The benefits of a broadband boost

The 20th May was National Work at Home day with businesses across the country encouraging employees to work from the comfort of their own homes. Although a survey by the TUC has shown that the numbers of people regularly working from home fell slightly during the recession to around 3.7 million, the overall trend towards home and flexible working is increasing.

Experts cite the all round benefits of working from home. Employees freed from the daily commute save time and money whilst stress levels are reduced. Employers benefit from greater staff commitment and productivity whilst the environment also benefits from fewer car journeys consuming less energy and creating less pollution.

Unfortunately not all employees can benefit from working at home. For some this is due to the nature of their work whilst others, mainly living in rural areas, simply do not have a robust enough broadband connection to allow home working. In recognition of the effect that poor or non existent broadband can have on employees and rural businesses alike, the House of Commons held a backbench debate on 19 May.

In opening the debate Rory Smith MP commented that “It is increasingly clear that a separation between voice coverage and data coverage is a thing of the past”. This is certainly true in a global village where companies with good broadband connections are benefiting from cheap or free telephone calls over the internet via VoIP along with the associated benefits of virtual telephone systems.

Chi Onwurah MP quoted the Federation of Small Businesses who reported that 90% of its members used the internet in their business with a third commentating that slow broadband speeds were contributing to reduced productivity.

One of the solutions to the slow roll out of good landline broadband speeds is to encourage the use of mobile broadband access or satellite broadband. A number of speakers suggested that the current Ofcom mobile auction should include an obligation to increase mobile broadband coverage to help rural businesses.

The resolution at the end of the debate was “That this House recognises that rural businesses and rural communities across the UK are isolated and undermined by slow broadband and the lack of mobile voice and mobile broadband coverage; urges Ofcom to increase the coverage obligation attached to the 800MHz spectrum licence to 98 per cent.; and calls upon the Government to fulfil its commitment to build both the best superfast broadband network in Europe and provide everyone in the UK with a minimum of 2 Mbps by 2015.”

Extracting the hype from the Skype deal

The news that Microsoft had paid $8.5 billion for Skype generated a mixture of awe and puzzlement from industry experts. The initial reaction was best summed up in the Guardian with the simple question as to why “Microsoft paid $8.5bn for a business that has changed hands so many times, never made money, and comes with substantial debt?”

On reflection it appears that Microsoft may have made a strategic call. In one fell swoop it has swept up a market leader in a field in which Microsoft lacked visible expertise. By integrating Skype within its platforms the software giant would take a further step towards a fully integrated business offering.

Skype is an internet service which allows users to chat face to face for free with other Skype users around the world and to chat with landline users for a reduced fee. Apart from the addition of face to face viewing it is little different from a number of VoIP packages, including the ones offered by Callagenix.

VoIP has been hailed as the future of business as it enables cost effective conference calls and opens up communication lines worldwide. This allows businesses to cut down on travel costs whilst at the same time gaining a greater understanding of requirements through the ease of cheap or free conversation. Coupled with features such as local telephone codes and virtual switchboards, business can act globally from anywhere in the world.

With 170 million users worldwide communicating for 209 billion minutes in 2010, Skype does come with a ready audience and it is easy to see the potential in encouraging this audience to use Microsoft products. Many commentators have speculated on the potential to be gained from targeting Skype at business users including whether this may tempt back some consumers from Apple.

However, users of existing Microsoft products are used to spreading their custom around with accounting, back up and storage programmes being just a few of the non-Microsoft products in common use. Those businesses looking for VoIP telephony services are just as likely to shop around for the best overall package. This is especially true of those businesses looking for not just a VoIP line but an integrated telephone service which includes features such as premium rate lines, disaster recovery, international presence, virtual switchboards or virtual assistance. Whilst we will watch the progress of the Microsoft/Skype integration with interest, our priority will be to carry on providing business with integrated VoIP packages coupled with service excellence for an all round telephony solution.

Closing the gap between science fiction and telephone fact

Those of a certain age may remember the science fiction programmes and books of some fifty years ago with nostalgia. Science fiction writers were basing their guesses of future technology on extrapolations of existing knowledge. In the process, whilst some ideas have still to come to fruition others have already had their time.

Take, for example, the late Isaac Asimov who in his Foundation series set thousands of years in our future predicted the invention of voice activated dictation. Or how about Star Trek, with communicators looking strangely like the flip lid mobiles of today? Voice activated systems, nowadays taken for granted, were playthings of the early Science Fiction writers.

In some ways science needs dreamers to explore ideas and come up with concepts that act as spurs to invention. However, the pace of technological change is such that current developments are far ahead of anything that could logically have been predicted fifty years ago. This is particular true of the latest two announcements on advancements in telephone technology.

The first announcement concerns the development of mobile phone batteries which will recharge themselves from sound waves. This means that the more you use your phone the more you will charge it. Even if you have had a quiet day, you can still charge your phone by listening to music or the television in the evening. The South Korean team behind the invention say that it won’t be long before their initial work on this new area of battery technology heralds fully self charging mobile phones.

We’re not sure how long mobiles will be able to benefit from self charging batteries following the announcement of a “paper” phone which contains all the functionality of a smart phone on a thin piece of paper the size of a credit card. Although final production is still some time away, the inventors at Queen’s University predict that this new phone will do away with Smart phones within the next 5 years.

Whilst these two inventions largely concern mobile telephones it won’t be long before the pace of technology transforms business telephony. Within the last few years we have already seen the advent of virtual switchboards transforming telephone call answering and handling with VoIP enabling international calls for a few pence or even for free. Telephone systems are leading the way in transforming the global economy and that is definitely something that the science fiction writers didn’t predict.

How effective are your telephone systems?

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Amanda Wilson, the manager of Aviva’s call centre, announced a radical shake up of the way in which calls were handled. Whilst proud that service standards for number of calls answered were met, Amanda Wilson acknowledged that this target driven culture left overall standards falling way behind expectations.

A review of calls themselves revealed that 60% of calls were directly as a result of previous calls being mis-handled. This resulted in incorrect or missing claim payments, mistakes in correspondence or lack of action. In effect the call answering target had put pressure on employees to skimp work processes and provide unconstructive responses.

The new approach is based around “systems thinking” with call centre staff encouraged to stay on the telephone for longer and try to sort out client queries within the first call. This means that queries are no longer passed around employees, a process which resulted in complaints taking an average of 39 days to solve against a target of 5 days. The success of this new call answering process can be seen in the reduction of 20,000 calls per month as queries are sorted first time around.

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from the lead taken by Aviva. With the advent of internet based switchboards even the smallest business can now benefit from some quite sophisticated call processing procedures. These, for example, can allow calls to be routed to the right department using press button or voice options. This saves employees having to route calls manually and also provides a smoother response for customers.

Before setting up a virtual switchboard, it pays to take time to consider the nature of calls and how they should be processed. Empowering employees to take certain actions in response to a query or complaint will help towards speedy resolution as will training in customer service. Something as simple as having access to a departmental employee schedule can help to speed up call resolutions whilst at other times the availability of computer based help manuals can be required.

With employees being encouraged to treat outside calls as having priority over other tasks, callers won’t have to phone more than once and this will actually free up both employee time and improve customer perceptions. Linking this change of emphasis to an effective telephone system will pay dividends in the form of improved margins and increased sales from satisfied customers.

How much money are you wasting on your phone bill?

The National Billmonitor Mobile report released recently makes startling reading. The company, which operates the UK’s only Ofcom-accredited mobile comparison calculator, analysed over 28,000 mobile phone bills and compared them against available contracts within the UK.

As a result of the survey, Billmonitor concluded that 76% of mobile subscribers are on the wrong contracts leading to a total overpayment of just under £5 billion every year. This equates to some £195 per contract per year, a very high proportion when viewed against the average UK mobile bill of £439 per year. Even more shocking this total overpayment equates to around a third of the total mobile bill charges each year.

Whilst the number of phone bills surveyed is only a fraction of the more than 33 million mobile contracts within the UK it is still a larger sample than is used in many surveys in all walks of life. For those with time to read it the survey makes fascinating reading. The top reason given in the report for mobile customers not optimising their bill is a combination of complacency and fear of “bill shock”. This is not surprising as the report includes the passing comment that there are over 8 million different mobile tariffs being used in the UK at present. Whilst some of these undoubtedly relate to contracts linked to specific handsets, it is no wonder that consumers who are thinking of switching are a little at sea over which tariff is best.

When it comes to switching landline contracts the same complacency and fear of “bill shock” reasons come into play. Inertia is a very powerful thing and many companies, including banks, trade on it to attract and keep customers. The perception that it is difficult to switch a telephone contract and that charges on the new contract may not be as advertised is enough to dissuade many people and businesses from switching contracts.

Those that do take the plunge can find themselves with a remarkable reduction in telephone call costs. For example, switching from a standard BT contract to Option Telecom can slash bills by over a third. Those who are able to switch to a VoIP contract can save even more. Thanks to Ofcom regulation changes the switching process is seamless and as it is carried out by the telephone service providers means little or no effort is needed by the telephone user.