Intelemedia pushes Callbutton into click-to-call market

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Application service provider Intelemedia Communications Inc. is launching a companion firm to help e-commerce companies link to customers by telephone and grab information about the callers at the same time.

The new company, Richardson-based Callbutton, offers service to allow e-commerce Websites to add buttons that visitors can click to connect by phone to sales or customer support personnel. But in addition to connecting the call, Callbutton will collect and store data about the call automatically and through on-screen prompts.

A number of companies, including telecom service providers and Internet service providers, offer click-to-call capability. But Callbutton believes its back-end technology will set it apart from other such services.

"Their offerings are very thin," said Eric Lenington, Intelemedia Chief Executive Officer and interim managing director of Callbutton. "Their objective was to provide click-to-call capability. Our objective was to provide a customer-call management system."

The sales approach
Callbutton will sell to intermediaries, including Web development firms, Web hosting firms and e-commerce and telephone systems integrators. Callbutton's customers, in turn, will resell to the clients that actually use the service.

"We've made Callbutton very easy to put on a site, but we're not going to be in the business of putting it on people's sites," Lenington said.

Intelemedia will provide the technology back office for the service under a vendor-client relationship with Callbutton. In addition to gathering data, Callbutton's system can intelligently route calls. The back-end system developed and run by Intelemedia can be set up to route calls to retail outlets or service centers in the callers' immediate geographic areas, if that's what a client wants. It can route calls to call centers and give callers options such as scheduling callbacks or leaving voice or text messages if their calls can't be answered immediately.

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Carter, Wayne - (2001, January 25) Intelemedia pushes Callbutton into click-to-call market - LocalBusiness.com