Overview:

Access your current telephony knowledge. Learn about telephony products and services that can help your clients save money or become more efficient (this includes mobiles, non-geographic numbers, working as a virtual team, DECT, VoIP, indirect access services and more). Explore ways of bridging the skills and knowledge gap that many VCOs have when it comes to telephony and discuss case studies for the costing, planning and implementation of telephony solutions. The session content will be adapted from the telephony courses provided by THA to IT volunteers and circuit riders in January 2008.

Session Facilitator:

Mark McLean (Telephone Helplines Association)

Biography:

Mark McLean is a consultant and trainer for the Telephone Helplines Association (THA), currently working on a project for the ICT Hub to raise the profile of telephony. His has recently worked with the Department for Schools, Children and Families and telecoms suppliers to implement a common telephony platform for several small-to-medium VCOs and is THA's main contact with Ofcom. Mark is the author of the ICT Hub's Good Telephony Guide to be published in March 2008. Before joining THA, Mark set up a contact centre to deliver several national telephone helpline services for the Department of Health attracting 3 million call minutes per year.

Session Notes:

Introduction

ICT Hub identified that I.T. was more prominent rather than the Communication aspect and herefore a perceived need to start taking telephony more seriously at a strategic level.

Telephone Helplines Association (THA) run training courses for managers of Small to Medium sized organisations and ICT volunteers.

The voluntary sector operates on a range of different levels and telephony is quite a mess. Therefore the seminar is not intended to be technical, or a course on VOIP (voice over internet protocol). The aim is predominantly on voice communication – blackberries, e-mails, MSN etc

The session opened with a 10 minute quiz to test the group’s individual knowledge on a range of issues on telephony.

The full multiple-choice questionnaire will be made available soon, but the answers to the questions are provided together with any discussions which arose as a result.

The group then discussed the following issues of the voluntary sector and telephony, particularly barriers to telephony:

• The person answering it – ie the way the calls are routed.
• Many small organisations don’t have a call clearing system – you ring someone and its random who you get to speak to you may not get the best interaction with the service.
• Telephony systems not reviewed – so they have more lines than they need, they don’t know their options or understand what they mean.
• If there’s a heavy workload, cover is difficult as there are not enough people employed – ie staff capacity.
• People want to use VOIP and link it into their network but don’t have sustainable enough IT – e.g. Windows 95 which they can’t link to their phone system.
• Being sold Business Communication Manager (BCM) – e.g. you ned to have a pc permanently linked to it just to log billing. They’re also tied into a 5 year contract so lack of sound advice.
• Serviced offices and having to use their internal lines where you’re charged a set rate for any single handset you want. E.g. in Salford a VCO need 12/connection per month and £20/connection for VOIP because they’re using a facilities management system. They don’t make money from the rental from the place, but by providing you with services which you don’t need. But on the short term, serviced telephony can be useful you won’t mind paying a premium as you’re not taking on rental agreements and the project can start up and shut down without being locked into a long term contract.
• The way organisations develop – they start with a couple of volunteers and they buy a phone from a shop, and then they
  expand and they have to get a proper phone system which then costs a lot of money.
• When an organisation grows organically and they keep adding and adding.
• What about buying specific kit for a project which the funders will fund, but the bigger picture means that it’s unco-ordinated .
• Hard to get funding for core costs. Also the convergance of costs – the organisation needs a server and a phone system so a huge leap in technology at the same time.

Path/Strategy

• Circuit riders could provide advice on a strategy, as it’s important to build communication into an IT strategy rather than having it as an add-on.
• Look at costs – make it a core component of management meeting, and review – help somebody. E.g. do an audit of their system, what do people need?
• Lobbying funders – tell them the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of telephony – it’s a core cost – make sure they’re providing money for the right thing.
• Methods of raising awareness – do groups know that options are available e.g. make better use of CVS, ICT Hub, case studies, best practice and guidelines to raise awareness.
• Who is responsible for strategy? - sometimes an office manager might be the person dealing with telephony and there’s no joined up thinking with the IT dept.
• Telephony has to be built in because if it’s not been linked into buseinss planning then it will only ever be an also ran.
• Working with small VCOs the telephony bit disjointed from IT and as a CR who has no in depth knowledge of telephony, it’s difficiult to help them integrate.

Knowledge of options/understnanding.

Lots of negative things and not many answers –

• lack of impartial information, using vendors who locked them into contracts finding impartial Internet based information
• Not easily self discoverable – you can learn how to hook two pcs up to a server, but not how to install a telephone network system.
• Lots of pricing scams around
• People with skills keep hold of them and don’t share.
• Can be reluctant to migrate telephony (which is established and works well) to the IT dept which is often perceived as not working

Solutions:

Check the telephony bit on the suppliers directory.

• You need to train IT people up in telephony for solutions for the future.
• Use a preferred suppliers list – e.g. ICT Hub/Lasa Suppliers Directory.
• Don’t go looking for problems to solutions - the old switchboards are very reliable and there is no need to spend money on switching over to other systems – help people understand what they can do with what they’ve got already.
• Lots of jargon busting needed.

Staff capacity

• No funding for dedicated staff – no administrator/receptionist. Example was given of organisation which has a 24hr helpline for victims of abuse.
• Occasionally that number is routed through to the office where staff who are not trained to deal with these calls have to