I’ve spent many years helping business owners with their telecommunication services. Many of them are very resourceful and tech savvy who do everything, or at least knows how to do most tasks within the organization. From getting sales, providing customer service, doing IT support, and sometimes, even taking out the garbage.
But when it comes to their business phone system, I see them getting upset and frustrated at the fact that they have no idea what to do, or where to start. Many of them have asked me:
Why do I have to pay $100 for someone to come in to change a person’s name?
I understand their situation and try to sympathize with them. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do. You see, business owners are task oriented, and when the time came on deciding on their business phone system, something they have no knowledge of outside of making and answering a phone call. Naturally, they would bring in a number of vendors to give a quote for their needs. Reviewing all the options, the decision is either made on relationship or price.
Great! Task done. You are a proud new owner of a business phone system… complete with digital receptionist, new handsets, and voicemail. You are off to the next task.
But wait, at no time, was there a discussion about common programming tasks like:
- Adding or Updating an employee’s name
- Resetting a person’s voicemail password
- Changing the company greeting during the holidays
Depending on the size of company, tasks like these can happen only a few times a year to a couple of times a month. Which brings us back to the question:
Why do I have to pay $100 for someone to come in to change a person’s name?
Many phone system manufacturers have “certified” technicians who are professionally trained to do program the system that may take them less than 5 minutes. Herein lies the frustrations for any stakeholder when you need to update a person’s name. Not only do you have to schedule and wait for a “certified” technical to come to you, but you also have to pay for the least one hour service time (sometimes being 2 hours if you are downtown of a major city). Can you blame them?
With the rise of cloud services, more and more business are migrating their business services over. Not only are they lowering operating costs, they are also able to change an employee’s name.
Take a demo of Slingshot and see how you can start programming your own phone system today.