My last post studied how the mentality around VoIP is far from legacy telephony, and how it has implications that go beyond this major transition. Legacy telephony has been intertwined with many personnel for ages, and if asked, they wouldn’t see much reason to switch. For them, there’s no problem to fix, unless of course your phone system is failing, and the status quo is just fine.
On the other hand, decision makers – either IT or management – may have very good explanations to accept VoIP, and the impact on employees needs to be considered. Making the move will largely be transparent to employees, even to the point where if they weren’t told anything, they may never notice. However, that can be risky, especially in terms of earned trust if things don’t go to plan.
That’s unlikely to happen, the IT will be better off with a more constructive approach that will please everyone in the end. You’re utilizing VoIP for good reasons, and when employees experience the profits that come with this change – even if they’re unexpected – your movement from legacy to the world of IP will get off on the right foot. Over the course of my research, I have come by many benefits, and I’ll outline some examples – things employees will love – with three here and three more in my next post.
#1 – Basic User Experience
If your workers are rooted in the pre-Internet world, must have been using desk phones for a long time already and probably the same one for most of it. In fact, it’s not unusual for desk phones to be the longest-serving means in use for communication or getting work done. Perhaps the fax machine has been there a little longer, but there’s probably just one of those in the office. In terms of what’s on the desk, personal computers turn over every few years, but desk phones last forever. Many employees are using their mobile phones more than anything on their desk, but these turn over even faster than PCs.
Your desk phones may have a very high level of familiarity, and even though they all look similar, each employee has a personal connection to “their” phone. Unless it’s useless already or becomes a hazard to use, they won’t see a reason to change. If their job requires a lot of phone usage, it will be significant to know that the basic user experience will stay the same when VoIP comes.
Old habits die hard, and if they view VoIP as being new, complex technology, there could be a lot of uneasiness around something that’s important to them. While that may be a precise description of VoIP, the good news is that VoIP is designed to imitate the legacy telephony experience, not replace it with a new one. Everything works the same as before, and in some cases, even the pre-sets. When they discover that, their apprehension about new technology will melt away and they won’t miss a beat with their new IP phones.
#2 – Visual Voicemail
In terms of new features that essentially make VoIP a better experience, this is hands-down the one that everyone will love. For long-time legacy telephony users, this will be a great development since they can now stay current on missed calls when away from their desk. Since legacy systems operate independent of the data network, there is no intelligence to route messages beyond where your desk phone sits.
On the other hand, VoIP shares the same network as all your other applications and by integrating the phone system with your desktop, you can receive notifications about missed calls from any broadband connection. This alone will be well received by employees, but there’s more to take into consideration. These alerts will include an MP3 file of the message, so there’s no need to call into your phone system to recover the message. Not only that, but because it uses a digital file, it can be easily shared with others. There’s even more to like about visual voicemail, but based on these examples, it’s not hard to see why employees will love this feature.
#3 – Low Cost
This matters more to the employer and it’s probably the most attractive feature for clients when going to VoIP. Low cost international long distance calling rates is another attraction for residential VoIP, but the psychology is different since costs are being incurred. Generally speaking, the vast majority of long distance needs for SMBs is domestic, and on this front, there are two things employees will really like.
First, time is not a factor since these calls are unmetered. If a sales call or a customer support call runs longer than usual, there’s no need to worry about the charges eating into their operating budget. Similarly, meticulous employees may be genuinely concerned about wasting their employer’s money, so now they don’t have to feel guilty if a long distance call runs longer than expected.
Second, this situation makes life easier for some employees that are working from home. In cases where employees pay for their phone line out of pocket and then chargeback the costs for repayment, they no longer need to track domestic long distance charges, which could be extensive for sales or technical support people. With VoIP, the only add-on charges will be international LD, but that’s usually minor, and otherwise, these types of employees will love how this simplifies managing their phone service.
Source: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/voip-news/three-things-employees-will-love-about-voip-71443
