Why KooKoo ?
KooKoo exists for the sole purpose of making it easier for you to develop telephony applications.
In the current scenario, web based systems and web based programming languages have gained traction for information dissemination. Telephony systems have lagged behind because of exorbitant setup costs and other such problems. Kookoo plans to address this problem by making telephony functions accessible through common web programming languages.
Let us look at a common scenario where Kookoo can be used:
Let us say that you own a local search company “SearchUs”. You have collected information about all local businesses and stored the information in a database. You have created a wonderful website using J2EE technologies so that customers can access that information. But you find that most of your customers actually prefer a phone than a website and hence your contact number is always overloaded. You would now prefer to have an IVR system so that customers can search for the information themselves without overloading your resources. But, building an IVR system is very costly and involves learning new technologies. Now you are caught in a dilemma. This is exactly the kind of problem Kookoo has been designed to solve. Just register for a Kookoo account. Reuse your existing web infrastructure and use Kookoo calls to access telephony functions and provide telephony access to your application. Just add one or two web pages to your web application to enable this.
Similar such scenarios can be identified for many web based portals including Job portals, matrimony portals, news portals etc.
What is KooKoo?
KooKoo is an interface to telephony applications. You can use it to perform telephony functions like placing a call, receiving calls, send sms, gathering user input etc. It is a perfect fit if you already have a web site/application as you can integrate KooKoo into your web site using your web programming language.So generally, by just adding around 10-20 lines of code you can enable a telephony channel to your customers.
The best way to think of KooKoo is that it is just another web page in your application. Only difference is, the web page is accessible from the phone rather than the browser.
How does KooKoo work?
Every customer of KooKoo will get a unique phone number. The phone number provisioning will be done by the KooKoo team on your behalf.
- Your customers dial the phone number you got from KooKoo.
- KooKoo answers the call and makes an HTTP request to your application. KooKoo also send you information about the call like the caller id etc.
- Your web application receives the information and informs KooKoo what to do through XML. Your application can inform KooKoo to Play a text message, Play an audio file, Send SMS, collect user input or record a message. More tasks will be added soon.
- KooKoo performs the actions and interacts with the caller.
- The business logic is completely handled by your code. KooKoo only takes care of the telephony part.
When will it be ready?
KooKoo platform is production ready. We are running the platform live for different clients for different purposes including call centers and outbound dialing in addition to IVR applications.
What is the development lifecycle?
1. Just register for a KooKoo account.
2. Setup public access to your web application.
3. Create a php, jsp page for KooKoo access as specified in the documentation.
4. Enter the URL of your application in your KooKoo page.
5. Test your application.
6. Upgrade to better plans once you are satisfied with your application and you get more traffic.
KooKoo advantages:
- Scalable: Grows with you and pay for what you use. Start as low as Rs.2000/month and increase only when your traffic increases. If your traffic goes down you can reduce your expenditure accordingly. We will give you reports which will indicate when your traffic increases, how many customers got the busy tone etc.
- Easy to program: Since KooKoo is XML based, you can use any programming language like Java, PHP, Ruby etc. Libraries are available for Java and PHP with more languages coming soon. Payment processing libraries are also available so that you can accept payment from your customers without the hassle of setting up a payment gateway etc.
- Safe: The business logic and data resides on your server. KooKoo comes in only when telephony functions are needed. All communication with KooKoo can happen over HTTPS which ensures security.
