The worth of your telephone

Earlier this year a letter written by Alexander Graham Bell sold for around $92,000.  In the letter written to his parents Bell describes and draws how his new invention works and also instructs them to run a copper wire out to their duck pond to diffuse any danger from lightning striking the phone.

The letter was written two years after Bell filed his patent application and made that historic first telephone call to his assistant.  Although the letter was considered to be particularly valuable because of the drawings and personal  information it set us to musing on the true worth of telephones to business and whether we appreciate them enough.

For many businesses the telephone is simply a cost.  The phone bill arrives and is analysed in detail. Employees are questioned on why they spent x time on the phone, was y call really necessary and then edicts go out on the need to cut down on calls in the future.  Sounds familiar?  It’s not surprising as similar inquisitions go on in firms up and down the country.

Let us make one thing clear.  We are not against analysis per se as it does highlight some wasteful practices such as those released to the Press Association recently which revealed that the Metropolitan Police spent more than £35,000 in making over 110,000 calls to the speaking clock in the past two years.  What we would like to highlight is that analysis of telephone use should go two ways.  This would enable firms to balance costs against the increased sales and customer satisfaction levels which arose from using the telephone in the first place, putting a true worth on telephone usage.

Analysing telephone costs has had one direct benefit for many businesses in encouraging them to look for alternatives.  Moving away from more traditional telephone models and towards internet telephony can result in substantial cost savings and greater efficiencies.  VoIP (internet) calls generally work out much cheaper than landline calls, even if the call is VoIP to landline.  For VoIP to VoIP calls the cost is often cheaper still or even free in some cases.

The other main advantage of internet calls is the ability to get rid of the old fashioned switchboard in favour of a virtual one.  This brings all the advantages of a quite sophisticated switchboard within the reach of smaller organisations.  Call recognition and forwarding, call recording and caller handling are among the many features of a virtual switchboard.

Of course, virtual switchboards also come with the ability to analyse calls, enabling businesses to streamline practices and concentrate marketing efforts on targeted areas.  The benefit is that now that calls are cheaper the marketing effort can go into full swing, bringing in revenue and proving that when it comes to income, the telephone is still worth a lot to business.