- 65k numbers with prefixes
- Zero downtime
- Handle capacity for 12 months in the future
- 10 Billion calls placed last year
- Growing Super Network team 40% throughout 2019
What is Elastic SIP Trunking Origination vs. Termination?
Origination - Inbound Calls
Termination - Outbound Calls
What is CPS?
Calls Per Second
What are some voice verbs in TwiML?
- Text to speech using Amazon Polly
- Play back mp3
- Connects the current caller to another phone. If the called party picks up, the 2 parties are connected and can communicate until one party hangs up.
- playing or saying something to customer and asking them to do something
- Puts you on hold
You can have verbs nested in verbs
What are some common use cases for Programmable Voice?
- ) IVR - Gather, Say, Play
2. ) Studio - uses widgets to abstract create programmability for you
What endpoints can we send calls to?
PSTN, SIP, Client
What are some voice nouns in TwiML?
- PSTN
- SIP endpoint
- Web browser
- Conference call
- Queue
Why is Twilio useful?
- Great for customer support to set up meeting room to add and move people.
- Max 250 people
- Price varies by region (re: $/participant/minute)
What is Twilio Client
- Make and receive calls with web browser
- We offer Voice SDKs for iOS, Android, JavaScript
- Allows you to make voice calls to and from a web browser/mobile app and a Twilio TwiML Voice Application
- Build click-to-call applications, soft phone services, contact center applications.
What’s a status callback?
After completing an outbound call, Twilio will make an asynchronous HTTP request to the StatusCallback URL
- Phone ringing, answered, hangup, etc.
What’s the difference between Twilio Client and Programmable Voice?
Twilio client is an SDK that allows you to embed making and receiving calls into your apps whereas Programmable Voice is building logic into other parts of your voice ecosystem.
What is the Media Streams API?
Access real-time media to control and extend your voice application.
- ) Resolve difficult customer conversations - use sentiment analysis to flag customers having bad experiences allowing supervisors to step in.
- ) Increase productivity of call center agents by transcribing speech in real time - using AI/ML to recommend relevant knowledge base to agent based on conversation.
- ) Reduce fraud and speed up authentication - incorporate voice authentication/biometrics within a call flow.
