You’ve Got The Power

If you’ve never thought of your communications system as a place to reduce energy consumption, it’s time to start…In fact, start by taking a look at the phone on your desk.

Testing by Avaya and Tolly Consultants agree: Avaya IP Phones use less energy than the competition. In head-to-head comparisons, independent tests show that Avaya IP Office phones consume up to 24.5% less energy than competitive phones. If your business uses a lot of phones-a small contact center for example-the savings can add up. And because the Avaya IP Office solution does not require a dedicated server, energy consumption is cut there as well.

All of this means:

* Less energy consumed
* Lower CO2 emissions
* Lower electricity bills

Read the report and learn about other ways to cut your energy usage: http://www.avaya.com/usa/registration/tolly-test-report-avaya-ip-office-release-6

Mother Nature has been playing havoc with just about everyone this winter. Snow, ice, rain and more have resulted in commuting delays, canceled meetings, business shutdowns, school closings/childcare issues, etc. If you are feeling worn down now might be a good time to check out how your business communications system can help you stand up to Mother Nature.

When the weather is bad, the last thing you should do is get in your car. Instead work at home. If you approach it correctly, a communications system like Avaya IP Office can help you weather the storm without missing a beat. Here’s how:

· Set up your office phone at home: Any employee in your business can easily set up their office extension in their home, either using an IP phone set or softphone software on a laptop/PC. Just connect to the Internet and handle all your calls, with all your speed dials and other short cuts. Callers won’t know the difference.

· Activate a new greeting: If the weather is going to impact business performance and you want to let callers know, take the opportunity to remotely update the greeting on your business’s auto attendant.

· Call overflow: Do you have another office in another location that is not affected by the severe weather? Then use that office to handle calls for the office that’s closed. With Avaya IP Office, calls can automatically be diverted to the other office or location (callers won’t even notice).

· Conference bridge: Don’t forget that Avaya IP Office gives you two built-in, 64-party conference bridges. If you need to get everyone in your business on the line at the same time, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Don’t let severe weather get in the way of doing business. Take advantage of the flexibility that Avaya IP Office gives you to sail (or sleigh) right though.

Small Business Communications: 5 Must Have Features

Is now the right time to upgrade your office communications solution? If your business is relying on an ‘older’ communications solution, the answer is ‘yes.’ But how old is ‘older?’ Here’s an easy way to tell. These are five communications features no business should do without… even if you are missing just one, it’s probably time to consider getting a new communications system.

Caller ID: Knowing who is calling before you pick up the phone is a great convenience and essential for sales and customer service. Caller ID has been around for years, so if your current communications can’t support Caller ID, it’s definitely time to make a change. But there’s an extra dimension to this: being able to link to your customer database/CRM solution (such as Salesforce.com). Avaya IP Office can automatically bring up a ’screen pop’ of information about the caller. The impact of that single feature on sales and customer service can be huge.

One-number Reachability: Most people in business today have more than one ‘reach’ number: office, office mobile, personal mobile, fax, home office, etc. To stay in touch, employees end up giving out personal numbers, which is never a good idea. A better way is to use your office communications system to manage all your different numbers by providing customers one number (i.e., the office number) and use the intelligence in your office communications system (like Avaya IP Office) to find you.

Conference Calls: Many small businesses get by with rudimentary conference calling on their phone systems (it’s good for conferencing a few people) and also spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on third-party conference call services when they need more. If that’s you, it’s definitely time to make a change. Avaya IP Office has two conference bridges-each one can support more than sixty people on a call. That means no outside charges for conference calls and calls can be arranged at a moment’s notice.

Communications Anywhere: It used to be that when you had more than one office or business location, you needed a completely separate phone system for each site. Or if someone wanted to work from home, you needed to install a separate line with its own number that had nothing to do with your office communications system. That’s not the case anymore. Avaya IP Office lets you link communications systems in different offices. You can share resources-messaging and a receptionist. If one office is closed, calls can automatically be diverted to the other office (callers won’t even notice). Employees in different offices, or those working at home, can reach each other with just a 3-digit extension.

‘No Cost’ Moves/Adds/Changes: Does it seem like even the smallest change to your current communications system requires a costly visit from a technician? If the answer is yes, it’s definitely time to make a change. Today’s new IP-based communications systems, such as Avaya IP Office solution, let you make moves, adds and changes without calling a technician and incurring any costs. That means if you add an employee or change the way calls are routed in your business, you can make the change yourself. The savings are significant and the flexibility is a real advantage.

Need more advice as to whether now is the time to upgrade your communications system? Interested in learning how you might be able to save as much as 60% on an upgrade.

Using online tools to increase awareness is a key part of any integrated marketing strategy today. But before you get caught up in the mechanics of e-mail blasts, posting articles/whitepapers, pay-per-click advertising, etc.-make sure you have a clear picture of what you want to accomplish. Remember, you are not selling, you are marketing.

Theodore Leavitt, the longtime Harvard Business School Professor and editor of Harvard Business Review, once distinguished selling and marketing this way: ‘Selling focuses on the needs of the seller while marketing focuses on the needs of the buyer.’

Online is the perfect place for you to focus on the needs of your buyer. In other words, you want to talk about them, not you. When you answer their needs, you position yourself as a solution provider that offers value and services above and beyond the ‘rest’-and that competitive edge is what you need to leverage. How do you make this happen? Here are some basic guidelines:

Ask yourself, ‘Why should they care?’ In everything you create-whether it’s a page on your website, an e-mail, an article, etc.-always keep the reader in mind: What’s in it for them? What benefit will they gain?

Are you being ‘meaningfully different?’ The innovation consultant Doug Hall of Eureka Ranch describes innovation as being ‘meaningfully different.’ Not just different for the sake of being different-difference that really matters. Are you getting across how your product or service is meaningfully different?

The medium is the message. How you choose to communicate will impact what you say-and how long you have to say it. Be sure to calibrate your message accordingly, whether it’s a 140-character Tweet, a banner ad, an IM/text message, an e-mail, blog post, online article, whitepaper, etc. Don’t overload: an e-mail should not become a whitepaper. Take advantage of the opportunity to offer online seminars if you really want the opportunity to present a lot of information. Remember, in most cases, your real goal is to get enough attention to schedule a face-to-face meeting.

Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. There’s no harm in writing less and reusing/recycling the same content. An old adage in advertising is that it’s only when you are sick of seeing your ad over and over that the public is first noticing it. Try to create a ‘repository’ of content and re-purpose it in various venues-seminars, blogs, white papers, demos, POV’s, advertorials, etc.

Where you say it is as important as what you say. Think about where your target customer lives and breathes and make sure you are there. If you are targeting doctors’ offices, think about the trade sites and professional associations they are part of and consider advertising on those sites. Think about contributing to blogs that are read by your core customers and establishing yourself as an industry thought leader-whether that means submitting white papers for publication, editorial POVs (point of views) or blog content, tweets thru twitter, or all of the above. Differentiating yourself through the use of meaningful content requires that you place that content in meaningful venues.

Make connections. Make it easy for people to find you by making sure your content links back to what should be a comprehensive and user friendly website about your products and services with a strong call to action to incentivize the prospect to contact you. Investigate reciprocal links you might add to your website. This increases traffic and is one of the best ways to improve your organic search results so when people type in a product or service you offer, you come up higher in the rankings.

If you’ve never thought of your communications system as a place to reduce energy consumption, it’s time to start…In fact, start by taking a look at the phone on your desk.

Testing by Avaya and Tolly Consultants agree: Avaya IP Phones use less energy than the competition. In head-to-head comparisons, independent tests show that Avaya IP Office phones consume up to 24.5% less energy than competitive phones. If your business uses a lot of phones-a small contact center for example-the savings can add up. And because the Avaya IP Office solution does not require a dedicated server, energy consumption is cut there as well.

All of this means:

*
Less energy consumed
*
Lower CO2 emissions
*
Lower electricity bills

If you think your phone system (aka communications system) doesn’t make a difference in your business, think again. How would you alter your customers’ experience if you could provide them immediate access to employees, no matter where those employees were located? Or have the ability to automatically route a call from a customer to the very specialist that is an expert in their area of inquiry so that they get their questions answered right away? Or, give your patients the ability to request a prescription refill automatically even if it is outside of business hours? Or, free up 50% of your receptionist’s time to work on more important work projects?

It’s doable and it doesn’t cost a fortune. Just check out Avaya IP Office. Just remember, while you may still look at it as a ‘phone’ it can be much more than that, it can be a money maker! Power up your people and give your employees more ways to be responsive to customers. You’ll see a difference from both sides.

Customer service is a critical function in any business today. While years ago, many business viewed service as an add-on expense and far less important than sales, that has changed.

But what’s less recognized is that delivering great customer service is something of a moving target. There’s no guarantee that what worked yesterday is going to be effective today. Customer service strategies need to constantly adapt to a wide range of factors.

Given that reality, how can small businesses ensure that they stay at the cutting edge of customer service? One strategy is to take a close look at what is currently getting the attention of big enterprises. Large companies are good bellwethers because it’s vital that they be proactive: if a global enterprise lets its customer service slip, the repercussions can reverberate around the world and take years and huge amounts of money to correct.

So what is on the mind of big enterprises that small companies will want to become aware of? Here is a rundown of a few of the top issues:

Generation Shift: As the historic, post-World War II ‘Baby Boom’ generation moves into retirement, its demographic followers-often referred to in the media as Generations X and Y -are becoming the major forces in the economy. These post-Baby Boom generations grew up surrounded by media-oriented technology while enjoying relentless improvements in computing functionality and performance. Given this experience, they expect instantaneous service and are puzzled when it is not available anywhere, anytime through any medium. Their tolerance for failure is limited and they have no hesitation going public with their dissatisfaction, including posting messages, photos, videos and more online. They are media agnostic, using the phone, e-mail, Web chat, IM and social media interchangeably.

Customer Service is Going Multimedia: Customer service has always been a phone-based activity, and in many if not most cases, that’s still the case. Many contact centers are still just call centers: voice-only systems designed for an era when the only real option for the customer seeking service was to pick up the phone.

Adding non-voice capabilities is critical-new generations of customers expect it. In a 2010 survey,[1] contact center professionals reported that they expect the next two years to bring strong growth in non-voice interactions:

* The greatest increases are expected to occur in Web self-service, Web chat and social media.
* One-third of contact centers are expected to have a majority of their agents handling both voice and multimedia interactions.

Making Experts Accessible: There are always times when a customer service agent needs help resolving a customer’s request. Too often, the agent’s choices are limited to shouting over the cubicle wall, calling in a favor from a colleague or asking for more time-necessitating a callback or subsequent correspondence, further reducing customer satisfaction and increasing costs. More and more contact centers are incorporating presence to provide agents with easy access to experts who may be located across the hall or around the world and can easily be patched into a conversation. Customers are happy because their needs are fully addressed the first time they contact the enterprise.

Creating Full Context for Every Interaction: A well-integrated, multimedia capability not only recognizes the customer, but also understands the context and intelligently selects the resources required to address the customer’s issue. Context means gathering all relevant information about a customer-profile, demographics, preferences, past interactions, etc. Such information often resides in databases, business applications and processes maintained by the business, but not always integrated into the customer service function. When agents do not have immediate access to information, customer satisfaction suffers. A contact center application that preserves all of this contextual information across all media and has it available for all agents not only increases customer satisfaction, but saves time and expense by reducing the time needed to serve the customer.

Listen for Unspoken Clues: Customer service is a great opportunity to hear the voice of your customer. Many companies are incorporating the ability to do extensive recordings that are then analyzed using speech analytics, searching for recurring issues and themes. But many companies are also recognizing that most, if not all, customer interactions have a major emotional component and are adapting their systems to pick up on clues that suggest both rising levels of dissatisfaction, as well as satisfaction, and providing customer service agents with techniques and support for dealing with both.

Small Business owners should routinely do an inventory of their systems and make sure they have features and functionalities that are keeping up with the expectations and preferences of their customers. If your phone system, for example, makes you ‘hard to find’ and doesn’t allow you to integrate your IM, cell, office and email-you may be at risk of losing your most important customers.

[1] Â 2010 Contact Center survey conducted by Webtorials, sponsored by Avaya

Convergence Communications is pleased to announce that Greg Lozano has completed the ICC Elite Certified Installer Program. With this certification we can now offer the ICC LIFETIME warranty for cabling installations.