This is a guest post by Kushal Tomar who is a freelance writer and journalist. He writes extensively in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the US. He’s published more than 500 articles about various topics. 




There’s a quick way of telling whether your phone system is letting you down. It’s basically a business model approach. You check performance against criteria. This is a very useful exercise, because you can plan your business phone system’s future needs, and identify the problem area very effectively in the process. Upgrading is inevitable- Phone technology and business methodologies are constantly improving, and you will need to plan ahead for the demands of these two irresistible forces at some point anyway.


How to check your phone system against performance criteria

Don’t be put off by the idea of “criteria” for a phone system. This is a purely practical exercise, and you define the criteria against your business needs.

For example, these are basic phone criteria

• Phone call numbers- A study of these numbers and the increase in calls over time is a working yardstick for future needs assessment

• Phone call turnaround times- 3-4 minutes is good for most basic inquiries and customer service. Over that period is not good, unless you’ve got complex customer support issues to consider. (Note: If your customer support people are finding they have to do “consultations”, you need both more staff and to reappraise your requirements in this area.)

• Queue waiting times- 5 minutes is bearable if not great, 10 minutes is ridiculous, and more than that is unacceptable. Bear in mind that on a mobile phone, that’s an expensive call both in lost work time for the customer and actual phone charges.  

• Issues with phone management- Some phone systems aren’t well organized. If a new project starts, particularly a large project, the phone system may need to be reshuffled.  

• Segmented phone call numbers breakdown- Is one section getting an overload while others are getting blissful silence? You must reconfigure your system and your resources. 

• Technology issues- Are there things your phone system can’t do that it should or will need to be able to do? 

If you can see systemic problems, your phone system needs upgrading, preferably sooner rather than later.

Now the good news- How to get a perfect, easy to manage phone system

If you’ve been on the wrong end of an “iffy” phone system, you’ll be pleased to hear that phone system designers finally went back to basics and simply designed better systems. These systems are very straightforward and very efficient. They actually do the jobs they’re supposed to do. No technobabble, no hype, just good working systems.

The new telephone systems are streamlined and easy to manage. They’re almost if not quite “LEGO for phone systems”.

These are the basic features:

• Private server operations- Private servers are servers for phones. They work much the same way as computer servers, managing the “grunt work” and keeping the system functioning efficiently and smoothly.

• Contact centre software operations- Contact centre software can manage up to 1000 extensions. This software is absolutely priceless for business. It’s a combination of built-in scalability and the capacity to dedicate extensions effortlessly. 

You can have whatever technology you need on these super-efficient systems.  You can have video calling, call recording, call monitoring, “cloud” phone systems, you name it.

Here’s another good reason for upgrading- You’ll love it.