Customers Need This From Telephone Management

What do end users really need from "telephone management"? The phrase is offered up as a means of saving money and increasing efficiency, but a software package on its own cannot achieve these things, it can only provide information to enable management to make intelligent decisions.

With this in mind, there are five important areas where telephone management can measure key performance indicators that may form the basis of decision making to dramatically improve a company's telecommunications environment for very little cost or effort.

I offer a brief description of each here and go into greater detail on each suject in other articles,

1. Managing staff use of the telephone

To speak plainly, it can be said that there are two main types of telephone call, a business call and a private call. The definition of a business call is: a call made in pursuit of the company's stated business goals. All other calls are private calls.

It is completely unrealistic to suppose that employees should not make any private calls. For example, an employee makes a phone call once per month to the bank to conduct private business, the call duration is less than 5 minutes. An event not worth management time and only in the harshest environment should such an occurrence precipitate disciplinary action.

If some private phone calls are permitted, then it is a matter of degree and circumstance. This dynamic requires measurement to ensure private use is within acceptable limits, a Telephone Management service meets this need.

2. Fraud detection

There are two broad categories of fraud within a telephone environment, illegal telephone calls, for example a bomb scare hoax, and an unauthorized party tapping into a PBX in order to make telephone calls at the victims expense.

Both these activities can easily be identified by a telephone management service.

3. Quantify offers from competing telecoms service providers.

Telcomms service providers continually make the offer, "we will save you money if you send your call traffic to us". A Telephone Management service can be used to check these claims before the contract is signed and you are committed to the fine print.

4. Make best use of your existing PBX or voice switching equipment

Get the right answers to difficult questions, for example, "Do I have any unused extension circuits on my PBX?".
And, "how many connections to my telecoms providers are actually working?"

Answer these and more question easily with a good telephone management system.

5. Contribute to customer service management

Are your telephones answered efficiently? Are your staff spending too much or too little time talking to customers and resolving queries?

Telephone Management can measure the performance of individual employees easily by comparing the average duration of a telephone call within a group with the average duration of an individual.

Considering is relatively low cost and high return every company large or small should have the benefit of telephone management information.