Aircall vs. Lumen Next-Gen Voice

Aircall is great for anyone who has multiple team members calling from the same number or a team that needs to call from many different numbers. The way Aircall allows users to organize people and numbers is extremely customizable and efficient. I think just about any business could benefit from using Aircall and highly recommend it!

Incentivized

[CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP is] good for environments that require tried and true SIP services, where high-quality voice is a requirement, and backed by a large, global company, with global footprint. CenturyLink voice is also well-suited to environments that want to use MPLS to interconnect their offices, as the same voice circuits can be used for data as well; however, the circuits are relatively expensive, even as far as MPLS goes, and watch out for Lumen's "fees" that often aren't included when you see their quote. Also beware if you require a rapid turn-up or have a very small or inexperienced staff, as MPLS with BGP deployments are great once they're up and running, but can be complex to design and implement.

Incentivized

• Make representatives aware of connection, time zone, environment. Having a sense of the customers location will help us to assist the customer
• Aircall always asks the quality of your call to be able to provide feedback on connection or issues with the app.
• Aircall is very customizable. You are able to set certain ringtones, play audio through computer and headset, as well as make it your own.

Incentivized

• Reliable service
• Supports wide range of key features
• They do have high levels of support where you can receive real answers

Incentivized

• No schedule for bank holidays
• No feature to update more than one phone line at the same time
• Admins don't have access to the timeline of a call to see with which agent it rang
• Missing agent-specific stats when your phone lines are organized in teams
• If calls are setup to ring to a first group and then a second, if the whole first group is already busy, it does not go to the second group but puts the customer on hold

Incentivized

• Lumen-Centurylink has suffered from many noticeable outages in the last few years - this is a blow to their reputation that they still have to recover from.
• Lumen-CenturyLink does not peer well enough with OTHER carriers - they depend on their own network to give you SIP, which means less true redundancy.
• Lumen-CenturyLink needs a better customer portal/interface to handle failover, see the real-time status, etc.

Incentivized

I give this rating as aircall is very easy to use but also lacks a parallel dialing feature which makes it slower to use. aircall has a pretty seamless integration with salesforce which is helpful. For the cost it is definitely very reasonable but it also lacks a live coaching/listening feature which is very valuable as a manager.

Incentivized

I provide this rating based on my overall experience using Aircall. I have used it on my previous company as well and that being said, it is a proof that Aircall is a great tool to use in contact centers and with B2B businesses that has direct communication with clients.

We've enjoyed using Aircall so far and have had no issues with it. The platform is easy to use, looks nice, and makes it easy to keep track of everything.

Incentivized

SIP service support is definitely improving. A few years ago I would have rated them a 2. Now a 7. But, Lumen still needs a better portal experience to report and see a real-time status. Also to manage SIP failover functions in a WYSIWIG/GUI interface. When Lumen's network breaks in a larger outage, there are long hold times and support is not good.

Incentivized

I am not the right person to answer this because I don't make the purchase decisions within our company. I have worked with several companies, and every one of them has their tools. I particularly liked Aircall among all of them because of the different reasons I have already mentioned before.

Incentivized

I have found a better solution is to run two different carriers through SD-WAN (such as Bigleaf or Velocloud MSR) and use a provider like BCMOne (formerly NexVortex) to manage the SIP. BCMOne/Nexvortex is an AWESOME SIP provider with better planning, deployment, and technical support. When paired with redundant internet paths on SD-WAN (BigLeaf or Velocloud) a very resilient solution is created.

Incentivized

• Because of the lack of local partnerships with South African telecoms companies, calls to South Africa is very expensive. This was not originally apparent when opening the Aircall account.
• Not having the option to display a local South African number in the CLIP, means that people are not always eager to pick up the phone when they see an overseas number ringing.
• The only positive impact has been the collaborative experience and being able to maintain a virtual office

Incentivized

• Faster learning
• Increased numbers of calls
• Organization of calls

Incentivized