Is Vonage's Vee a Game Changer?

Given the rising popularity of chatbots for customer service quality checks and communication pathways, several players are looking to increase their offerings portfolio by adding on these smart, workplace tools. Business VoIP isn't a stranger to this movement either; imagine a Business VoIP provider, offering a bot which helps businesses intelligent control their services - Vee , from Vonage has achieved exactly that.

While the press release from Vonage says that Vee is still in Beta stage, the company's billed the product as a first-of-its-kind, geared with the ability to deliver virtual customer assistance via a cloud-based integrated solution. Vee will be available to Vonage customers, ready for use across their Vonage Business Cloud service, as opposed to being a bot meant for embedding in their personal websites.

Vee can be accessed by both account admins and end-users, who currently operate the Vonage Business Cloud mobile app.

Decoding Vee - key features and benefits

Here's what Vee could achieve, upon implementation:

• Setting up and managing of accounts
• Setting up and managing of desk phones
• New features add-ons such as group calling and virtual receptionist to one's current Vonage service
• Instruction manuals and guidelines on using features such as recording calls
• Natural language commands for questions to Vee
• Real-time troubleshooting on any issues, faced
• Live chat for a variety of next-best suggestions to meet client need, with contextualisation

Over time, Vonage has been expanding its capabilities and products, moving into newer areas such as the inclusion of the Amazon Chime service with their business cloud application.

In the near future, Vonage could possibly add new elements and upgrades to Vee, actioning deeper connectivity, enriched interaction capacities, and other services.

Pricing -  evaluating the necessary investment

Vee comes with several pricing components and models, as a complement to the Vonage Business Cloud. These move from an entry level of 1-4 lines, to 5-19 and then to 20-99, and finally to a 100+ lines. Vonage Business Cloud is a comprehensive offering, with useful plugins such as Salesforce, G Suite, Zoho, Clio, ConnectWise, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and more.

Each bundle is divided into three categories - mobile, premium, and advanced - with a growing set of features. At bundle 1-4, mobile is billed at $19.99, with features such as unlimited calling, mobile app, desktop app, team messaging. Premium is at $29.99 and offers additional features such as CRM integration and multi-level auto attendant. Advanced is at $ 39.99, and carries further additional features such as call recording, call group, Vonage voicemail, and the like.

Similarly, for other bundles, there are different price points across the three models with feature specificities.