This is the 9th product award for Call Manager! “Toshiba has demonstrated to the editors of CUSTOMER magazine that Call Manager improves the processes of their clients’ businesses by streamlining and facilitating the flow of information,” said Rich TEhrani, TMC’s CEO and Group editor-in-chief.  

Call Manager won in part due to the addition of Call Manager Mobile, which empowers users to take their office calls and instant messages with them on their mobile devices, just as if they were at their desks.

Call Manger Mobile is Toshiba’s Unified Communications client application that empowers users to take their office calls and instant messages on their mobile phones just as if they were at their desks. It is compatible with Toshiba’s VIPedge™ cloud-based telephone solution for business users. Call Manager Mobile provides users with enhanced presence information; single and group instant messaging including multiple simultaneous sessions; and broadcast messaging. It also integrates with Toshiba’s IPMobility solution, providing single-number reach for both incoming and outgoing calls, so users only need to provide their office telephone numbers to make and receive calls on multiple endpoint devices. With IPMobility integration, users are also able to access advanced system calling features, including direct-extension dialing, call transfer, call record, and more.

Migrating to native trunking via SIP can bring many benefits, such as eliminating the need for numerous expensive PRI T-1′s cards and simplifying network management by running all internal and PSTN calls over IP. Until now, IP Trunking for ShoreTel phone systems required some type of Session Border Controller which added significantly to cost. ABS and TOTLCOM have developed, tested and implemented a low cost solution to this issue.

What this means to you as a customer: 

• A complex, expensive Session Border Controller is not required.
• A costly ShoreTel T-1 box is also not required.
• Whereas a PRI is restricted to 23 voice circuits, 40 talk paths are available in SIP Trunking with the same bandwidth.
• IP Trunking is available via many modes of transport, such as Comcast, Charter, Century Link, etc., so there are great choices.
• On-going costs can be minimized, because the same broadband access can be used for both data and voice needs.
• IP Trunk sizing is flexible and available with just a few talk paths!
• Enjoy big company capability without the expense of a T1/PRI circuit

Why spend thousands of dollars establishing a branch office out of state?

SIP trunking allows you to have a phone number specific to any chosen area, regardless of your current location, and gain a local presence anywhere in the nation. You might have three different locations in three different time zones and don’t want the hassle and expense of deploying infrastructure at each site. You can answer all calls at one location. 

SIP enables buying only as many call instances as are needed, with the flexibility to add more on the fly over the same SIP trunk during heavy call periods. Therefore, network savings and usage savings are normally realized within the first few months of transitioning to a SIP trunk.

Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery 

SIP trunks offer a variety of Business Continuity options to protect your business against unforeseen outages and ensure uninterrupted business communications. With a complete disaster recovery plan in place and no expensive call-forwarding charges to pay, you can now enjoy peace of mind in the event of an emergency. Flat rate pricing also greatly improves your ability to fix business telecom costs. 

TOTLCOM and American Broadband Services are confident that any SIP migration will be cost-effective and efficient – especially as new features such as fail over and increased capacity are added, in order to ensure the enterprise continues to run smoothly.

All multi-year deals include install and hardware costs. 

TOTLCOM and ABS are authorized agents and have direct-peering relationships with leading global and regional carriers. We’re very familiar with SIP trunking for Shoretel IP PBX’s and offer 24×7 live support and a full internet based support desk. If you’d like some more information, contact the TOTLCOM sales team at 800-300-5500 or send us an email.

Download

Download

Download

These include:
• Strata IP5000-series digital telephones shown in Table 1 on Page 2.
• Strata IP Add-on Modules.
• Strata Direct Station Selection (DSS) console.

Note Telephones and ADM models that include “1” in the model number are models that support the backlight feature.

Download

With the debut of the ShoreTel Dock, the unified communications provider is tapping into a wider industry trend that has seen many enterprise users favoring iPhones and iPads for work.

As further evidence, ShoreTel reps pointed toward a recent report from Good Technology that found 77 percent of all new smartphones and tablets activated in the enterprise during Q4 2012 were Apple devices.

Thus, the Dock supports iPhones and iPads, enabling them to serve as business desk phones and business conferencing hubs while also being charged.

When running ShoreTel’s Mobility app, the iOS devices can serve up ShoreTel’s video, instant messaging and other UC services.

But note that the initial shipping model of the ShoreTel Dock sport the 30-pin connector and will require the Apple Lightning to 30-pin adapter to work with the iPhone 5 — or it can connect through Bluetooth.

ShoreTel said it is working on a Lightning connector model, expected to be available by the end of the year, to work natively with the iPhone 5.

Priced at $349, the ShoreTel Dock is scheduled to roll out this summer for both on-premise and cloud-based deployments.

Original Article

There have been plenty of predictions about the “bring your own device ” trend, but that’s not stopping Gartner from making a few more. Gartner’s latest research shows 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016 and half of companies will mandate BYOD by 2017.

Gartner defines a BYOD strategy as an alternative strategy that allows employees, business partners and other users to use a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data . Many think of smartphones and tablets in the context of BYOD, but Gartner also includes PCs in the mix.

“BYOD strategies are the most radical change to the economics and the culture of client computing in business in decades,” said David Willis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “The benefits of BYOD include creating new mobile workforce opportunities, increasing employee satisfaction, and reducing or avoiding costs.”

More Education Needed

While BYOD is finding its way into companies and governments of all sizes, Gartner said it is most prevalent in mid-size and large organizations. BYOD also makes it possible for smaller companies to go mobile without a huge device and service investment. Despite driving innovation for CIOs and businesses by increasing the number of mobile app users in the workforce, Willis said the business case for BYOD still need to be better evaluated.

“Most leaders do not understand the benefits, and only 22 percent believe they have made a strong business case. Like other elements of the Nexus of Forces — cloud , mobile, social and information — mobile initiatives are often exploratory and may not have a clearly defined and quantifiable goal, making IT planners uncomfortable,” he said. “If you are offering BYOD, take advantage of the opportunity to show the rest of the organization the benefits it will bring to them and to the business.”

According to Gartner, how a well-managed BYOD program subsidizes the use of a personal device is critical, and can dramatically change the economics. Today, the firm reported, about half of BYOD programs provide a partial reimbursement, and full reimbursement for all costs will become rare.

“The enterprise should subsidize only the service plan on a smartphone,” said Willis. “What happens if you buy a device for an employee and they leave the job a month later? How are you going to settle up? Better to keep it simple. The employee owns the device, and the company helps to cover usage costs.”

Security Concerns Remain

Gartner reports that BYOD does increase risks and changes expectations for CIOs, and security is the top concern for BYOD. That said, IT is catching up to the trend. More than half of organizations rate themselves high in security of corporate data for enterprise-owned mobile devices.

“We’re finally reaching the point where IT officially recognizes what has always been going on: People use their business device for non-work purposes. They often use a personal device in business,” Willis said.

“Once you realize that, you’ll understand you need to protect data in another way besides locking down the full device. It is essential that IT specify which platforms will be supported and how; what service levels a user should expect; what the user’s own responsibilities and risks are; who qualifies; and that IT provides guidelines for employees purchasing a personal device for use at work.

Original Article art CIO.com By Jennifer LeClaire

TOTLCOM today announced it has earned ShoreTel’s Partner Customer Excellence Award. ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple unified communications platforms including business phone systems, applications and mobile UC solutions, announced award recipients for the first half of the Partner Year (October 2012 through March 2013), and TOTLCOM was honored as a customer satisfaction achiever in its Champion Channel partner program.

It is an honor to accept this award, which is totally due to our TOTLCOM team and their dedication to our customers. Our motto is “Customer Satisfaction is our Standard, not our Goal“  and we don’t take it lightly. Our team’s Customer Satisfaction Score from surveys which are run by an independent company, is currently running 90% where 55% is considered World Class.  The only reason we miss 100%, is because some respondents to the survey have been so new to their job that they didn’t know us, and answered  “Don’t know” to the question “Would you recommend TOTLCOM to your friends and colleagues?” All others were quite positive that they would recommend us due to the great service experience.

ShoreTel’s highly qualified partners include value added resellers (VARs) and system integrators that help customers navigate a world of voice over IP (VoIP) options, including LAN, WAN, call center, voice and data application integration, technology deployment, as well as training and support. The Partner Customer Excellence Award is presented to ShoreTel’s channel partners that have achieved world-class customer satisfaction scores of 55+ as measured by an independent third party.

“We’re pleased to acknowledge TOTLCOM and this achievement in customer satisfaction,” said Charles Krogman, vice president worldwide channel management. “TOTLCOM exemplifies the best in delivering our innovative products and leading business solutions to our ShoreTel customers”.

About TOTLCOM

TOTLCOM, Inc. is a ‘total solutions provider’ offering expert telecommunications and data networking consulting, design, implementation and maintenance. Covering Northern California with offices in Watsonville, Sacramento, Fresno and Modesto, California, TOTLCOM, Inc. provides a wide range of data and telecom services, including Internet services, telephone systems, voice mail applications and video conferencing. For further information visit our website at www.totlcom.com, contact Sam Bishop, President at 800-300-5500, or email info@totlcom.com.

About ShoreTel, Inc.

ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR) is a provider of business communication solutions whose brilliantly simple unified communications platforms, applications and mobile UC solutions promise a new rhythm of workforce engagement and collaboration. With costly complexity eliminated by design from its award-winning, all-in-one IP phone system, UC and contact center solution and its industry-leading hosted phone system, workers enjoy a freedom and self-reliance that other providers can’t match. Users have full control to engage and collaborate, no matter the time, place or device, for the lowest cost and demand on IT resources in the industry. ShoreTel is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and has regional offices and partners worldwide. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com or www.shoretelsky.com.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 16, 2013 – ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple unified communications platforms, including business phone systems, applications, and mobile UC solutions, today announced the availability of the ShoreTel Small Business Edition 100 (SBE 100), a unified communications solution tailored to meet the needs of small businesses, while still providing the benefits and functionality that are usually only available to large enterprises.

ShoreTel SBE 100 is an integrated hardware and software package that provides organizations with up to 100 users at five or fewer locations with the benefits and functionality that characterize ShoreTel’s award-winning solutions — reliability, scalability, and ease of use, setup and management. Most standard functions, such as adding or changing phones, and moving users, can be done by anyone with basic IT knowledge and skills, making it an ideal fit for small businesses that often lack dedicated IT staff.

“With the right set of tools businesses are able to compete effectively in the marketplace regardless of their size,” said Peter Blackmore, ShoreTel CEO. “The ShoreTel SBE 100 brings enterprise-class benefits to small business environments, helping owners empower their employees with productivity-boosting UC applications, while delivering exceptional ease of management and low total cost of ownership.”

For small businesses focused on growth, the ShoreTel SBE 100 can be easily integrated with their current communications infrastructure and can also scale seamlessly. With just a software upgrade, the SBE 100 can go from a small system to a large system with thousands of users — no hardware change required.

The ShoreTel SBE 100 is based on the same modular architecture and software used by every ShoreTel customer with up to thousands of users

The SBE 100 also provides a variety of productivity-boosting capabilities, including desktop call control and Unified Messaging that delivers voice, fax and email messages to a single application, such as Outlook® inbox. Mobile and remote workers benefit from convenient features like call handling modes, message notification and Follow Me Find Me, which allows a user to receive calls anytime, anywhere. Additional applications, including Contact Center functionality and complete collaboration solutions, can be added as businesses’ needs change.

“Providing quality advice and client service is the basis of our success so it is critical that we have the right communication tools in place to better enable our consultants,” said Mark Patterson, managing director at Nexus Risk Services, an Australian-based insurance broker that is rolling out the solution to five sites and 66 users. “The new ShoreTel SMB offer is a complete, out-of-the-box unified communications solution that gives us enterprise-class functionality at a price-tag that meets our requirements as a growing medium-sized company.”

The release of the ShoreTel Small Business Edition 100 solution provides an excellent opportunity for customers to benefit from a single unified solutions architecture, with inherent ease of use and management of the wide UC capabilities, which can scale from as small as 10 users to tens of thousands of users.

For more information on how the ShoreTel SBE 100 can accelerate your business and save you money, please contact one of our experts today by sending us an email or calling 800-300-5500.

Tight integration delivers multiple benefits

The Call Center Adapter was designed to integrate with the IP telephony system through a customizable call control tool, that appears in the sidebar of every Salesforce.com page. When the call control tool is activated using the Call Center Adapter, voice and data functions are converged, significantly boosting individual and organizational
productivity.

From within the Salesforce.com application, ShoreTel Communicator (formerly ShoreTel Call Manager) Personal, Professional, or Operator Access Level users and ShoreTel Contact Center, Workgroup Edition agents can make selections by clicking on the appropriate icon to dial and answer calls from the desktop, put callers on hold, initiate conference calls, transfer calls, or initiate new calls on a second line.

Users and workgroup agents can also attach comments to a call log or associate a record with a call by navigating to the record and then selecting it. Workgroup agents can write notes during live phone calls. If a workgroup agent subsequently transfers a call both the appropriate contact record and the new call notes will appear on the screen of the receiving party, facilitating real-time collaboration to speed resolution of escalated or otherwise transferred calls.

Click to call

The Call Center Adapter lets users conveniently place calls from directly within individual contact or account records by simply clicking once on any hyperlinked and annotated phone number field. Inbound calls trigger Salesforce.com screen pops that contain related account information.

All together, these capabilities enhance a ShoreTel IP telephony system users’ ability to work more effectively and assist customers more quickly, two important benefits that can have a widespread, positive impact on operations – and the bottom line.

Customizable user interface

With the Call Center Adapter, Salesforce.com application users can specify personal settings to automate login and customize record opening based on individual preferences. Users can also customize the screen page layout by adding, removing or changing the order of the fields or the records to match their work flow. Finally, the call control tool

Call center state

The call center state area shows the current agent status and allows an agent to change it as follows:

• From any state, the agent can change his state to “Not Ready for Calls” to signal he is temporarily unavailable
• From “Wrap Up”, the agent can change his state to “Ready for Calls” if he concludes his wrap up early before the automatic timeout
• From “Not Ready for Calls”, the agent can change his state to “Ready for Calls” to resume accepting workgroup calls provides convenient “Last Call” and “My Calls Today” displays that let users quickly and conveniently review recent activities.

Easy activation

Any Salesforce.com Professional, Enterprise or Unlimited Edition customer has the option to activate the Salesforce.com Softphone feature at no additional charge. The ShoreTel Salesforce.com Call Center Adapter which acts as the intermediary is available for order from TOTLCOM for a one time fee, priced per user.

Enterprise mobility that puts mobile UC on the devices employees love

With so many people working in different offices as well as from home, on the road, and in cafes, it can be difficult sometimes to work with each other and even more difficult to have those spontaneous discussions that are often necessary to solve a knotty problem or spark a new idea. Mobile collaboration tools re-introduce the human element—and face-to-face interaction—back into a workflow that has been dominated by email communications.

With mobile collaboration tools, the right people can be included in key decisions, when they need to be made, because it’s easier to find and communicate with the decision-makers. Workers can brainstorm with each other more easily, no matter where they are located. Your customers can connect with the right resource in your organization faster. Ultimately, mobile collaboration leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction, improved workflows, and faster time to market. In addition, workers can travel less, which saves the company money and makes employees happier that they can closer to their families.

People want to use the most appropriate mobile device—laptops, tablet or smartphone—depending on the context. But the tablet in general—and Apple iPad in particular—is at the core of the mobile collaboration revolution. People want to use their iPads to communicate and collaborate. That’s why ShoreTel introduced Mobility 6, so workers can use their iPads to make and receive calls (using their business persona and corporate phone directory, even on personally owned iPads), exchange instant messages, and participate in video and web conferences. ShoreTel Conferencing for iOS makes mobile application collaboration a reality. Workers can share presentations, spreadsheets and documents in real-time with people in different locations or view the shared desktops of their colleagues’ PCs and Macs.

The addition of social technologies into an organization’s communications and collaboration mix could unlock additional business value. McKinsey estimates that knowledge workers spend 28 hours a week writing emails, searching for information, and collaborating internally. McKinsey estimates that by using social technologies to free up information locked in workers in-boxes could make knowledge workers 20 to 25 percent more productive. The value will come not only from tapping into consumer insights and crowdsourcing new products and services, but also from improving communication and collaboration, breaking down the barriers in functional silos across the company, and redrawing the traditional boundaries of the enterprise.

The impact of mobile collaboration can be seen already across many industries. For example, field service personnel can conduct remote inspections and maintenance using video. In schools, iPads and mobile collaboration are essential for tutoring, homeschooling, and other forms of remote education. And mobile collaboration has the potential to improve healthcare, as it extends the reach of healthcare professionals into remote communities, long-term care facilities, and even patients’ homes.

Looking at enterprise mobility, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) recently released a report that found the global enterprise mobility market will earn $140 billion annually by 2020, which is a 15 percent annual growth rate in revenue for the next seven-year period. However, the report also noted that the majority of this spending increase will not be easily observed by the end user as a significant portion of investment will be funneled into constructing infrastructures that are able to support BYOD policies. Moving forward, in a recent SYS-CON Media article, contributor Kevin Benedict explored the task of predicting the future of enterprise mobility.

“If all software apps are soon to be mobile, where will we find the next wave of innovation beyond traditional mobile apps and enterprise mobility platforms? I believe it will come from sensors and integrating the physical world with the digital,” Benedict wrote. He later added, “Your smartphone is changing from a simple communication device, media center and personal digital assistance, to a hub between the physical and digital world. That development opens up all kinds of interesting opportunities to ponder. It is on the very edge of digital transformation where the integration between the physical and the digital happens where the next wave of innovation lies.”

Adopting business mobile solutions and strategy

Writing a recent article for Business 2 Community, contributor Arwen Petty discussed enhancing accessibility by pursuing enterprise mobility. He noted how an employee’s work-life integration has evolved to parallel the needs, wants and behaviors of customers, producing the powerful IT consumerization trend that has corporate technology decisions being increasingly informed by modern consumers.

“Mobile trends taking root today have launched businesses into an arena where classic marketing strategies just don’t cut it anymore,” Petty wrote. “We can’t apply tactics that worked well for desktop or even cloud deployment to apps that rely on their own portability and convenience, location or gadget be damned. Simply put, users – including employees – will not adopt a tool that doesn’t support their own motility. Moreover, mobile is quickly becoming the best way to target and meet customers where they already are.”

Original post: Adopting mobile voice for enterprise mobility

The figures released show a growing shift by enterprises to SIP trunking and IP-based networks for their telecom needs. Diane Myers, the author of the study and principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research said, “We surveyed close to 300 businesses about their SIP trunking and enterprise SBC plans and one trend is clear: SIP trunking adoption is growing as businesses seek to improve the reliability and lower the cost of communication services.”

Myers also went on to say that, “though more and more companies are implementing SIP trunking, it is far from being the ubiquitous standard of T1 lines or ISDN circuits. T1 lines are still the most commonly used trunking service today, and while their use is declining, our survey shows that North American businesses are using a combination of services; there isn’t going to be a 100% cutover from T1 to SIP. Companies are using SIP trunking for only a portion of their call capacity.”

For the majority of businesses surveyed, the SIP trunking connection was made with PBX natively to keep costs down, while 31% made the connection via premise-based enterprise SBCs. Other information released by Infonetics Research reveals that the most commonly cited reason by enterprises for not aiming to deploy SIP trunking by 2015 is satisfaction with current voice services, followed by their existing contract not being up for renewal. Respondent companies named over 20 providers in the survey, indicating that the SIP trunking market is not dominated by a single provider.

It’s no surprise that more and more companies are making the switch to SIP trunking. As Myers notes, SIP trunking can substantially lower operating costs compared to other communication solutions. It also delivers high-quality VoIP service that’s easy to use and comes packed with powerful features. From SMB to Enterprise businesses, TOTLCOM SIP Trunking is fully scalable to provide you with the next generation communication solutions today.

There’s no need to wait for 2015; get a jump start by making the switch to SIP trunking with TOTLCOM.

Original post: Study Predicts SIP Trunking Will Overtake T1 in the Enterprise Sphere by 2015

This ShoreTel whitepaper shows how a multi-location organization can reduce cellular spend by leveraging
current Wi-Fi and dual-mode smartphone deployments, and offloading expensive minutes from cellular networks to virtually free WLAN networks.

Download the Whitepaper

Network outages and phone problems are always a business concern, but when they last for days, the cost to a company’s reputation and bottom line grows exponentially. This was the recent challenge facing our customer, a multi-site association, who experienced intermittent phone outages due to a “routine” hardware change.

See for yourself why TOTLCOM is one of the last truly full-service telephone companies.

While converging services onto a single physical network brings measurable cost savings to the company, deploying VoIP integrates the “Voice Network” with the critical “Data Network” and brings a new level of complexity into the mix. TOTLCOM “Total Network” solutions include an entire suite of telecom, internet, and networking products including life cycle device configuration management. 

Companies make huge investments on procuring network infrastructure and employ highly skilled professionals to manage and administer the overall network infrastructure. But typically,  few administrators totally understand the added complexities that VoIP adds to their network. This requires specialized knowledge, familiarity with all types of devices from different vendors, awareness on the impact of changes, precision and accuracy. 

At TOTLCOM, highly skilled network administrators carry out all configuration changes. 

This customer’s data network vendor innocently made changes to their network equipment without giving consideration for the voice network. When errors in the configuration caused strange behavior in the phone system, they needed to move the configuration back to a proper working version. After trouble shooting for an inordinate amount of time, they called TOTLCOM to fix the problem. 

80% of network failures are caused by human change control errors. 

Misconfigured network devices can cause problems. For example, devices must be configured with correct IP addresses, subnet masks, and gateway information. If this information is not correct, then communication between voice devices and the data network won’t be possible. 

Such was the case with the customer in question. By having a vendor that was strictly maintaining the data network, changes were made to a Gateway device which essentially eliminated communications between VoIP endpoints at a remote office, and the VoIP Server sitting at the headquarters (HQ) office. 

As a result, all internal phone calls from the headquarters location to VoIP endpoints at the remote location were going direct to voicemail. But calls in the other direction were routing fine. Due to the length and severity of the error, TOTLCOM engineer Raul Fimbrez was dispatched to the headquarters site to troubleshoot.

Here it gets a little “techie” 

Raul performed some simple network tests to ensure the voice network devices were communicating properly and found some clues that eventually led him directly to the root cause issue. 

Checking traffic and settings one way he found all devices in the remote office were able to successfully ping all devices locally in the HQ office and was able to eliminate the Remote Office as a source of the error. 

Going the other way, he discovered HQ phones could ping local switches and the local VoIP Server. However, as expected, the ping test from a HQ phone to a Remote Office phone failed. He moved on to check out the settings on the VoIP Server and noticed something slightly different. 

Just one digit was the problem. Raul asked the IT Manager if they had made any changes to the HQ gateway device recently. 

As it turns out, the vendor had recently swapped out an old HQ firewall for a new Dell SonicWALL with a slightly different IP address. By simply updating the DHCP server to assign a new Gateway IP to all DHCP Enabled devices they were able to quickly install the device, test the data network, and walk away. 

Why isn’t anybody answering their phone? 

Because the Servers and Switches that make up the voice network do not use DHCP, they did not receive this critical IP update. Even without access to the Gateway the local server and switch were able to process most inbound and local extension calls but could not reach across the WAN to the remote office. When Raul discovered the problem, he quickly updated the Gateway IP on the Server and switch, and was able to restore proper call handling. 

This customer has TOTLCOM’s Gold PARTNER Support, so solving the problem was at no cost to the customer, even though the problem was caused by a third party. Under their Gold PARTNER Program  there are no NO LABOR CHARGES for all Repairs, Moves, Adds, or Changes to their system. You get a proven vendor to increase efficiency, enhance productivity, help save time, cost and resources and minimize human errors and network downtime. 

We suggest calling us for a free consultation before making any network changes. 

With TOTLCOM, companies are making the best use of their network infrastructure, achieving increased network uptime and reducing degradation and performance issues. 

See for yourself why TOTLCOM is one of the last truly full-service telephone companies.

The NPS is a key indicator of a company’s overall success and is an indicator for future growth. 

ShoreTel launched a revised survey program last year leveraging Net Promoter Score (NPS) as the primary metric. TOTLCOM’s Net Promoter Score consists of a single question:

How likely are you to refer TOTLCOM to a friend or colleague?

The rating is based on an 11-point scale. Respondents who give a ranking from 0-6 are “Detractors”. A score of 7 or 8 indicates the “Passives”. Those who ranked us a 9 or a 10 are “Promoters”. To calculate the NPS, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. Passives are not used in the calculation of the score. 

A world-class Net Promoter Score doesn’t come easy. TOTLCOM’s consultative, solutions-oriented approach to sales, our excellent install project managers, and a dedicated support team are at the center of our success. Here are a few major NPS leaders from 2012: Amazon.com — 76%. Trader Joe’s — 73%. Costco — 71%. (source: Satmetrix) 

TOTLCOM, Inc. offers expert telecommunications and data networking consulting, design, implementation and maintenance. Covering Northern California with offices in Watsonville, Sacramento, Fresno and Modesto, California, TOTLCOM, Inc. provides a wide range of data and telecom services, including Internet services, telephone systems, voice mail applications and video conferencing.

Let us know if you would refer TOTLCOM to a friend or colleague or send us a comment in general. We are pleased to share a long history of comments made by our customers and would love to add yours to the list.

With its Mobility 6 release, Shortel delivers a native iPad user interface for enabling multi-modal communications, and its Conferencing release for iOS further extends the communications experience with application collaboration capabilities.

With Mobility 6 users can place and receive calls with their business persona (desk phone caller ID), exchange instant messages, listen to voice mail messages and create multi-party calls by dragging names from enterprise directories together with a swipe of the finger.

With the application collaboration capabilities of Conferencing, users can share presentations controlled by their iPad or iPhone with remote participants, or view shared desktops of their colleagues’ PC and Macs.

ShoreTel Mobility for unified communications is so much more than just simultaneous ring or a softphone client on a smartphone or tablet.

ShoreTel CEO, Peter Blackmore said the Apple iPad had quickly become the most popular tablet brought by users into the workplace.

“ShoreTel transforms the iPad into a true multi-modal business communications device – for placing and receiving calls just like a desk phone, for sending and responding to instant messages, and for easily collaborating with other PC, Mac and iPad users. 

ShoreTel Mobility provides voice application support across iPhone, Android, Nokia and BlackBerry devices. Mobility 6 interface has been designed specifically for the iPad user experience.

“By combining these applications together in a manner that is brilliantly simple for employees to use, businesses can feel comfortable supporting a BYOD policy to drive effective communications and enhance productivity.”

BYOD and the Mobility Revolution!

See how you can provide your employees with a common Unified Communications platform supporting desktop, smartphone, laptop and tablet devices.

Register for our FREE lunch seminar now!

OAISYS Talkument voice documentation and Tracer quality monitoring applications help businesses mitigate risk and enhance customer service by digitally capturing phone-based interactions for simple retrieval, playback and management. OAISYS solutions are compatible with leading business communications system providers, as well as SIP-based communications services.

For more information on how Call Recording can accelerate your business and save you money, please contact one of our experts today by sending us an email or calling 800-300-5500.

Perhaps it’s one of those phrases that is widely heard, but not quite fully understood. Call recording is an essential tool in the call center. With call recording, managers can stay up to speed on agent performance; how calls are being handled, whether they’re being accurately routed, or if a problem arises, how to use the information for future calls.

When it comes to call recording, there are a bevy of benefits that come along with it. A recent TMCnet report highlighted a few, the most important being that recording simply improves efficiency. Call center managers can obtain necessary data that will help identify areas that are in need of some improving to better serve their callers.

To use call recording to the call center’s benefit, there are actually three ways that call recording can improve customer care. According to Business2Community, these three key points are to host review sessions, make sure new employees are trained and evolve by assessment.

The first key point deals with agent performance, and managers can adequately address any issues or merits by having a powwow with their call reps. All it takes is a few moments to talk to the staff, to ask and review each call and see where it all went right or wrong and use that as a launching pad for improvement. Whether it’s discussing scripted or off-the-script calls, managers and reps can use this information to improve future calls.

Training is one of those essentials that a call center cannot operate without. Constant training and updating are sure fire ways for customer care success, and through training using call recording, new employees can learn from the mistakes of their coworkers. New employees can hear how not to handle a situation and how to improvise a call off the script. These tools are invaluable to managers who need to ensure that their newest of the bunch go in trained, confident and ready to handle customer calls without incident.

Of course, none of this helps without being able to evolve. With the knowledge gained from call recording, call centers can take their missteps and use it to evolve to offer better customer care. Call recording provides actual evidence of where there can be room for improvement and provide call centers with the knowledge to move forward. By assessing and evolving, the future of customer care is bright.

For more information on how Call Recording can accelerate your business and save you money, please contact one of our experts today by sending us an email or calling 800-300-5500.

Source: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/call-recording/articles/312900-call-recording-improve-customer-support-care.htm