Posts

Remote Workers Need Voice Services

/in

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

/in

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.

 

Tuesday Take Away: 8 Ways that Clouds Beat Blizzards

/in

Once again, the team and I at Cumulus Global found ourselves working from our homes, pizza shops, libraries, and coffee shops.  An unusual and record-breaking October Nor’easter dumped about a foot of very heavy and wet snow on us, snapping power poles and trees like, well, twigs.  In our area of the state, most towns reported between 60% and 100% of residences and businesses without power.  Starting on Saturday evening, many will be without power until late Thursday or Friday.

Businesses tied to their physical offices, again, are learning the hard way how Cloud Computing can help keep things running when life throws the unexpected your way.

1) Message Continuity

If you run MS Exchange, Google Message Continuity not only provides you with bullet-proof spooling if your server or Internet link are down, you get Gmail’s web interface and the ability to send and receive emails.  And while most email contingency services dump all activity in your spool to your inbox (including sent message), GMC actually syncs your sent and saved messages, preserving your folders and your sanity.

2) Cloud Storage Mirror

Different than backing up for restores or recovery, synchronizing or mirroring local and network data to a cloud service gives you the ability to access and use your documents, usually through a web interface, from anywhere at anytime.  Matching the cloud service and the sync tool to your needs ensures your critical data is available even if your office is not.

3) Google Talk

With a laptop or smartphone, the Google Talk app, and an Internet connection anywhere, you can communicate with your team and your associates securely via instant messaging, voice conferencing, or video conferencing.  Don’t worry of phone lines or in-house PBXs are down, with Google Talk you can see who is available and converse at will.

4) Google Voice

Get your laptop to an Internet connection with a headset and microphone and you can send and receive calls without a fuss.

5) Hosted VoIP Phone Services

It may seem like the throw-back to the days of Centrex, but hosted VoIP (aka Hosted iPBX) services keep your phone lines working regardless of what is happening with your building.  And, you can access and use your lines, extensions, and voice mail from pretty much anyplace with either a VoIP phone, softphone software on your laptop, or your smartphone.

6) Cloud-Based Email

If you are thinking of using the cloud as a contingency service because cloud-based email is going to be available when your in-house system goes off-line, why not make the more reliable service the one you use every day?  Do you need or want to keep your in-house server when a cloud-based service will be more reliable and more available?  Ok, it’s a loaded question … but still worth some thought.

7) Cloud File Services

Just as with cloud-based email, Cloud File Services will prove more reliable and available over time, and especially during emergencies.  Granted, you may have applications, and work flow issues that make using cloud file services as your primary file service impractical.  But, you will never know if you don’t take a look. And, many of these requirements work with the right local sync technology in place.

8) Google Apps for Business / Government / Education

There, I finally said it.  Google Apps gives you the reliability and availability of the cloud-based Gmail, cloud storage you can mirror or sync, Google Talk, Google Voice integration, and a cloud file service.  Better yet, Google Apps rolls these services into an integrated, affordable package with access from most any computer and smartphone.  Some of the solutions may require third party components.  But, when disaster strikes (and disasters will strike), why not have an IT Ecosystem that is resilient to available rather than you you need to recover.