November 2011
1 post
Giving is the new Getting
Movember is upon us again, and half grown mustaches are everywhere.
This month, we are supporting this noble cause by growing mustaches in our office.
We’re also making a donation for each and every extension that we light up on our network this month.
So that’s all well and good, but it brings up the idea that maybe, just maybe, there’s a way that we can all be a part of...
September 2011
1 post
Expanding voice beyond dialtone and desksets
This week, I pitched a project to a client that went beyond traditional voice services, but allowed us to keep a more human element in a marketing campaign.
The client - A builder who is looking to work with a specific (and forward minded) demographic has agreed to a pilot that would see the integration of voice and QR codes into their signage that would allow a user to scan one of their signs...
August 2011
2 posts
Telecommuting - A reality or just another...
We all run into the same type of story from time to time….The one about the person who “packed it all up and moved to (insert awesome, sunny, trpoical place here) and never had to deal with winter again by using the internet as their portal back to their home base….”
It’s easy to be skeptical about this kind of story, but in reality - it’s not that far off the mark.
...
7 tags
Old Tech - New Techniques for Hackers
An article came through my inbox today about a lawyer’s office in the United States that had over $20,000.00 in charges from their phone systems being hacked and pirated for voice traffic.
While I’ve heard of this before (even locally), this article really stuck, and brought up a great point that few organizations really consider (mainly because a lot of them don’t know that...
July 2011
3 posts
Long Term Contracts? How about Nooooo…..
Here’s the thing that pretty much will sum up everything that I’m about to write (and one of the mantras that we live by here at Planet Telecom):
Unless you’re looking to amortize hardware or price, If you do your job and take care of your clients the way that you should, as an organization, you shouldn’t EVER need to have a long term contract.
We firmly believe that...
You say You want a revolution? Well, ya know….
This week we met with a prospective client and did some work on their site that was outside of what would be considered “the norm”.
In our business, we have to jump through a LOT of hoops, and get around a proverbial mountain of potential technical issues - which a lot of clients can take for granted.
For every “WOW - you can actually do that?” that we get -...
The stories that you're told
This week we had a LOT of meetings.
Far more than normal actually - and I must say - meeting with the clients and prospective clients has been a real blast!
I love getting out and meeting with our market - what an interesting world we live in. The business world is chalk full of unique needs and concerns - and yet these are the things that are generally go on quietly behind the scenes, while...
June 2011
3 posts
The Boutique Model - Why don't we apply it to...
I was recently asked by one of my team how a gigantic company cannot manage to provide even satisfactory customer service?
I didn’t have an answer for him…… I can speculate that it could be a function of size - that the people who are calling the shots end up having to make broad, sweeping decisions that affect each client differently, or perhaps it could be that it’s really hard to...
It's time to retire your old phones……Planet...
It’s a sad truth of today’s world, but most old phones are no longer meeting the requirements of today’s business.
Without a proper retirement plan, your old phones can rapidly spiral out of control, ending up in a vicious cycle that could result in a loss of purpose, a general disregard for society, and quite possibly homelessness.
Planet Telecom cares, and we understand that after many years of...
Work From Home Day - Once a Year to Once a Week?...
Tuesday June 1st was this country’s first “Unofficial” Work From Home Day.
A fantastic idea, and organizations like Workopolis are even helping to drive the initiatives to make this a nationally recognized day.
While we’d like to stay out of the law-making business (We’ll stick to what we’re awesome at, thank you….) We’d most certainly agree with Workopolis on the values of telecommuting for...
May 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Brand Evangelism
It’s one of the oldest cliches in business - do right by a client and they’ll tell three people, do wrong by them, and they’ll tell 10 (or something like that)….
The question is - how do you flip those disproportionate numbers around, and have a happy client tell as many people as they can about what a fantastic job you’re doing and how much they’re enjoying your...
4 tags
Self Assigned Ownership (Go on - act like an...
Recently, I was asked a very interesting question by a prospective client.
During our conversation (in which I was reviewing some of his other needs - and making suggestions that could help him), the client asked me “are you an owner?”
I told him no, and asked him why he asked.
His response was that it seemed like I really cared about the business, and wanted to ensure that he had...
9 tags
Why not be creative?
Leveraging telephony in new and interesting ways is always interesting, and that’s why Voice over IP is such a great space to be in.
Having complete control over the way that a switch handles a call, (and why) based on pre-defined needs can be an extremely interesting way to showcase your company, but there is so much more that can be done in today’s age of technological...
6 tags
Feeling guilty about the environment? Telecommute!...
At Planet Telecom, we’re passionate about doing things differently, thinking outside of the box, and looking to find big picture solutions to problems that businesses face every day.
Sometimes, the solution to a problem that an organization faces is not always what or where you’d think it is.
A major concern of many businesses today is their ability to be more environmentally responsible.
...
April 2011
2 posts
The idea of letting experts be experts (So you can...
Recently, I had an excellent conversation with a client about the concept of “letting experts be experts”.
While he’s capable of managing a phone system himself, he said “why would I want to when a company like yours has the time and knowledge to support this FAR better than anything I could ever do?”
That raises a really good point…. Historically, I.T....
11 tags
Soft Costs (What about Morale? )
As we start to come out of the recession and feel the purse strings loosen a little, there seems to still be a lot of focus on hard costs, without examining the idea of “other” costs. When we look at the price of a solution, do we REALLY know what it costs, and are we considering what the actual costs are when we add in the potential variables (ie; “soft costs”)?
While...
