Posts Tagged ‘Beat’
How to Use Your Telephone System to Beat the Credit Crunch
In today’s tough economic climate businesses need to work hard to ensure they are maximising every customer and opportunity they have. This article will show you how you can use your existing or a new telephone system to make the most out of your customers and prospects alike.
Mobility
What happens when you or your staff are out of the office? Does the phone just ring and ring. Perhaps the customer can speak to someone else or leave you a message on your voicemail. You could give out your mobile number but then you’re contactable 24/7.
Mobile twinning allows you to take calls made to office numbers from your mobile phone. Then use software installed on your mobile phone to place the call on hold, transfer, conference or record, just as you could using your fixed office phone.
Voicemail
Voicemail offers businesses many ways to save money and increase productivity. The capability of some voicemail systems stretches well beyond the simple message taking functions of early voicemail systems. Today voicemail systems control call flow by automatically answering calls and directing them to the correct person or department. The voicemail will also queue calls and give announcements to update callers to their position in the queue.
Voicemail has many other money saving features such as call recording which allows supervisors to listen to calls via a password protected web browser application. Call recording can help train staff correctly, maintain service quality and encourages staff to adhere to company regulations. It also helps to avoid ambiguity in difficult situations by allowing both customer and company to listen to a call.
CTI
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) is where there is a connection between your data network and the office phone system. CTI allows ‘click to dial’ from applications such as Microsoft Outlook or Goldmine.
CTI applications like Avaya’s Phone Manager Pro offer a graphical user interface which allows you to control telephony features such as forwarding, conference initiation, message control, company directory and much more.
When customers call, some CTI applications can ‘pop’ the customer record from the company CRM so the customer can be greeted personally and the person that answered the call is ready to action the call immediately.
IVR
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) makes everyday orders easy. Callers never have to speak to a person. The phone system will answer the call and ask the caller to make selections from a list based on the callers response. Eg. A book company wants to be able to sell its books 24/7 both online and on the phone. Their staff work 9-5 so how can non web users place their order after 5pm? IVR will answer the call and ask the caller to input the product code, read back the product name and then take payment details.
Call logging
It is estimated that call logging can increase productivity by 15-20% as staff know their calls are being counted. The saying goes that ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’. This is especially true for call data. Call logging can show how many calls an individual takes or makes and reports can be emailed to a supervisor automatically at the end of each day. Call logging can also be used to individually bill departments or other companies using the same telephone system.
South African born Keith has lived in the south of England for most of his life. After graduating from University with a degree in Business Information Systems Management he decided to start Strawberrysoup; a website design company based in West Sussex and Dorset.
Keith successfully gained entry into the Southampton University Air Squadron and spent over 12 months training to fly. Since then he has continued to follow his interest in flying and has now began his own training in the form of a Private Pilot’s Licence.
Keith also spent 13 months working within the Image and Printing Group at Hewlett Packard in Bracknell. Throughout his time there, he was responsible for many activities including events organisation and website design and maintenance.
Beat Prank Callers And Stalkers With Reverse Telephone Search!
Chances are, we have all had a few prank calls. Usually kids looking for a little fun. However, sometimes, that innocent (if annoying fun) turns into something more sinister.
Cyber stalking, internet harassment, and harassment via cell phones, including text messages, is becoming more and more prevalent. The problem is that these modern technologies all offer anonymity to the perpetrator, making it easy for them to make your life miserable!
Fortunately, new technology like reverse telephone search services are making it a little easier for us to protect ourselves, but the statistics are nonetheless scary. Research shows that a million men and women are victims of online and telephone stalking. That is eight percent of women, and two percent of men.
How to Stop a Stalker
Cyber stalkers find out every piece of information on you via the internet, and other means. They will continue to harass you, and the harassment will escalate, as long as you allow it to. Take action, including the following:
Minimize the amount of information you put online.
Never include your telephone number, or address.
Make social networking and other sites private, viewable only to friends.
Avoid posting pictures of yourself online.
Make sure your internet security is up to date.
Request that your number be unlisted, and remove it from any directories, online or off.
Use an alternative number when you have no choice but to give out your phone number, whether online or off. Do the same with your email address.
Report prank call or stalking incidents to the police.
If your caller calls from a number that you can check, run a reverse telephone search and identify them immediately.
Keep detailed records of any incidents. This will help if your stalker is prosecuted, or you decide to get a restraining order.
These are just a few of the key points to remember. Of course, if the stalking is via phone, or escalates to include telephone contact, make sure you run a reverse telephone search – that should make it a little easier to identify and take action against your harasser!
Stalking is Serious
While the majority of harassment via phone or internet never reaches life or death proportions, there are incidents where people are injured or even killed by their stalker. Taking this kind of harassment seriously, and contacting the authorities, making physical security provisions, such as carrying pepper spray or taking a self defense calls all help.
Make sure you identify your stalker by running a reverse phone search, and if that does not work, request that authorities put a trace on your phone line.
The bottom line is, we all need to start being more conscious of our security, online and off. Blithely handing out details like addresses and telephone numbers online opens us up to online and offline stalking, and can make our lives very unpleasant indeed! Take an active stand in making sure you do not become the victim of a stalker, and if you do, that you resolve the issue quickly, before it escalates!
To access the easiest to use tool to do a Reverse Telephone Search all you have to do is Click Here