In addition to cost savings, productivity improvements, and customer service enhancements, another driving force behind IP telephony is mobility. Workers are increasingly mobile—from traveling sales people to call center staffers who work from remote sites and even home offices around the globe to serve customers 24/7. Mobility is an absolute necessity, as is the requirement for customers to reach anyone at anytime, anywhere. IP telephony is the ideal way to meet this need. With it, organizations can use distributed hunt groups to ring employees around the globe with the right skill set to ensure a question is answered or an issue is solved immediately. As long as an agent with the skill set is logged in, even if on another continent, the issue will be resolved just as if he or she were at their own desk. With IP telephony, calls are intelligently routed based on calendars, so agents logged as out of the office are reached via cell phone, etc. At the same time, the agent’s cell phone acts as an extension of their desk phone with all of the integrated features, such as dial-by-name, transfer, conference call capabilities, etc. This wireless integration is crucial, especially since you don’t necessarily need to purchase specific wireless handsets or specialized handsets for traveling employees. This mobility is not even noticeable to the customer base. There are IP telephony vendors that allow employees to choose their device—for instance, a cell phone or home phone—and that device assumes the identity and capabilities of his or her regular office extension. For example, the caller-ID information provided when the employee makes a call can reflect their office number instead of the mobile or home-office phone actually being used. In other words, caller-ID will indicate that the call is coming from headquarters of their company. This is important to protect the employee’s privacy and strengthen the corporate brand.
'OING¬-OBILE With IP telephony, users are highly mobile, logging in from anywhere and gaining access to all the same capabilities as if they were working at headquarters, at their desks, or within a call center building. With IP telephony, to the outside world, it can seem as though your organization has call center locations scattered around the globe, making help available 24/7. In reality, you are simply utilizing IP telephony features such as time-of-day routing and call forwarding to make sure calls are answered quickly by a live human being. Your employees can be working out of branch offices, at remote locations, or even at home. Your workers are mobile and happy; your customers are being catered to and satisfied quickly. You are also able to manage peak calling times by having the ability to add other employees, regardless of their location, to the call center to help meet the overflow demand. With IP telephony, users can also easily re-route their calls so that they are reached wherever they will be working—they can make these changes themselves, without asking for IT assistance. This “find me” feature also enhances customer service, as well as productivity, by ensuring every call reaches the right person, regardless of where he or she might be working. An employee can even program his or her extension to ring based on status—ring through when he or she is in the office, forward to a cell phone when there is no answer, or forward to a colleague when the line is busy.
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