Fonality blogs

Make Mobility Seamless

Katerina Roemer — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 20:43:04 +0000

Mobile devices are an important part of our daily lives. More than just talking, we use our phones to exchange emails, check social media, surf the internet, and take pictures. Additionally, more business workers are using their mobile phones. A recent study found that 53 percent of professionals make more business-related calls on their mobile phones than their office lines. Additionally, 64 percent said that their job requires them to make hours of calls on their phone every month.

Game Changing Mobile App for Small Businesses

David Scult — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:31:24 +0000

Hello everyone,

I usually try to share information about VoIP and business phone solutions that’s fairly agnostic, but I have some news about the Fonality Mobile solution that’s too exciting not to share.

Contact Centers Adopting Mobility

Katerina Roemer — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:49:44 +0000

According to a recent study, about 50 percent of contact centers in the country are planning to integrate mobile technology into their customer support solutions within the next 12 to 18 months. Indicative of global trends, this push shows more acknowledgement of the power of mobility and unified communications in the workplace, especially with client-facing services.

The VoIP Path of Success: A Reliable Internet Connection

Randy Hurn — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:41:53 +0000

So you have decided to implement a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution or perhaps you fall into another category of people who have already tried to implement VoIP and had a bad experience. Now what do you do?

Have no fear I am here to guide you off the ledge and give you direction to a clear path of success. I will not bog you down with industry jargon, technical mumbo jumbo, or try to dazzle you with my knowledge.

Reach Out and HUD Someone

Lee Mayhew — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:49:15 +0000

Encouragement and inspiration can often come from very unlikely places. For me one of the most unexpected sources of encouragement is my dry cleaner.

ACD Best Practices for Call Centers

Chris Sherwood — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:04:27 +0000

Fine tuning the way that calls flow into your call center can be a frustrating process. Much like playing poker where it takes five minutes to learn the game, but a lifetime to master, getting calls to ring into your agents is easy, but maximizing agent time on the phone while minimizing caller hold times and average speed of answer takes a lot more effort. To aid in that effort, here are some valuable tips for ensuring that calls flow to your agents as efficiently as possible.

A Note About the Service Issues on June 25

Rick Bushell — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:03:00 +0000

On June 25, 2012, the Fonality network engineering team discovered that Fonality Connect and Enterprise customers experienced intermittent quality of service issues. Customers reported outages impacting outbound calls. For the majority of customers, service was restored in around one hour, with service fully restored for all customers shortly afterwards. The issue was caused due to a disruption through an upstream carrier failure. Customers should currently not be experiencing any service disruptions; however, we are monitoring the situation to ensure there are no further critical issues.

We Love Gogo!

Katerina Roemer — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 14:16:47 +0000

Paper airplanes. The idea floods back memories of being in school. After my dad taught me how to make one that actually flew, I was all about making airplanes and decorating them with crayons. There's nothing like taking a plain flat piece of paper, and turning it into something that can soar through the air.

Yesterday at Fonality, we got to relive some of the past glory days of the playground.

Unified Communications: Making Collaboration Easier

Katerina Roemer — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:30:24 +0000

Unified communications technology has had a major impact on how professionals do their jobs, from team collaboration to solo projects. It allows workers to more easily share ideas and run proposals past managers, or take their work home with them through cloud access. According to Huffington Post contributors Carl Wiese and Ron Ricci, there are several specific advantages that UC offers businesses, such as increasing collaboration ability and productivity, expanding into new markets, improving "green" operations and allowing companies to transform their industry.

UC: Everyone is Just a Click Away

Katerina Roemer — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:45:28 +0000

Unified Communications. UC. The term is everywhere, and it seems like UC and Cloud are the cool thing to do these days in regards to you good old business phone. When I heard the term Unified Communications for the first time I thought, “Wow, that sounds really complicated and business professional, but what exactly does that mean?” What I learned quickly after trying it out, it meant that everyone in my office was just a click away.

VoIP Market Grows as Landlines Decline

Katerina Roemer — Thu, 31 May 2012 19:11:26 +0000

A recent study found that the landline market is declining sharply, giving way to both cellular and VoIP phone systems. VoIP service in particular is showing incredible adoption rates, with deployment almost doubling in the United States between 2010 and 2012 and expected to triple by 2015.

Plan for the 9's

Chris Sherwood — Tue, 29 May 2012 15:12:13 +0000

Fonality’s data centers are engineered towards what’s known as four 9’s of availability. That means 99.99% uptime, or no more than 4.32 minutes a month of downtime. This amount of availability means we have to have redundancy at every level including multiple servers, Internet connections, and electrical power. On top of that, every device in the network is on battery backup that is further backed up by diesel generators.

The VoIP Revolution

Lee Mayhew — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:25:39 +0000

I believe that very soon – perhaps in less than five years – over 90% of the phone calls made in North America will be VoIP phone calls. What’s that you say? You’ve heard similar claims before? Yes, it’s true: for over a decade the telecommunications industry has been heralding the dawn of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) revolution.

UC Evolution Reflected in Adoption Rates

Katerina Roemer — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:09:13 +0000

Despite the highly touted benefits of unified communications and cloud-based telecom solutions, adoption rates for these services have been slow. According to Computerworld, this may be due in part to the fact that the technology is still evolving, and many businesses are confused as to what a UC solution actually provides.

The Cloud Supports Social Businesses

Katerina Roemer — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:22:14 +0000

Cloud communications provides vital support for companies that support social media endeavors and are integrating these services with business processes. According to Cloud Computing Best Practices, cloud-based unified communication will be a leading factor for developing social tools and consumer collaboration.

VoIP Security Best Practices

Chris Sherwood — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:03:06 +0000

When discussing VoIP security, we are mainly talking about securing Fonality’s premise-based PBX solutions to facilitate remote users. For our fully hosted solutions, such as Connect, no security issues exist at the customer premise because no ports need to be opened through the firewall for the phones to function.

How VoIP Can Make SMBs More Efficient

Daryl Reva — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:20:31 +0000

New Capabilities 

VoIP and UC technology can deliver dynamic solutions to the micro contact center environment, combining virtually all communications methods into a single user interface. Users can utilize capabilities like “find me/follow me” which allows them to customize how they are contacted, and by whom. For instance, calls can be programmed to reach desktop phones and mobile phones simultaneously.

Fonality Teams with Literacy Group to Solve Local Murder

Paul Vance — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:24:48 +0000

On Saturday night, April 28th, with a library full of 250 visitors, a murder was committed by an unseen assassin using a poison blow dart. Fortunately, through insightful interrogations of the suspects, the audience of “witnesses “ was able to solve the crime on the same evening! Yes, Fonality was a key participant in solving the murder. But more importantly, the Richardson Adult Literacy Center wrapped up their signature fundraiser with great success.

Understanding Business Needs

Daryl Reva — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:28:12 +0000

To ensure an SMB is getting the most out of its communications system, it’s important to determine business needs. If a company relies on multiple employees to conduct customer service or sales calls by utilizing the phone for the majority of a day, they are actually working in a contact center environment – albeit a scaled-down, “micro” version.

SMBs: The Backbone of the U.S. Economy

Daryl Reva — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:32:52 +0000

It’s no secret that small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) are the backbone of the U.S. economy. These companies serve a vital role in employing millions of Americans across a spectrum of industries. Contrary to larger counterparts, SMBs are actually gaining momentum. In fact, the SMB space is the strongest growth sector for employment. According to the ADP National Employment Report released in Jan. 2012, small businesses (defined as 1-49 employees) added 95,000 new jobs and medium-sized business (50-499 employees) added 72,000 jobs.

Knowing Your Resources Part 2

Taylor Hoffman — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:11:33 +0000

My last blog concerned our Knowledge Base and what a beneficial tool it can be for speedy self-help, and while that remains true one of the biggest complaints I've received is that it's a fairly complex and intimidating database of information. It can be frustrating to search for the correct terms, or find what you're looking for if you're not someone who's particularly tech savvy. That's why Fonality has introduced a new interactive tool for your self troubleshooting needs.

Playing Moneyball

David Scult — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:32:47 +0000

With the start of the baseball season, I was pleased to see that some of the "mid-market" teams like Diamondbacks, Reds, and Tigers are among the preseason favorites right along with the big guys like the Yankees (I admit, I’m a Yankees fan). I can’t help but think of the book (and movie) Moneyball, which clearly demonstrated that big isn’t always better.

5 Things That Waste Your Time at Work

Katerina Roemer — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:19:13 +0000

Fonality was mentioned in an article on Mashable.com, the largest independent news source dedicated to covering digital culture, social media, and technology. Mashable created an awesome infographic based on Fonality’s Webtorials finding on productivity and cloud-based services. The infographic showcases our findings on the top five ways knowledge workers waste time. It goes on to discuss the benefits of business communications solutions like Unified Communications.

Why Businesses are Leery of Contact Centers

Dave Hancock — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:36:18 +0000

No matter what your business is, or who your customers are, they all expect customer service to be good. But why not make it great?

A SMB View of Enterprise Connect

Aron Aicard — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:28:07 +0000

I had a chance to attend the Enterprise Connect conference this week in Orlando. During the whirlwind trip, we had a chance to speak with analysts, media and of course spend some time on the expo floor to see what vendors in the enterprise space are up to.

Transitioning to the Cloud

Darren Conant — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:25:00 +0000

Many businesses are moving their phone systems to the cloud. So, many communications providers, like Fonality, have developed cloud-based solutions -- full featured PBX platforms where everything but the physical desk phone resides in a data center which transmits calls via the Internet. But what about a business that has a three year voice PRI contract or is located in an area where internet connectivity is unreliable? If your internet is unreliable, your voice is unreliable. If your voice is unreliable, your business is unreliable.

Knowing Your Resources

Taylor Hoffman — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:40:57 +0000

Throughout my various tech tip blogs after the tip I'd make a point to link a related article or content that can be found on our Knowledge Base. One of the constant reports I get from our support department is that people calling in either don't know about our Knowledge Base or haven't tried to use it! Our Knowledge Base (located at help.fonality.com) is a collection of information created and contributed to by not only our technical support team, but engineers, accountants, sales, professional services and most technical issues can be resolved by simply searching key words.

GrowCo Recap- Part 2

Paul Vance — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:06:06 +0000

My company, Fonality, was an exhibitor at the GrowCo, and we had the opportunity to speak with a great many of the attendees during the conference. I came away from these discussions being very impressed with both the technical prowess of the attendees, who generally wear many hats in their organization, and with their attention to both their long-term and short-term growth plans.

GrowCo Recap- Part 1

Paul Vance — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:54:30 +0000

Notable Keynoters

A Trip with a Purpose

David Scult — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:23:25 +0000

Hi Everyone,

It’s been almost two months since I joined Fonality. Since then, the thing I’ve enjoyed most about my job and this company is getting to know our customers.

Although our goal at Fonality is to bridge distances, strengthen relationships and enhance productivity through technology, I must admit sometimes there is no substitute for a good old fashioned face-to-face meeting.