Author: matt

Whether refreshing your existing outdated telephony, or perhaps even buying your first business telephone system, you will be faced with the same decision ~ “should I invest in cloud telephony or buy my own telephone system?”

Not an easy decision as there are many things to consider.

Certainly, much of the initial guidance you might receive will be around cloud. “Cloud is the future” you will be told. “Cloud is ‘plug and play’”. “Cloud enables you to connect many sites together as a single system”. “Cloud telephony costs less”, “cloud saves you money on calls”, “cloud means you can have VoIP”. Cloud Cloud Cloud.

However, the simple truth is that no two customer’s needs are the same and as such there is no single right or wrong answer.

So, let’s take a look at some of the key factors that you will need to consider.

Cost is usually somewhere towards the top of the list. So how does cloud telephony compare versus owning your own telephone system?

With regard to the cost of the actual system itself,

• Certainly, it would be fair to say that there is an initial ‘up-front cost’ when you buy your own telephone system. This is because you will need the server, licences, handsets and skilled engineering resource that comprises a new telephone system. However, as a cash line item this can be offset as an operational expenditure by utilising lease facilities over a fixed time period. At the end of the lease you will have an asset that your business owns and will have no more payments to make to use your own telephone system, beyond skilled support and that all important manufacturers software assurance.
• When committing to a cloud solution, the business model is very similar to that of a mobile telephone contract. You might be required to commit to a handset cost upfront or the handset may be packaged into a monthly service charge that will include a host of features available to each user on your selected cloud platform. Adding a new user is simplicity itself, the new user becoming an additional recurring cost line on the monthly invoice. However, as long as you use the system you will always be required to pay that ongoing recurring monthly charge per user.

So, the big question to consider is the Total Cost of Ownership or “TCO” of the solution across its expected life cycle. Would it be more cost effective to buy outright or to pay a monthly rental charge in perpetuity for the many years that you would expect to use your new system?

What about telephone lines and how you pay for your cloud telephone calls?

• With your own telephone system, you also need your own telephone lines. This means you will have to pay a monthly rental for these lines and of course are potentially limited to the number of lines you have installed, depending on which types of lines you have. Then of course there are the costs associated with making telephone calls.
• With a cloud solution, typically, each user subscription comes with it’s own line or some providers offer a bundle of shared lines. So, having enough telephone lines should never be an issue. But, are you paying for more lines than you really need? Also, just like the mobile networks many cloud providers include a bundle of minutes within each user subscription. However, just like mobile networks how many of those minutes are you actually using compared to the price you are paying for the seemingly bottomless calling bundle?

The question to consider here is how does paying for what I use compare to paying for what I might not use?

The buzz phrase often associated with Cloud telephony is VoIP. So, what is VoIP and how is that relevant?

VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol, is basically telephone calls over the internet in the form of IP data packets.

VoIP is relevant in that it is the very backbone of Cloud telephony. Without it you cannot have cloud telephony. It is fair to conclude that to have Cloud telephony you need to have good available bandwidth broadband access. It is over this that you will need to be able to safely send your unencumbered voice IP data packets.

• You can use VoIP calling with your own on premises telephone system. This is achieved by installing IP telephone lines (SIP channels) over your existing broadband lines. SIP lines are typically much cheaper to rent than traditional telephone lines, offer lower cost calling charges and offer flexibility with regards to resilience, redundancy and scale. However, when using your own broadband for VoIP telephone calls you do need to ensure that your IT environment is securely protected from this additional access resource.
• Cloud telephony comes with VoIP as standard. However, the quality of your calls is wholly dependent upon the quality of your available broadband services. Typically, you can rely on the cloud service provider to ensure a high level of cyber security but should always ensure that irrespective of source your enterprise is safely secured.

An important differential is that with your own telephone system you are not committed to using VoIP services should your broadband availability not be up to the job!

“Cloud and VoIP good for connecting multiple sites together”

This is true, but so is traditional telephony. Both solutions are good for multi-site and remote telephony users in their own way.

• If you have your own telephone system, other locations, remote offices, home workers and even mobile telephone users can be incorporated into the single system securely and seamlessly. Indeed, many companies successfully network their sites together to offer their customers and users calling flexibility, resource availability and a host of other UC (Unified Communications) functionality.
• Cloud telephony by its very nature is location agnostic. It provides excellent multi-site / multi user flexibility, scale and ease of deployment, usually by a web based administrator portal.

Both cloud and on-premise telephony offer opportunity for a multi-site single telephony solution.

However, a single advantage that on-premise telephony might have over Cloud is that in poor broadband coverage areas an on-site system can be better flexed to spread resource between inter site networking and traditional lines for inbound/outbound/ breakout calls.

There is a view that Cloud telephony costs less to support and maintain, but is that true?

• With your own telephone system outside of simpler administrative functions businesses need the support of skilled telecoms engineers for any major changes you might need or to resolve any faults or problems that might occur. You will also need to keep up to date manufacturer software assurance to ensure you are protected from the latest cyber challenges and benefit for software upgrades, improvements and revisions. A good rule of thumb would be to allow 12% to 16% of the system value for this each year.
• With a cloud solution all the above is included within the monthly rental charge, so you do not need to allocate additional annual budget to this. However, as all your system management is done by your own administrator via a web portal you do need to have trained and available resource within your organisation.

Whereas a cloud system will be kept automatically up to date by your provider, you are dependent upon the diligence and availability of your system maintainer if you own on the premises telephony.

Finally, there is a view that with Cloud telephony a business has access to everything that it might need, available whenever it needs it.

Due to the key differences here, we will first of all take a look at what a Cloud offering might deliver: –

• Most Cloud telephone systems include many of features that a business might wish to use, already built in as standard. These would include all basic telephony elements, through to compliant call recording, call reporting, mobile applications, desktop applications and even some contact centre functionality. Some of these features are included in your monthly subscription and others can often be added as a cost option. However, with Cloud being a ‘one fits all’ type of solution, the offering can be adequate but in some cases limited. What is more, should you wish to add features or need any type of specialisation then you are dependent upon the plans and progress of the cloud provers services roadmap.
• With your own telephone system, if a feature is not available then you must buy it. However, with the ability to add a much wider range of solutions to your system you can often have greater flexibility. Simple examples might include: – integrating a none mainstream CRM, or industry specialised software such as taxi cab solutions, hospitality industry PMS to name but two. Typically call reporting data is not as intelligent or as flexible as specialist off the shelf solutions.

Cloud services providers maintain a stable solution environment for their customers and so typically do not allow any external solution access or integration into their closed platform environment.

Due to the standalone nature of an on the premises system, manufacturers encourage platform developers to provide solutions and features that enhance the capabilities of the system for their wide ranging and varied customer base.

However, something to be mindful of is that some Cloud/VoIP providers penalise their customers if they need to cancel or reduce users inside the first 36 months of the contract.

One thing is for sure, Cloud telephony and the associated functionality is moving forwards at pace. However, if you need specialisation you might have to seek out a specialist provider and may have to regularly ‘change horses’ should your specific needs outgrow the capabilities of your current cloud service. At the very top end there are some services that support active solution integration and will provide highly skilled developers to support bi-directional integration into their specialist cloud service.

And we haven’t even mentioned ‘Hybrid’ yet, but perhaps we will leave that one for another day!

So, given the above, how do you most easily decide which solution is right for you?

Many decide purely based on financials. Others, find the plethora of features and technical information confusing and make a decision based on the relationship that they have formed with the proposing supplier.

One thing is for sure, you should always engage a knowledgeable provider. A partner that will review and consider all aspects of your commercial and technical needs. This way you are more likely get a solution that is just the right fit for your business.

Should you require any guidance on any of the topics raised in this article, please feel free to contact me personally or any member of the Evoke Telecom sales team on 01509 278278 or at sales@evoketelecom.local

For the purists, VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. But, what in fact does that mean?

Whereas ‘in the old days’ companies had a telephone line for their calls and an internet connection for their data, VoIP enables voice calls to be made over the internet. It does this by merging two different forms of communication, data and voice, into a single cable. It’s actually the same as sending an email, except you are sending a voice call, using the same cables that connects your business or home to the internet!

OK, how does that work?

To make a VoIP call we now know that we can use the same technology that is used to connect your computer to the internet.

When you send an email, the message gets broken down into packets of data and transported along your data network and out to the internet. VoIP does exactly the same thing, also breaking your voice down into small packets of data, sending them out along the same data network and internet route.

What is so good about that?

The great news is that in theory, if you can send an email or surf a web page, you can make a VoIP call. So, it doesn’t matter where you are. As long as you have a strong internet connection you can make a VoIP call.

In the same way as your computer has a personal ‘mac’ address and is recognised when you log on to the network, VoIP devices have the ability to do the same thing. This enables them to register to the voice network and become a secure part of your company’s telephone system.

So, just as you can receive emails almost anywhere, you will also be able to receive office telephone calls almost anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.

But what are the business benefits of this?

One of the greatest benefits is that you can use your existing internet connection, without the need for traditional telephone lines.

If you are using an existing telephone system you might be able to add IP telephone lines, which are much more cost effective to rent, and enable much cheaper VoIP calling charges.

With VoIP, intercompany calls, even between sites and countries can be free of charge.

VoIP has no fixed geographical boundaries. This means you can receive a call made to a geographical number (e.g. a 0115 call to Nottingham) in Truro, Tamworth, Tyneside or even in front of your Television!

Remote workers can have one single number and work as if they were in the office, from a hotel, the airport or even the motorway services.

So why do I need a telecoms company to help me if it’s so simple?

The internet is a bit like a motorway. Sometimes the traffic moves freely and other times there can be traffic jams. What is more, imagine your office cabling as a ‘ring road’, that can sometimes get busy too! For a VoIP call to work properly, it cannot afford to get stuck in any traffic jams. It needs a good clear road ahead or the ability to turn on its siren and get priority with all other traffic moving out of its way when it enters the ring road or internet highway. Continuing with the ‘car analogy’, some data routers have traffic lights that can turn to red and stop all ‘none voice’ traffic when they see a VoIP call is moving along the network.

For a VoIP call to be crisp, continuous and clear the voice data packets cannot afford to be hampered by network traffic or stopped by router traffic lights – or the call will break up and be lost.

This is where a good, reputable and knowledgeable telecoms provider, such as Evoke Telecom Services Ltd. come into their own. We have the knowledge and expertise to ensure your voice traffic has the necessary routes and internet ‘thoroughfares’ to make it safely on its journey.

If you are considering a VoIP solution, why not contact us for a fact finding meeting. We will take the time to understand you’re business environment and specific needs. Together we can use our expertise to understand more about VoIP and to establish whether it really is the best solution for you and your business.

For a free consultation call our friendly sales team today on freecall 0800 8403688 or email them at sales@evoketelecom.local.

Today’s guest blogger Jen Wiss-Carline from marketing agency Angel Digital looks at why recorded information is a better option for callers on hold than silence, beeping or music alone.

When callers ring in but your team is tied up on other calls, what do they hear? For many businesses, the answer will be a ringing tone – but is this really what callers want?

First, a ringing tone or beeping gives your caller the perception that the waiting time was actually longer than the reality.

Playing them your favorite track might help kill the boredom, but if they don’t share the same taste in music as you, you could easily just annoy them. Keep in mind also that often this type of music can sound gritty and distorted over the phone.

This only leaves you with one realistic option – information on hold – of which I am a huge advocate.  If you’re not personally a fan of hearing messages while you’re on hold, consider these compelling stats:

• Inbound/Outbound report that on average 7 out of 10 business callers will be placed on hold.
• According to a survey by AT & T, customers who were left on hold without hearing anything thought that they had been waiting for 90 seconds – when in fact they had only been waiting for 30. Those who experienced a 30 second wait with music thought that the hold was only 15 seconds.
• AT & T also found that 80% of callers who are left on hold with silence will abandon the call within one minute.
• Voice Response, Inc have found that 34% of callers who hang up will never call back.
• According to USA Today, Executives spend an average of 15 minutes each day, or 68 hours each year on hold.
• Electronic Distribution Today report that the average time spent on hold is 38 seconds.
• Tom Collins and Stan Rapp of Maximarketing have discovered that 88% of callers prefer to hear messages while they are on hold, compared to other options.
• The Tom Peters Group (Oren Harari) found that, of the 8 to 15 per cent of a company’s customer base that is lost each year, a staggering 68% is down to negative or indifferent phone treatment.
• Sales & Marketing Management reports that 20% of callers have purchased additional products because of information that they heard on hold.
• The Inbound Telephone Call Centre say that on average, while 94% of marketing budgets are spent on persuading customers to call, just 6% will be spent on handling the call once it has been received.
• According to research firm Jefferson Denneandrus, when callers are presented with messages on hold, compared with silence, they will stay on hold longer, and are more likely to show an interest in the product or service advertised. They are also more likely to retain information, and feel less agitated.
• Infomax, Inc also confirms that callers are likely to stay on the line by up to 25% longer when given on hold messages, vs silence or background music.

These are certainly impressive figures and build a strong case for playing messages to your customers while they are on hold. Of course, you can also add a background track to your message, making it more interesting – but keep it neutral, not everyone shares the same taste as you!

What to put in your on hold messages

I recommend that you try to keep your messages useful and informative. Your callers really don’t want to listen to how wonderful YOU are – all they care about is how your service can benefit THEM. Update your customers with details of special offers or new products that may be of interest to them, highlighting the features they might benefit from. Of course, this is the type of information that can change every month or two and an information on hold package that allows updates is ideal for this purpose.

If you get a large volume of calls asking the same questions or wanting to carry out tasks that can be done on your website, this would also be an excellent opportunity to present relevant information on hold.  Pointing them to the correct part of your website saves their time, and yours.

Finally, remember that effective marketing is about building a relationship with your customer, not dissimilar to a friendship. Ask yourself, would you tell this information to one of your close friends in a social context? How would you present it to them? How would they react to your message? This is a really good rule of thumb to help you decide if your information on hold is something your customer would actually want to listen to, and something that will help strengthen the relationship you have with them.

You can find out more about information on hold and listen to examples here.

A new SCAM has just been highlighted which we are flagging as an early warning to our customers and followers.

The scam begins with a call to your mobile telephone from 020 3519 1534 – which when you answer has no one on the other end of the line.

As this is a land line/geographical number many will call it back as a legitimate ‘missed call’.

Upon calling back you hear a message explaining that there is a fault on the line currently and can you dial 118820 to be connected through. Needless to say with 118 being a directory enquiries code the set up and per minutes charges are extremely high.

Please also remember the ‘old faithful’ 070 /076 missed call SCAM. 070 /076 are not mobile numbers and could result in you paying premium rate charges perhaps as high as £1.50 per minute!

If in doubt – please feel free to call our friendly team on 01509 278278 where we will be only too pleased to help.

This month Evoke Telecom are pleased to welcome back Natalie Thomson as our guest blogger. Natalie specialises in employment law and works at Halborns in Nottingham.

As a working mother herself, Natalie is more than familiar with the challenges of balancing both working commitments alongside the pressures and responsibilities of family life.

Recent changes in legislation, massive strides forward in technology and fast changes views around work being ‘ a thing that you do as opposed to a place that you go’ is changing the face of the workplace in the UK.

Below are Natalie’s thoughts on home working

Do we really need to be office based?

Traditionally, employees worked 9-5 in the office five days a week. Now with the provisions of flexible working and a more modern IT and communications world we find ourselves liaising with other people in all areas of business who may be sitting at home on the sofa in their onesie.

In our experience, employers used to be quite reluctant to agree to part time working, flexible working or working from home because they thought that it meant that employees would not do as much work and that the element of control would be lost.

Now employees who work at home can be monitored in almost the same way as employees in the office. Providing there is a monitoring of communications policy, then employers can monitor their internet usage, productivity, email input and output and even phone logs.  Meetings can take place via FaceTime or Skype and this in our opinion makes working more effective.

Many parents are restricted by the need to drop their children off at school and undertake other various childcare duties. There are other employees who may have dependants that they need to care for. Permitting employees to work flexibly gives them a sense of reward and often increases productivity.

Many employees work in the evenings from remote access through access to the Company server. If in reward for doing this they are able to take their children to school a few times a week or undertake some other activity that is important to them they are likely to appreciate the Company that they work for.

The society that we live in today is one that demonstrates a high percentage of both parents working, a lot of females in senior roles and many men that want a more flexible working approach. This is all supported by the new Shared Parental provisions that came into effect for babies whose expected week of confinement was on or after 5^th April 2015. These new provisions allow parents to share 50 weeks of the leave rather than the father just having his 2 weeks paternity leave. This is a huge step forward in parental rights and it remains to be seen how many fathers take up the opportunity of addition leave when their wife or partner returns to work.

Since April 2015 unpaid parental leave has applied to parents of children up to age 18 rather than age 5.

The modern way of working seems to be catching up with the modern world.

If you would like any more advice or guidance on working from home or the new Shared Parental leave provisions, please get in touch with Natalie Thomson at natalie.thomson@halborns.com 

Did you know that:

It is now possible to work from home as an extension of your company’s systems and infrastructure with complete flexibility?

For example you can have a work telephone at home that is connected directly back into your main office switchboard.

Or perhaps you might wish to have your business mobile telephone directly paired / twinned to your deskphone so that you never miss a call?

You can even have a cloud solution that enables you to use your home phone as a separate business number and system, paid for by your employer and totally controllable by yourself via your own personal internet portal.

The new solutions available are almost endless – why not contact the friendly team at Evoke Telecom to find out more on 01509 278278

It’s that time of year again for the hotel and hospitality industry.

Wedding ceremonies and receptions, Corporate Golf Days, Annual Conferences and of course holiday season. It’s that time of year again for the hotel and hospitality industry where profits are made and lost, reputations are enhanced or damaged.

At this critical time of year many hotels are discovering that a modern and efficient telephone system can be one of the tools that makes that all important difference, both to the customer experience and to the hotels bottom line!

With today’s traveller always having their mobile telephone at the ready, telephone systems in the hotel and hospitality industry have to be used in a very differently way if they are to once again become a profit generator for a hotel or guest house.

A good start is the ability to integrate today’s telephone systems into a hotels CRM or Reservation / PMS (Property Management Solution). They can also be integrated into popular software packages such as Fidelio’s-Micro and Tiger TMS. For many, this in itself is totally transforming the way that some hotels or guest houses are run.

Specialised hotel telephone systems now also offer a wealth of options as standard that enable many day to day tasks to be managed automatically, enhancing the guest experience and freeing up staff up to spend more time with customers. Some simple yet helpful features that improve the customers experience include:

– Direct Dial to rooms
– Privacy Mode for rooms
– Private Voice Mail boxes for guests
– Conference Calling
– Hotel Services Recordings
– One Touch Dialing for restaurant, gym, spa, or golf centre,
– Multilanguage
– Listen in and Child Monitoring – from anywhere on the hotel complex
– Wake up calls and recordings

A destination rather than just a room.

With today’s hotels becoming destinations that guests go to rather than just a room that they stay in, there is now even more pressure on the wide array of teams that now work together to deliver a seamless customer experience. Adding to the complexity is the estimate that up to 80% of staff in hospitality are now mobile. Events managers, estates team, housekeeping, night porter, and even the general manager
are constantly on the move, in some cases both on and off site.

Availability and speed to contact can sometimes make the difference between a good or bad customer experience which in turn could affect the customer review on sites such as TripAdvisor.

Fortunately, today’s telephone systems offer mobility options make it much easier for guests and management to contact not just 20% but 100% of the hotel team, wherever they might be. Features to help improve hotel services and efficiencies typically include:

– Room status update by housekeeping via the phone in the room,
– Integration in to CRM/PMS to deliver real-time information and tailored promotions
– Mini bar charges updated via the guest’s phone in their room.
– Routing of calls via the most cost effective carrier
– Prepaid limit on a room phones
– One touch dialing for revenue generating services.
– Barring of phones in vacant rooms
– Business and Mobile Phone twinning for mobility
– DECT and WiFI handsets for faster and better service.
– Voicemail Boxes for all staff
– Unique Distributed Architecture without the need for expensive re-cabling.
– SIP Trunk Connection to reduce calling costs and uplift profits

“We have already seen a growth in the number of positive reviews on TripAdvisor,
commending us on the high level of customer service we provide. I have no doubt
that this is a result of the improved communications we now have in place around the
hotel thanks to the new telephone system”

General Manager – 106 room hotel 

So, be it a large chain, or specialist boutique hotel, a guest house or a bed & breakfast, a conference centre or a golf club, a new telephone system can completely transform the way that a business in the hospitality sector operates, enhancing the customer experience, delivering service, new efficiencies and most importantly savings on running costs.

Would you like to find out more?

The team at Evoke Telecom specialise in specifying, installing and supporting phone systems for the hotel and hospitality industry, so why not call our helpful and friendly sales team now on 01509 278278, our free sales line 0800 840 3688 or email the team now on sales@evoketelecom.local

Or why not visit our hotel telephone systems page at – https://evoketelecom.com/business-telephone-systems/hotel-telephone-systems/

Do you currently use 084, 087 or 09 numbers in your business?

If so, there are some imminent changes around the use of these non-geographical calling services (NGCS) that you will need to be aware of.

Research has highlighted that many callers to NGCS numbers are confused about how much their call is going to cost. This often results in customers choosing to avoid dialing these numbers.

As a result, from 1st July 2015 this will all change. Ofcom, PhonePayPlus and the Advertising Standards Authority have laid down a new set of requirements that will mean that companies using NGCS numbers will have to clearly advertise the cost of calling these numbers.

The cost of calling NGCS numbers can be easily split into two parts:

The Access Charge – this is the amount that callers are charged by their line services provider for making a call to an NGCS number

The Service Charge – this is the additional amount added to the call cost as pre-determined by the type of NGCS number, some of which is given to company using this number as a revenue share agreement.

From 1st July 2015, in order to comply with these new guidelines, companies using NGCS numbers will be required to clearly advertise the breakdown of the costs associated with calling their NGCS numbers both on their company website and anywhere else that they might promote one of these numbers. This must be clearly displayed in a close and prominent position to the telephone number in all cases.

A suggested statement regarding call charges for a NGCS number (for example where the service element of a call is 7p) might be:

“Calls to this number will cost 7p per minute plus your telephone company’s access charge” (*)

As a result of these new changes and in some cases in light of what charge band their NGCS number has been placed in, some companies are deciding to move away from 08 numbers completely. Should this be something that you are considering, there are several alternatives available including 03 non-geographical or more traditional geographical numbers.

If you would like to know more about these then please do contact our sales teams to find out more.
Our team can be contacted on Freephone 0800 840 3688, via our switchboard on 01509 278278 or by email at sales@evoketelecom.local. We look forward to helping with any enquiry that you might have.

(*) This is likely to be considered to be compliant – but we recommend you seek individual advice from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) at asa.org.uk/industry-advertisers

We have all become used to ‘those’ calls. The ones where the number dialling you doesn’t quite look right. Or perhaps those calls that drop after just a ring or two and the caller doesn’t leave a voice message. Over time we have become used to these petty scams and have learnt not to answer or return those suspicious looking calls.

Telephony fraudsters have recognised this and moved on to a new form of scam that is proving to be even more successful than the old ‘voicemail on hold’ tricks of bygone days.

The new weapon in their armoury is skilful use of that old faithful friend of the telephony fraudster, the 070 personal number.  Genius, as most people quite wrongly think that the 070 number that they have been asked to call is a mobile telephone number.  Infact 070 numbers are personal numbers that provide a share of the calling revenue for the number owner. What is more they are often used as ‘follow me’ numbers, giving fraudsters amazing flexibility as to who and where in their organisation they direct these incoming calls to.

The way that they use the 070 number has matured too. Prime targets are those companies that offer a call back service to their customers. Fraudsters now call up outside of office hours and leave a sophisticated and detailed voice message. The message requests a call back to discuss a high value private or business services requirement.  Eager new and often even more experienced sales staff, easily mistake the 070 as a standard mobile telephone number and return the fraudsters call. They quickly find themselves being intelligently engaged in a complex, fake business enquiry and kept on the phone for tens of minutes, whilst in the background a hefty phone bill is being racked up.

For example,  Holiday Companies were targeted earlier this year with fraudsters requesting a call to discuss holiday options for a complex group booking within a £1500 to £2,000 budget. Insurance and IFA’s, telephony companies, all sorts of services providers are now being targeted. In fact any companies are considered fair game if the fraudsters think they will be able to keep your teams on the phone for a substantial period of time.

So, what is in it for the fraudsters? Well, prices for calls to an 070 number can cost up to 65p per minute when calling from a landline (with a hefty 51p call set up fee). Calls from a mobile to 070 numbers are substantially more expensive and could cost as much as £1.50 per minute from some mobiles. Criminals can often be making £1 for every minute they keep your staff engaged on the phone. A fifteen or  twenty minute call at £13 or £14 might not actually feel like such a big loss. However, often these fraudsters call many times, leaving different messages and different 070 numbers which they invite your teams to call. The losses can soon begin to mount up with your teams not even knowing that they are being scammed.

As with many frauds currently targeting UK businesses, the best and often only way to protect against these scams is good support, good information and  good housekeeping.

At Evoke Telecom we have helped many of our customers to protect themselves and their teams against the many different types of telephony fraud now pervading in the global business market. For impartial, free help and advice as to how best protect your business against criminal scams and intrusions you need do nothing more than simply call the Evoke Telecom team, who will be delighted to help.

Stay in touch, stay informed and stay protected with Evoke Telecom Services Ltd. 

We are all taught that the key asset in any business is its people. But for some employers and employees, when things don’t work out and all else fails this can unfortunately sometimes result in courts, tribunals and the minefield that is employment law.

We are hearing that an upturn in the UK economic outlook has seen a reduction in redundancies, but in return the introduction of tribunal fees, has prevented access to justice for many. Can this really be the case?

We approached Natalie Thomson, to see if she might shed some light on this for us. Natalie has been a qualified employment Solicitor for 9 years and works for Premier Legal LLP a niche employment firm based in the centre of Nottingham.

When she is not practicing law, you will find Natalie out running or working out in the gym. A keen fan of the Half Marathon, Natalie recently tested herself with the extreme event that is the 10k WOLF RUN. Cold, muddy, wet and exhausted, she loved it and already has one eye on a potential maiden triathlon.

Here are Natalie’s thoughts on the impact of these changes:

 “It is true that there has been an impact on Tribunal claims since the fee paying regime came into force in July 2013. The statistics speak for themselves. The Ministry of Justice has just released Employment Tribunal statistics for the period from April to June 2014. There has been a 71% drop in claims compared with the same period in 2013. Single claims are also down by 1/3 compared to January to March 2014.

So why is this?

Before the reforms to the Tribunal system, anyone could submit a claim. The system was full of claims, many of which were maliciously presented or had no reasonable prospects of success.

As Solicitors, we would try and get these claims struck out, often successfully but this still caused our clients to incur considerable costs. Costs orders were rarely made against Claimants and it was a very unbalanced system. Something needed to be done and the fee paying system was right in many respects. In most cases the Claimant now has to pay £250 to issue the claim and £950 for the claim to be heard. At Premier Legal we are working on more Tribunal claims than ever. Whilst Claimants are having to enter into mandatory pre claim conciliation and then pay a fee, this is making them think twice before they commit to litigation. It means, by consequence that the claims that are proceeding are those that deserve to be.

 Does this prevent access to justice? Not really. Many Claimants have legal expenses insurance policies that they can use and there are many Solicitors that will take claims with sufficient merit on, on a damages based agreement (similar to a no win no fee type agreement).

 Settlement agreements (formerly called compromise agreements) are also being used more frequently now to avoid the costs and uncertainty associated with litigation. Therefore whilst fees have clearly affected the numbers of claims, so has the mandatory pre claim conciliation process (this came into force in May 2014).

We are seeing a change in the market in terms of the advice that we are giving. There is always advice to be given on redundancies but this is not as prevalent as it was. Our clients are recruiting, promoting and rewarding. Auto enrolment is having a large impact on Companies because this is a huge financial and operational change but the pay cuts, removal of benefits and redundancies has certainly reduced.

As for dismissals, is it virtually impossible to dismiss an employee? Do they have all of the rights? Absolutely not. It is far easier than you think, you just need to take the right advice and follow a fair and reasonable procedure. All of the advisers at Premier Legal LLP are qualified Solicitors or Barristers and can deal with any employment law issue for you”

Of course we find at Evoke Telecom that the best solution is to provide working conditions and solutions that enable employees to work efficiently and effectively, be it in the office, at home or remotely. Work life balance continues to challenge and for many, any help that legislation and technology can bring is more than welcomed. This is the case for employers AND employees alike. As we all know, a happy employee is more often than not, a productive and loyal employee.

At Evoke Telecom we can offer a wide range of options to help deliver a more balanced work to life relationship: from remote fixed and mobile telephones that are integrated into your business telephone system, through to full desktop collaboration, presence, instant messaging and high quality mobile video conferencing.

Today, work can be the thing that you do as opposed to the place that you go to!

If you want to know more about how business communications can help your working environment and employee work life balance, then why not contact our team for a free consultation on 0800 8403688 or 01509 278278

If you wish to learn more about recent employment law changes or need help and guidance with any employment issues, then you can contact Natalie and the team at Premier Legal LLP as below.

Natalie Thomson – Premier Legal LLP – Tel:     0115 988 6211     |     Fax:     0115 988 6212

nataliethomson@premier-legal.co.uk

http://www.premier-legal.co.uk/about-us/natalie-thomson/

One of the hottest current topics when engaging with IT Managers and Business Owners,  is the increasing awareness and appreciation of the benefits of deploying SIP Trunks as a part of their business connectivity strategy.

With more than 1,200,000 SIP channels deployed to market already, predictions are for a sharp acceleration in growth as more powerful connectivity options become both ubiquitous and more affordable.

With connectivity choices having now moved beyond simple DSL broadband, options such as: EFM, FTTC and Fibre Circuits are enabling cost effective, reliable and secure SIP Trunk service deployment.

For many the major advantage of deploying SIP Trunks is clear, cheap business phone calls!  This includes free calls between sites for multi-location businesses. What is more, with calls travelling via internet links, businesses can immediately benefit from the savings of line and service provider consolidation. Some estimates put these potential OPEX savings as high as 40% to 50% of total voice spend!

However, for some savings are not viewed as the greatest benefit delivered by this solution. For example, with both business numbers and service functionality being held ‘in the cloud,’additional business benefits might include:-

• Scalability – The ability to add and remove lines at short notice to match business fluctuations and seasonal promotions.
• Growth – Additional trunks and capacity can be added quickly without the wait from traditional line suppliers and the need to buy your line capacity in batches.
• Flexibility – With inbound and outbound calls travelling via an internet service provider, businesses are not restricted to their hard-wired local exchange. Wherever there is a data circuit, calls can be made and received, with voice merely being an additional application delivered over a data connection. What is more, because numbers effectively live in the cloud, they can be taken anywhere, deployed to mobile devices or even used over somebody else’s landlines. Calls can be made from one or many locations without UK geographical restriction, with your key business numbers not being restricted by location. For example a call to a 01159 Nottingham office number can be delivered to alternative offices in Leicester, Derby, Birmingham, the choice is yours.
• Alternatives – Cloud based functionality can enable SIP calls to be delivered to multiple end points, sequentially or simultaneously, commonly known as “ SIP Forking ”.  Therefore in mobility scenarios or disaster recovery situations important calls are not lost.
• Business Continuity – When confronted with a business communication challenge, be it an outage, extreme weather conditions, perhaps even sickness, companies can have seamless fail-over and managed continuity, redirecting and routing calls to alternative locations or perhaps even business mobile devices. This is because of the soft switch nature of SIP meaning that services can be pre-provisioned to automatically fail-over and divert traffic in a more cost efficient manner.
• Extended Functionality – Many businesses are already using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) but only internally over the company LAN as a replacement for traditional ‘wired’ telephony. However, SIP Trunks enable the fuller potential of VOIP for communication to be realised outside of the LAN environment beyond simple voice. For example, In addition to VOIP calls, SIP Trunks can also allow companies to deploy UC across their organisation by seamlessly integrating functionality such as presence and Instant Messaging, multimedia conferences, content sharing and other  real-time communications services.

So, the big question for many customers is ‘where are you on your journey towards SIP’? The arguments for moving away from traditional analogue and ISDN lines to SIP Trunks would appear to be clear. With a current market trend of 15% – 20% annual growth, more and more businesses seem to be in absolutely no doubt.

 For many, the time is right and the journey to SIP starts now! 

It’s easy to think that as B2B service providers Consumer Credit doesn’t affect our businesses. However, for many that quite simply isn’t the case. Sole Traders, small businesses, clubs…many are affected and protected by new consumer credit laws.

To help us to clarify this somewhat complex area we have invited our friend Lisa Botterill, Partner from the East Midlands law firm Nelsons, to guest on our Evoke Telecom blog site and share her thoughts with us.

Lisa has a wealth of experience and knowledge in working with consumer credit issues, gained not only during her time at Nelsons, but also in previous roles that include Operations Director at a business within the financial services sector that provided consumer credit.

“When we talk about “consumer credit” what do we actually mean? The legislation refers to agreements with “individuals” and it would be easy to presume that this would cover only personal finance arrangements with consumers but that is not the case. The legal definition of an “individual” includes everyday consumers as you would expect but it also covers sole traders, partnerships of 2 or 3 people as well as unincorporated bodies e.g. sports/members clubs which are the most common form of organisation that often fall into this category. This is a real trap for the unwary and gives the protection of consumer credit law to small business borrowing.

The law on consumer credit covers agreements where the creditor provides the debtor with a cash loan or an arrangement where the debtor is allowed time to pay for something and covers most agreements over £50. A few examples of the sort of arrangements covered by the rules are hire purchase agreements, log book lending and pay day loans but in a telecoms context what you are most likely to come across is a leasing/hire agreement where a customer is provided with finance, often through a third party, to purchase a new system. Referring the customer to a provider of finance or arranging the finance through a third party falls within definition of consumer credit activities (credit broking) even though the credit is provided by a third party.

There has been a recent tightening of the law on consumer credit, driven primarily by the activities of the high rate short term lenders. Because of the strange anomaly that consumer credit also covers some small business lending, the new rules that came into force from April 2014 will also apply to small business customers so that anyone who provides credit needs to go through a brand new application system to be able to continue to provide consumer credit after April 2016.

So what are the options available now where a customer wants to buy a phone system but pay for it over a period of time? Many providers have simply stopped providing a finance option to small businesses because of the new application process and only a small amount of their business is caught by the consumer credit regime, presumably because of the time and cost of the new application system but this new procedure does not appear to be as daunting as it may at first appear. There are two tiers of registration under the new system and a business that only refers customers to third party providers of finance can go through the simpler and more streamlined application process for what is known as “limited permission” rather than needing to apply for full authorisation. There are still important rules to comply with so that consumers are provided with the correct information and treated fairly but the limited permission route is quicker and cheaper in terms of the initial application fee and annual ongoing fees and definitely worth considering to ensure that there remains a finance option for small business customers.”

This article provides general guidance on a complex area of law and should not be taken as legal advice. If you require more detailed guidance please contact Lisa – lisa.botterill@nelsonslaw.co.uk

Evoke Telecom are pleased to welcome another star guest blogger to our site in the form of  Will Morey, Marketing Director and co founder at Pragma , the sole distributor for Ericsson-LG telephony in the UK.

Will has some 15 years of senior leadership roles to add to his MBA , including work for and on behalf of Channel 4, First Group and the UK Government.  A real champion of  ‘start-ups’,  it is no surprise that Will co-founded Pragma, driving Ericsson-LG technology to deliver cost effective and efficient Unified Communication’s solutions into the UK SMB and Mid-Market space.

This month Will pick up the subject of ‘UC in the SMB’ segment. A thought provoking read which we hope you will enjoy. Let us know what you think ……

“Working in the technology industry means speaking in acronyms is second nature and only when you step outside of the world of technology do you fully appreciate quite how annoying constant acronyms and TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) are.

The latest technology with a catchy acronym is UC. This stands for Unified Communication which is probably equally as baffling for most businesses who don’t spend their day thinking about technology but would rather be using it without having to think. Ideally businesses quite simply wanted to appreciate and enjoy the benefits that it delivers.

 The challenge for technology providers is to make really clear the benefits that new technology can bring. Unified Communication is a great example of this. The normal work day has changed significantly.  It starts earlier, finishes later and isn’t bound to an office or a desk. We are all working on our smartphone from early in the morning until late at night and we are doing this at home, in the car, in airport lounges, hotels and occasionally at our offices. The key to all this work is it should be just as easy regardless of location.  We also need to be able to quickly access our colleagues and draw on their knowledge and expertise to help us regardless of whether they are also in the office. It is this challenge that unified communications helps us meet head on.

Unified Communication technology from Ericsson-LG is about making life in a complex business world easier. It’s about making sure the people you need to speak to are available by phone, video or instant message. It’s about being able to share that document for feedback and get your teams opinion without having to be sitting next to each other. It’s about controlling your phone calls and voicemails on screen or your tablet with a mouse click or gesture.

 All of this is available now for your business at a cost that means small and growing business can get a return on their investment in weeks and months not years. Ericsson-LG iPECS unified communications technology was designed from the ground up to meet the needs of small and growing businesses.”

Want to find out more about Will – http://www.wearepragma.co.uk/about-us/people/will-morey.aspx

Or contact him at @willmorey or https://www.linkedin.com/in/willmorey

This month Evoke are pleased to publish a guest blog provided by our good friend Mark Deakin- Partner Technology Strategist at Microsoft.

I first met Mark back in 2009 when we worked together at Vodafone and soon discovered that he is one of those guys that simply loves making technology work. What is more he particularly enjoys enabling technologies to help consumers and businesess be more productive.

As a child it is reported that he was a bit of a “geek” – which must undoubtedly be true as he collects gadgets ‘for fun’ these days and can be found always within reaching distance of a plug socket or an internet connection.

Mark shares with us his thoughts around ‘the cloud’ and what it might mean for the Small and Medium Enterprises of UK PLC. We hope that you enjoy Marks piece and look forward to your feedback….

“Having worked in IT for over 14 years,  I have seen a number of technologies come and go and with the public interest in ‘cloud’ increasing,  I was wondering if this is just another fad or something that might be here to stay?

 Probably the first thing to do is clarify what is meant by the term ‘cloud’.  The answer normally depends on which vendor you are speaking to of course.  My personal opinion is that when you put something in the cloud,  you are paying for someone to run all or part of that service for you in a data centre somewhere.  This could range from them simply supplying power, network,  compute and disaster recovery only,  through to them running and maintaining the entire service.  You could compare this to either buying a new car where you sort out everything,  except perhaps a yearly service,  through to having are car on a company car scheme where repairs,  petrol, servicing are all included in the cost,  all you need to do is drive.  With cloud,  as with the car example,  you decide how much you want to be involved in maintenance of the service,  paying more if you want to offload the effort and worry to the supplier.

 Given you are offloading the effort and stress to someone else,  you would understandably assume that this means a service in the cloud becomes expensive.  Luckily this isn’t the case,  due to the large purchasing power of organisations running the service,  the mass adoption of the services and the high levels of automation,  all of which contributes to the price being much lower that you would expect.  For example,  Microsoft offer a version of Office365 for small businesses that is the same price as three Starbucks coffees per month (admittedly I could probably polish off three skinny lattes in one day).  Previously this technology was only available to large organisations with a considerable IT budget,  now it’s available to any size of organisation that can spare a few less lattes during the month,   allowing them to compete with the big players on a level technology playing field.  Proof of this is that my wife’s cake decorating business has access to the same technology as I do working at Microsoft …. Something that a few years back would have been unthinkable.

 One question I get asked all the time is ‘Do I have to move everything into the cloud?’.  My feeling is that the cloud should be nearly invisible for the person using it and where possible they shouldn’t need to adjust their work practices much,  if at all.  This for me means you probably need a combination of ‘in the cloud’ and ‘on premises’,   perhaps even a little ‘fog’ (a term I love, coined by Cisco) which is partner hosted and somewhere in-between ‘on-the-ground’ and ‘in the cloud’ .  You might chose to have something local where employees have limited connectivity or because you have special requirements for a set of users,  but I would suggest that in every company, the majority of people will need a generic service that supplies what they use 80% of the time,   and for those people a cloud service is normally the best route.  Now is the time for you to look at what you could move to the cloud!

 Availability of cloud is changing the balance between small and large organisations,  levelling the playing field and giving small businesses access to solutions that would previously have been out of reach.  The question therefore for any small business is why would they not bring cloud into at least some part of their business?  You could simply move commodity services like email or telephony to the cloud as you no longer want to run them yourself.  However,  I would suggest you look at this as an opportunity to rethink what you would do if your business had unlimited IT budget.  With cloud you only pay for what you use,  it’s your imagination that’s the limiting factor,  not the availability of resource as a realistic price.”

Thanks to Mark for such a thought provoking piece. If you want to follow Mark he is of course available up there in the clouds at @markdeakin or #GeekinDeakin.

We are pleased to be able to add another couple of glowing testimonials to our website, following creative, successful and enjoyable engagements with our growing customer base.

Andrea Riley, Managing Director at The Naked Flame (UK) Ltd, and Fred Wilkinson, Managing Director at BPI OnDemand Ltd. have been impressed with their recent engagements with the team at Evoke Telecom Services such that they have put pen to paper and provided testimonial for us, which can be found at

https://evoketelecom.com/case-studies/

Evoke Telecom are delighted to announce the appointment of Susannah Wardell to the role of Sales and Marketing Director.

Susie has more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience, gained in telecommunications and unified communications,  both in direct and channel management roles.

Susie brings with her, to the role, a wealth of  experience in managing integrator campaigns, business expansion initiatives along with an impressive history of delivering customer centric engagement, retention and growth strategies.

Susie is an invaluable addition to the Evoke Telecom team.

To find out more about Susie and her new role at Evoke Telecom go to https://evoketelecom.com/about-us/

There has been a change to the permitted use of non-geographic numbers for post contract customer helplines, following EU Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU, the majority of which will be implemented into UK law as ‘The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013’.

So, what does this mean for UK business and how might your business be affected? Below is meant as a guide only and it is always recommended that if in any doubt as to the potential impact of these new regulations customers should always seek independent legal advice.

What are the changes?

The Regulations will affect companies who are operating Non-Geographic Numbers for customer helplines that are called by consumers.  This will not affect other lines that companies might operate such as business to business sales lines.  Therefore, if a company operates one of these Non-Geographic consumer helplines they may not be able to charge more than the basic call rate from this summer. However, there are exemptions, as some business types will be allowed to continue to offer Non-Geographic Number helplines to their consumer customers.  These exemptions are listed later in this article.

The regulations state:

Help-line charges over basic rate

41.—(1) Where a trader operates a telephone line for the purpose of consumers contacting the trader by telephone in relation to contracts entered into with the trader, a consumer contacting the trader must not be bound to pay more than the basic rate.

(2) If in those circumstances a consumer who contacts a trader in relation to a contract is bound to pay more than the basic rate, the contract is to be treated as providing for the trader to pay to the consumer any amount by which the charge paid by the consumer for the call is more than the basic rate

It is important to remember is that this applies to consumer-to-business contracts.  It does not apply to business-to-business contracts.

Consumer?

A consumer is an individual acting for purposes which are wholly or mainly outside that individual’s trade, business, craft or profession.

Customer Helpline?

A customer helpline is a line used to call a company about something the customer has already bought.  As such, there is no requirement to cease using all non-geographic numbers ~ only those used to contact a company about a contract that has been concluded.

Basic Rate?

Calls to numbers such as 01, 02 and 03 are considered as charged at “the basic rate”.  This is the same for mobile numbers that usually begin with 07.

Which numbers are included within the Directive?

084, 0871, 0872, 0873 and 09 cannot be used for customer helplines.  Even though 0870 is not currently a revenue sharing option, it is likely not to be compliant with these new regulations.

Can I run a 084 number alongside a 03 number?

The good news is Yes. However, the consumer must not be bound to pay more than the basic rate, so it is possible to run both numbers alongside each other.  To help, Ofcom have made a series of 0345 numbers, many with a 0845 equivalent, available to assist with the changes.  If you want to operate a 03 equivalent number we would encourage you to contact Evoke Telecom Services Limited to discuss your options.

What are the exemptions?

The following exemptions have been identified in the Regulations:

• residential letting contracts
• package travel contracts
• timeshare contracts
• construction and sale of immovable property including building of new properties
• gambling as this is covered by the Gambling Act 2005
• supply of consumables by regular roundsmen such as milkmen
• purchases from vending machines
• supply of a product by a health care professional under arrangements for the supply of services as part of the health service
• single telecom connections (e.g. payphones and café internet connection)
• financial services are generally exempt although warranties, credit agreements and insurance which are offered in conjunction with the sale of a non-financial goods or services, will still need to meet the requirements for cancellation of ancillary contracts and additional payments not being a default option.

What date do these new provisions take effect?

These regulations apply to contracts concluded by the company operating the helpline on or after 13th June 2014.

Where can I find official guidance?

Guidance from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) can be found via the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/266525/bis-13-1368-consumer-contracts-information-cancellation-and-additional-payments-regulations-guidance.pdf

How can Evoke Telecom help?

Our experienced team are available to help customers find the best way forward for their business. We can support the maintaining of functionality currently in place or where necessary look to offer alternatives to deliver an optimum customer experience. Telephone numbers can be pointed into existing or new routing plans to ensure the customer experience does not change. Most importantly Evoke are in most cases able to help customers to retain full visibility of inbound call traffic to ensure delivery of the best possible customer experience.

To find out more call the team NOW on 0800 840 3688 or 01509 278278