Tag Archive for: voice

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Work Life Post COVID-19 Will be Different

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As reported by the Boston Business Journal, a recent survey conducted by the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, with help form several regional business groups, found that businesses are projecting that 47% of employees will continue to work completely or partially from home post-Covid. If this is the case, the number of remote workers will jump 2 1/2 times from the pre-Covid rate of 18%.

While this survey’s focus was looking at the potential impact on the commercial real estate market in the metro Boston area, we can expect these results to be somewhat similar for metropolitan areas across the country.

A significant, permanent shift in the percentage of remote workers will impact how businesses operate.

To adapt, you will want to eliminate issues that are “inconveniences” when temporary, but should not be allowed to hurt productivity or efficiency in the long term. Some of the changes we have seen and helped businesses deploy include:

  • Changing your infrastructure (and using cloud services) to provide users with secure, direct access to applications and files, eliminating the need for remote desktop or VPN connections to on-premise networks and systems
  • Expanding your use of social communication tools, like Google Chat and Microsoft Teams, to enable the casual and incidental conversations that occur in office
  • Incrementally automating common tasks and work flows to simplify and monitor processes
  • Giving your staff the ability to manage inbound and outbound calls through the company’s voice service, ensuring
    • Call flows, through ACD and IVR menus, work properly
    • Team members can transfer calls to others
    • Staff do not need to use personal phone numbers and voicemail
  • Ensuring your calling groups, like those for help desks, function well regardless of a person’s location
  • Updating threat protections for users, data, and applications outside your physical offices.
  • Selecting video conferencing services that are secure and that provide your team with useful features and controls, such as:
    • Controlled and secure access
    • Ability to share desktops, windows, and browser tabs
    • Privacy tools, such as alternate backgrounds
    • Captioning and transcription capture

As many of these improvements can be accomplished with the tools and systems you already have in place, the cost to ensure productivity is manageable.

Complete this form for a free, no-obligation assessment, or contact us to schedule an introductory call with one of our Cloud Advisors.

Remote Learning + (Privacy x Access) = New IT Needs

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While schools, teachers, and families want schools to safely re-open, the reality is that in most areas of the country, remote learning will be part of the plan this coming school year.  In addition to ensuring student access and adapting teaching methods, the move to remote learning creates new communication and privacy issues.  Working with schools and districts across the US, we see new requirements for voice services, such as:

Full Access

  • Even schools with Voice over IP phone systems may not have a way for staff to receive and make calls remotely.  More than forwarding an extension to a home or cell phone, staff should be able to answer, transfer, and initiate calls.  Additionally, unanswered calls should go to the school, not personal, voice mailbox.

Hotline / Service Desk

  • With staff working remotely, provide the ability for managed call groups with either “ring many” or “round robin” features to ensure staff are able to answer student calls quickly.
  • In addition to IT help lines, these service desks can help librarians assist student with research, enable counselors provide better coverage, and ensure calls to administrative offices are answered or routed when staff are working remotely.

Privacy for Personal Phone Numbers

  • Not all staff have school phone numbers that they can use to call, and receive calls, when out of the office.
  • Special education teachers, aids, liaisons, and coordinators, and other staff that need to communicate one-on-one with families, should not have to make calls from, or disclose, their personal home or cell phone numbers.

Cloud VoIP solutions can augment and fill gaps in your current phone services so you can fully support remote teachers, staff, and learners.

With cloud VoIP services, we can easily tailor incremental and point-solutions to your needs while managing per-user and total costs.  Capabilities include:

  • Individual direct dial numbers or extensions
  • Soft phone apps for mobile devices, laptops, and desktops, providing:
    • Ability to make and receive calls on any device without disclosing personal phone numbers
    • Access to all phone service features
    • Access to system voicemail services
  • Single or multi-level call direction menus
  • Service Desk / Agent Pools that provide:
    • Ring many, round-robin, or prioritized inbound call assignment
    • Ability to mark self available or unavailable
    • After-call work period before receiving next call to allow for documentation/transition

Depending on the features and functionality you need, we can deploy native Microsoft and Google voice services or bring in third party services designed to work with G Suite for Education and Microsoft 365.

Please contact us to discuss your needs and explore your options.

Remote Workers Need Voice Services

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As remote work becomes a longer-term consideration, we have spent time and money to make sure that our teams can work from home.  Computers, WiFi upgrades, remote desktops, and new cloud services have been parts of the solution. Often forgotten are voice services.  Employees that normally work in the office may not be set up to effectively use your phone system from home.  For some businesses …

  • Employees answering general lines are unable to forward calls to other employees, requiring callers to hang up and redial or the disclosure of personal cell and home phone numbers.
  • Members of hotlines, service desks, and other managed groups cannot receive live calls, forcing them to constantly check and respond to voice messages and dramatically increasing the effort to coordinate activities.
  • Individuals are forwarding business lines to home or mobile phones, mixing business and personal voicemails and calls.

A robust voice service can dramatically improve remote worker productivity.

By moving to a cloud Voice over IP (VoIP) service, or augmenting your current phone services, you can ensure your business communications run smoothly.

  • Robust desktop apps allow receptionists and administrative staff to answer, transfer, and route calls.
  • “Soft Phone” mobile apps allow staff to send and receive calls from personal devices without using or disclosing personal contact information.
  • All voice messages remain within the system, ensuring data privacy.
  • Managed calling groups function properly, maintaining routing, sequencing, and time management features.
  • Employees have access to conference calls, and optionally video call and secure chat services.

In addition, many cloud VoIP services seamlessly integrate with the Microsoft 365 and G Suite ecosystems, improving ease-of-use and providing additional features.

If you need to shore-up your phone service, we have multiple, affordable options we can match to your needs.  Please contact us to discuss your needs and options.

Solve Your COVID-19 Phone Issues

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As we are reaching out to customers and others in our network, we are seeing about 15% of business with serious phone problems.  The most common issue is that the person answering the business’ phone is unable to forward a call to other employers, nor can they provide a direct number without sharing a private home or cell phone number. It is more difficult to keep your business moving when you cannot properly answer calls.  Call backs and emails only go so far.

The good news is that you can use cloud-based, voice over IP (VoIP) phone services to solve this problem without replacing your current phone service.  And, several vendors are offering free services to small businesses.

How it Works

We effectively overlay a cloud VoIP service over your existing phone system/services.

  • We setup a VoIP phone service for your business, but do NOT port over your existing numbers.
  • We auto-forward your current business lines to the VoIP service
  • Within the VoIP services:
    • Employees can, answer and make calls using “Soft Phone” software on the computers or via a app on their smart phone. The cell number remains private.
    • We can setup groups or departments that simultaneously ring multiple people, or round-robin in a team, to ensure inbound sales and service calls are answered.
    • Use the embedded voice mail, or forward calls back to an individuals normal extension/voicemail (depending on system capabilities)
    • Enable texting/chat services (in most VoIP services), if needed.
    • Integrate audio and video conferencing services, if needed.

Several VoIP providers we work with are offering multiple months of free service. While they are hoping you like the service enough to switch permanently, this is an affordable temporary solution.

Call us or email us for more information.