We have a requirement like below:
Person A (like an Agent) want to call user B with masked number. User B sees masked number (not the real number of A) and B can also call back to Agent with the masked number. At B side, normal telephone needs to work.
So, our conceren is, can we able to use the masked phone number for Agent with a real phone number so that B can call back Agent ?
We considered the option, Caller ID for agent, but the caller id verification needs to be avoided in this use case.
Please help.
We usually refer to these type of "masked" phone numbers as proxies.
Do agents call from a phone or using the Voice SDK?
If an agent calls from a phone.
You could build an application with a Twilio Phone Number that the agent can call. When the agent calls, the application could ask the agent to enter the user's phone number using the TwiML Gather verb, then the application can dial the entered phone number. As a result the user would see the Twilio Phone Number aka the proxy number, and not the agent's phone number. Depending on your needs, instead of asking for the user phone number, you could ask for the customer ID or other identifier that your application can lookup the user's phone number by. The user could call the proxy number, and your application could look up the associated agent's phone number from a database, and then dial the agent's phone number.
If you don't want the agent to enter a phone number or user identifier, you could acquire a Twilio Phone Number programatically for each Agent/User combination, then store the agent phone number, user phone number, and proxy number into a database. When the proxy phone number is called by the agent, your application can dial the user's phone number, when the user calls the proxy number, your application can dial the agent's phone number. Technically, other agents and other users could also be assigned to this proxy number, but you wouldn't be able to assign the same agent or user to the same proxy number multiple times as you wouldn't know which agent/user to dial when called.
If an agent calls using the Voice SDK.
Using the Voice SDK could be a better experience for your agents and also simplifies the solution somewhat. When you initiate a call through the Voice SDK you can pass along extra parameters to your application. So say that you have a web application that lists the users, and every user has a "call" button, you could click the button and the user's phone number could be passed in as a parameter to your application. Your application can then instruct Twilio to dial the user's phone number. When the user calls the proxy number, you'd still need to look up the agent associated to the user in a database and dial the agent's Client ID.
Unfortunately, I can only suggest these high level solutions with the information you provided, but I can provide more instructions if you provide more details.
Related
I bought a number and have it set up in a studio flow.
My goal is to have calls to this number routed to my cell- I need to answer these calls with a unique greeting. So I'd like to see my Twilio number always as the caller ID.
I have everything set up in Studio Flow, but when calls come in I see the caller's phone number, not my Twilio number.
Where can I designate this static caller ID number? It looks like it should be here, but I can't access it.
https://www.screencast.com/t/WL00dmEuw
Thanks!
We want Caller ID to display our company name on outbound calls.
According to Twilio, numbers purchased from them cannot have Caller ID/CNAM added.
If we transfer numbers from another service that can add the numbers, will the CallerID/CNAM be maintained.
Should we Port the Number or have Twilio host the number? What is the difference?
Tried to purchase numbers on Twilio and have CNAM added.
Have purchased numbers from another vendor and they were able to add CallerID
Based on my experience recently migrating several numbers to Twilio:
If we transfer numbers from another service that can add the numbers, will the CallerID/CNAM be maintained?
Supposedly yes, mine did not. I had three Spectrum landlines, with working outbound caller ID. At some point after porting them to Twilio, the caller ID disappeared. What's worse is that some cellphones will try and "guess," and show random people's names instead of my business name (or at least, nothing).
What is the difference between porting and hosted numbers?
Hosted SMS provides a method for customers to use Twilio’s Programmable Messaging, Functions and Studio products to send and receive messages on voice-enabled numbers they already own as part of an established voice application.
(from https://www.twilio.com/docs/phone-numbers/hosted-numbers)
So porting is moving the number entirely to Twilio as the carrier for the number - voice, SMS, possibly fax (although Twilio's fax support is minimal). A hosted number would just enable SMS through Twilio for a non-Twilio landline number.
I have been looking for a way to get my numbers listed back in the CNAM database(s), today I tried a company called TrueCNAM (https://www.truecnam.com/) who will let you list up to five numbers for free. I went ahead and listed mine, I'll update my answer if I verify that it's working. Currently the CNAM lookup for my numbers is blank, so we'll see what happens.
Edit: I also tried verifying my number at https://listyourself.net, but I'm still not seeing the number in a couple searches I've done on it. It looks like the changes may take a while to propagate to the downstream third-party CNAM databases, based on this: https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26461709-
I'm trying to establish the recommended way to connect two numbers via Twilio and get the pricing of that call before hand.
The scenario is that a user on my system will call one of his/her contacts. The user's own number is predefined before hand, and they are using a specific sub account.
The way I'm doing it now, is to first call the user's phone, then use a Dial verb to call the target. That way, the user answers first, is announced that we're calling "Contact X" and the contact's phone rings. This avoids a lag which would occur on the contact's phone if I called them first. Is there a better way to do it?
As well, I'd like to establish the cost of the call before hand (the cost per minute). I can use the pricing client to get a cost for specific countries, but how do I determine the SOURCE country? The user might be in the UK or the Middle East, calling a contact in the US. The pricing API lets me see the cost to the UK or US but how does the API call knows which country we're calling from?
Twilio developer evangelist here.
The way you are setting up the call seems fine to me.
As for the cost of the call, you are actually making two outbound calls in this situation, so the costs are that of an outbound call to each country that you are calling to. In the case of a user in the UK that initiates a call in the way you describe to the US, your cost will be an outbound call to the UK and an outbound call to the US.
There is one different way you could set up the call. If you make your system aware that the next call to a number will be forwarded onto the user you want to call, then your user can make an inbound call to the number and you can return TwiML to forward onto the call recipient. That way you would pay for an inbound call leg from the country the user was calling from (the UK, in the example) and an outbound call in the country the user called to (the US in the example).
Let me know if that helps at all.
My users all have accounts with unique Twilio numbers that feed them into my app. If my app goes down, can I have an emergency protocol where I effectively "flip a switch" and have every Twilio number forward to a single number?
Example:
Accounts A, B, and C have unique Twilio numbers. When a customer calls A, A's office number is forwarded to the unique Twilio number, where our app collects the data A requires; and similarly for B & C.
If our app goes down, I want my customer service line to get all the calls from A, B, and C. Is it possible to create an emergency protocol such that all those numbers get forwarded to my customer service line? I need to be able to do it basically instantly so there is no down-time.
Twilio evangelist here.
I'd suggest checking out Fallback URL's:
https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/security/availability-reliability
You can configure every phone number with a fallback URL that Twilio will request of the HTTP request to the Voice Request URL fails. You could set this URL to something like a failover data center running a backup of your application, or even to something as simple as a static XML file that return some fallback TwiML.
Hope that helps.
I have a question and I need to know if this Twilio integration is possible.
My client needs to keep the same business phone number (as it is marketed and printed in all advertisement).
She has a landline phone handset which is connected to ATT&T with the business phone number, but we have a different number for tech support.
I want to be able to integrate Twilio so that it works like this:
1.Client calls studio phone number
2. Twilio receives the call and presents a (press 1 to speak with the front desk, press 2 to speak with tech support prompt)
3. They press 1 and the studio phone handset rings and the front desk rep is able to take the call.
3a. They press 2 and they are connected to our tech support number.
Please help. If you need any more clarification, please let me know. Thank you.
Twilio evangelist here.
It sounds like the best approach here is to port the business phone number into Twilio. This would let Twilio answer the incoming phone calls and execute your IVR for the callers, which solves steps 1 and 2 in your workflow.
For step 3, if you port the business phone number to Twilio then you'll need to find some other way to make the landline phone in the business ring since it won't have a phone number any more. There are a few ways to do this:
You could get a new phone number from AT&T that rings her landline.
You could go VoIP and build a Twilio Client application hosted either in web browser or a native iPhone or Android app.
With either of these options, from when the user selects option 1 in your IVR, you would just use the <Dial> verb to have Twilio make an outbound connection (either to the new landline number or to the Client instance name) and Twilio will bridge the incoming customers call with that outbound call.
Hope that helps.