The workers at Follyville Borough Council continue to get ready for the big move. The office phone system has now been replaced with VOIP (Voice over internet protocol). This is supposed to be cheaper and will allow those working from home to make free calls. However, it is plagued with problems. For a start, you can't make a phone call unless your computer is logged on. This in itself is a process that now takes about 20 minutes each morning so, if you have just popped into the office briefly before going off somewhere else for the day, you can't make a quick phone call because it's just not worth firing up the computer. It also means that you can't be helpful and answer your colleague's phone when it rings because if they are not there, their computer will not be logged on.
This week my system has been ringing and then hanging up before I have a chance to answer. The caller gets a message asking if they want to leave a message, even though I am sitting at my desk. This then transformed into a total malfunction by the end of the week whereby my colleague had to phone someone else in the office on their mobile and get them to bring me a message to phone her back because my phone was not ringing at all (no voicemail either).
But this is not as bad as it gets. We heard on Friday that when we move we will lose our computers and will instead have "dumb terminals" connected to the server. The dumb terminals won't have any kind of sound-card in so when the phone rings ........... we won't be able to hear it! Great for getting work done but not exactly high in the "customer care" stakes. I'm starting a book on how long it will be before we get proper phones back again!
No comments:
Post a Comment