How important is the user experience in your BYOD strategy?
The BYOD (Bring your own device) phenomenon is a leading force for the adoption of new technologies in the enterprise and SMB market. The problem is that many of these mobile devices were designed for consumer preference and not company requirements. Thus, IT teams are given the pain staking task of creating a BYOD strategy that takes consumer devices and integrates them into the business environment.
Many BYOD strategies focus on two main components: securing corporate data and minimizing the cost of implementing and enforcing the strategy. Those two components should be the foundation for all BYOD strategies, but to create a truly sustainable BYOD strategy, the user experience must also be a top priority. A BYOD strategy will fail if the user experience is compromised with over complicated authentications, invasion of privacy, restricted access to useful features, or difficult interfaces.
Preserve the user experience:
- Have and communicate a well defined BYOD privacy policy
- Identify what activities IT will monitor
- Outline how compliance issues will be handled
- Deploy mission critical services to all devices
- Set the users up with access to the WLAN
- Sync user’s mailbox with their personal device
- Install and test any important apps
- Let the user use their device
- Don’t lock down apps or functions unless absolutely necessary
- Preserve as much as the native device experience as possible
A company with a sustainable BYOD strategy will reduce costs and increase employee satisfaction and productivity. Creating a sustainable BYOD strategy requires securing sensitive data and giving the users a positive experience.
Businesses today now face the problem of handling new communication channels.
Customers are now beginning to use new channels such as web chat, SMS, and social media to communicate with businesses. If your business is not set up to handle the communications of these new customers you are losing out on possible opportunities.
- Web Chat – Web chat is among the most popular of the new channels of communication. Customers like chat because it allows them to get quick answers in real time. Having chat functionality on your web page can maximize e-commerce opportunities and help reduce website abandonment by giving the customer real time responses.
- Social Media – Everyone is using social media today and people like to communicate using different social media sites. It is important to interact with your customers through social media. Track your company name and brand by monitoring Twitter and Facebook. Listen to what is being said about your company and respond. By simply communicating through social media you can generate new opportunities, by engaging customers, who otherwise would not have been engaged.
- SMS – Not as popular as web chat or social media at the moment, but as more people use SMS as a primary form of communication, they will come to expect a response from businesses via SMS too.
Ultimately the name of the game is being able to communicate with your customer the way they want to communicate. The more ways you communicate with your customers, the more ways you relay information and create opportunities.
If you would like more information on managing different types of communications, download the Multimedia Contact Center PDF below.
This year is Digital Telecommunications Corp's (DTC) 30th year in business and we wouldn't have made it here if we didn't listen to our customer's needs. DTC continually strives to improve the customer's experience, we regularly reach out to our customers through various surveys. Through the feedback we have received, DTC is excited to announce the launch of our new customer portal.
From the DTC customer portal, customers can request service, check the status of Service Orders, and view current invoices. We feel that this is a powerful tool for our customers. In the future we will integrate a quoting tool and electronic bill pay options.
Receive 10% off your next Add, Move, or Change Order!
As a special promotion DTC would like you to join our portal and over the month of February you will receive 10% off of a Move, Add, or Change Order placed through the new customer portal!
Hop on our portal and check it out! We hope you like it!
The Fine Print
Offer available to any existing DTC customer or new customers in the Southern California region. Customer can only receive 1 discount. 10% discount will be taken off of first order placed through the portal. Order must be placed through the DTC customer portal between 2/1/12 - 2/29/12. Maximum discount is $500.
Universities and Colleges are just like any business, customer satisfaction is extremely important. Complex auto attendants, slow email responses, and long operator wait times are just a few of the things that create frustrated students. These frustrated students eat a lot of valuable administration time with issues that could easily be resolved with a Unified Communications (UC) solution.
To improve student services universities and colleges should consider implementing:
- Instant messaging – Students today are use to instant messaging (chat) as a normal communications. Implementing a chat queue on to your website can help clear up phone lines for other issues.
- Email queuing – Don’t let emails get lost in a general mailbox . Queue the emails you receive so they can be easily transferred to the right department and answered quickly.
- Single Click Answer/ Transfer - empower your operators to easily answer and transfer calls to anywhere on your campus. At the College of the Canyons, in Santa Clarita, CA, 2 operators were able to process over 16,000 calls in a month utilizing a new UC system. Watch the testimonial
- Presences - A rich UC presence will help reduce response time by giving a real time look at the availability of the staff .
A UC solution will not only improve the services, but communications across your campus. Read how Stevenson University was able to increase customer (student) satisfaction and maximize staff time while decreasing overall operating expenses, in the NEC press release
If you have any questions on how UC can improve communications, contact DTC
Being tethered to a desktop phone is simply not an option for today’s SMB employees. It is more critical now than ever that you can be away from your desk and still have the functionality of your desktop phone.
With the release of SMB Wireless (ML 440) by NEC, SMBs now have a cost effective in – building wireless solution that can be seamlessly integrated with your SV8100. Utilizing proven DETC (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone) technology employees can now efficiently conduct business from anywhere in the building.
Quick look at the SMB Wireless:
- 1.9 GHz radio spectrum offers crystal clear and secure conversations
- Advanced call – logging features that simplify call management
- Soft keys for hold, transfer, and conference
- Long lasting battery allows for 20 hours of talk time
- Easy web based management tool
Most importantly, SMB Wireless improves customer satisfaction. Having a flexible and secure on-site mobile solution allows customers to quickly reach the people they need to.
For a full list of the features that the NEC SMB Wireless (ML 440) can provide to your small business please download the pdf from NEC Unified Solutions.
IF you would like to find out how SMB can help your small business please contact DTC.
NEC Sphere: Convergence
In a recent article by Dave Michels, he explores the history of NEC, along with NEC SV8000 series and the Sphericall.
NEC Sphericall is a robust IP – PBX , enterprise class, software solution. With so many advanced aspects of the NEC Sphere, Dave Michels writes, “Describing Sphericall is reminiscent of the blind men and elephant parable because it is different things to different people. To the telecom types, Sphericall is a modern VoIP platform with broad support for SIP and rich telephony features including feature endpoints and with 8.0, a revamped contact center solution. To UC enthusiasts, Sphericall offers rich communications including support for IM, video, conferencing, mobility and an aggressive road map for collaboration. To IT staff Sphericall offers clients via a Rich Internet Architecture (RIA) and uses Flash and HTML5. IT Architects will leverage the platform’s SOA compliance, and IT developers will value the comprehensive SDK and APIs.”
There is so much that NEC Sphericall can offer to fit the needs of any business.
Along with all the robust features, NEC Sphericall is also extremely scalable, the NEC Sphere can be deployed in an SMB or an enterprise and is scalable up to 30,000 ports. The ports can be spread across any number of locations, with NO additional charge to add to another Sphericall server.
If you would like more information on how the NEC Spericall can follow the links below
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) invasion/phenomenon is a result of the “Smart Revolution”. With more employees bringing their own smart phones, laptops, and tablets employers and IT staff are facing new security and bandwidth issues on the wireless LAN.
A report conducted by Aberdeen Group (link) found that 45% of business are allowing employees to bring any Wi-Fi device on to their WLAN, and 27% are allowing compliant Wi-Fi devices; which equates to 72% of businesses are permitting BYOD for work use.
With this large increase in devices, corporations must prepare by having a strong compliance policy and having a network ready to handle the density.
Compliance Policy - Developing a strong compliance policy includes; controlling device access, not all mobile platforms/devices should be allowed on your network, content filtering, URL filtering, anti – virus, and data leakage preventions should be extended over your wireless network, unify networks, your wired and wireless personnel and recourses should be combined to enforce a strong unified policy. Creating a Sustainable BYOD strategy
Density - Single users will begin accessing your wireless with 4+ devices in the future. Not only will users be carring more devices To ensure QoS you must prepare your network and your AP’s to handle that kind of heavy usage from many different types of Wi-Fi devices.
NEC Users Group
Have you ever wondered how others in your industry have deployed their NEC systems? Do you feel that you could leverage your applications in a more effective way? NEC User Group offers a place for NEC users to connect and explore ways to get even more out of your NEC system. Benefits of NEC User group:
- NEC access - Obtain product knowledge provided by NEC product managers and have access to tips, tricks, and resources that can help with day to day problems
- Be an Insider – being part of the NEC user group allows you to be up to date on all the latest Voice and Data technology that is hitting the market
- Networking - Connect with other IT professionals across the US and Canada. With access to other professionals through a ListServ , connect to individuals who can help you with obstacles they may have faced
- Webinars – Take advantage of the webinars that give you NEC insight from NEC professionals.
- Annual Conference - experience exclusive product tutorials, demonstrations, networking and have the opportunity to interact directly with NEC management and product experts.
Watch the video below for more info
Visit the NEC User Group Home page if you would like more information on the NEC User Group
Visit digitaltel.com to learn more about DTC an NEC triple diamond dealer
Evaluating the communication needs of your law firm can be a difficult task. With the different equipment and service offerings in today’s market, it is important to find a provider that understands the communication needs of the legal industry. Over DTC’s nearly 30
award winningyears as a service provider we have found that the following are trending and among the most important aspects of a law firm’s communications solution:
- Call Accounting – This is a must for any phone system in a law firm. Tracking all incoming and outgoing calls is critical for maximizing customer billing. Many of the call accounting applications allow for flexibility in the reporting functions; this helps you retrieve the information needed, when it is needed.
- Unified Communications – Unified communications covers a broad range of features that can help any business stay connect and enable quicker responses to customer needs. Two features important for law firms are messaging and presence.
- Messaging – Unified messaging will allow you to receive all your emails, voice mails, and faxes in one location. The secure single location can also be set up to have a safe and advance archive
- Presence – In a business where customer contact is essential, a rich UC presence can help your assistances and operators track you down without having your clients wait on hold
- Mobility - Law firms rely on communicating with clients. With full mobility features, you can be reached at one number, no matter where you are. Transfer your calls from your desk phone to your mobile phone without your client ever knowing or call your clients from a mobile device and have your office number be displayed on caller ID. Your mobile device will also be able to access your unified mail box.
Cookie cutter approaches to a communications system is never the way to go. With the advanced applications in the market today, a total communications solution can be tailored to fit your business based on your budget and needs.
DTC understands that every law firm and business has different needs, we have dedicated sales and support to help you leverage your communications to best serve your law firm. If you are interested in what a new phone system can do for your law firm, or business, please contact us.
NEC Sphericall is the most flexible, scalable, reliable and cost effective IP PBX. The NEC Sphere is a software based solution that is now offering a full featured, enterprise class UC solution bundle for the medium businesses and small enterprises (MB/SE).
NEC Sphere works with any SIP phone and the software can be installed on most servers. Whether a business needs a Server and Phones, a server but no phones, or just the software, NEC has created a UC bundle to fit their needs.
Bundles include:
- Full UC capable Sphericall Platform with advanced voice features
- Simple user based licensing – Bundles come in 3 sizes depending on how many licenses are needed. 50, 100, or 200
- Unified Messaging - integrates with Exchange or Lotus Notes
- Softphone, Presence, Instant messaging,/Chat
- Mobility
- Point and Click/ Drag and Drop call management
- Customizable Automated IVR messaging
- SIP Phones (if needed)
By bundling everything into one comprehensive package, NEC is able to aggressively price Sphericall for MB/SE to allow you to realize significant cost savings immediately. Additionally, this dynamic software-based solution will be forever current and always provide you with compelling new features through simple software upgrades.
For more infromation on NEC Spere or DTC visit our main page
