What do people use deskphones for?

Feature, Feature, Feature. When we launch new products to our channel, that is the question we get asked most. What features does it have? What can it do? This actually translates to what can you offer that your competition can't? What will give me the edge in a sale?

All fair questions, that is the nature of the beast. Last year we entered the competitive world of hosted telephony. We have a great product, as good as any of the other ones out there. The problem is, it was pretty similar to everyone out there. It did all the same things. It had the 45/60/100 features that our competitors had (and still does). There are nuances that made it different, better protocols, higher security settings, but not things that get you through the door.

So we Invosys'd it. We took it to the bare bones and built it back up. What do people want, and what do people use, and how can we make that better? Hosted telephony is frustrating as it is, in general, being sold on an old formula but it is so much more. It is a huge computer and all the devices are terminals. It can spin calls on its head, yet historically it is being pigeonholed as a plain old telephone.

So what do people use a telephone system for? For 90% of telephone systems, their job is to receive calls, make calls and pass calls around. That is it, that is their mission in life.

Right then- receiving calls, we run one of the best, if not the best call handling platforms in the world. Let's put that at the front end- so all numbers coming in run through Number Manager, and will give them all the cutting edge functionality that we have built over the last 11 years. Want International numbers on your platform, easy. Just for good measure this adds Disaster Recovery as standard- Tick

Make calls, not a lot you can do with that, but let's add reliability to the game, we are not a carrier so we can use anyone to route the calls to, if there is an issue with a route we can change it, so calls can get out. The joy of hosted is that most things are instant, no changing CPS, no changing LCR or Autodiallers, we have the flexibility to move calls to different carriers in real time. In fact, we can do more than that but that is for another time.- Tick

Move calls around, change the way that is done. Replicate what people have done before and then make it better. So if people want to be extension 120, do that. I have two extension numbers now, 3311 which is the last 4 digits of my DDI and 78383, which is the one most in the office use, as it spells STEVE. Ed is ED (33), Dom is DOM (366) Luke J is 58535 and Luke G is 58534. We made their extensions what we called them. Darren is known as Darren, Daz or Dazza- he is all three on a PBX (327726, 329, 32992). The order desk group is ORDERS, Support is SUPPORT and Sales is SALES.

It actually gets more impressive as one of our partners adds a universal speed dial to all their clients. If you dial 83532667 (Telecoms) you dial out to their own help desk. This is on everyone's phone. So also add universal speed-dials eg a supplier, a courier, a non internal phone that many people ring and set that up (Pizza is 74992, Taxi is 8294)

Now we are mimicking what people use the phone for and making it simpler. Everybody now knows what everyone's extension is (without looking at that sheet of paper which is on virtually every desk in the land). Simple and relooked at the way that the phone was actually used.- Tick

Then we looked at commercials, and changed the way that they were dealt with, however, I am afraid you will have to contact me for that information.