The last 18 months have reminded us of the true value of communication in business and connecting with people.
Our team’s communication skills and tools have grown in planned and unplanned ways throughout this period, as has how we communicate with our customers.
Having delivered a “Virtual” phone platform for tens of thousands of businesses, we sometimes took how we used our own product for granted.
Our team embraced video conferencing and SMS and integrating tools like Slack and MS Teams into our work lives. Yet, the most impactful feature we experienced was the use of presence status displayed in the VirtualPBX softphone and programmed into Desk phones.
Team Member Presence and Communication in Business: Are You Available?
Presence is a long-standing feature of most PBXs and is fully supported on the VirtualPBX platform. This feature displays the current status of a user in real-time to other users.
The ability of our team to signal availability and for the platform to automatically indicate when team members are on a call helped our team operate more efficiently than ever It’s welcoming, almost beckoning for interaction– “do you need anything? I am currently available. Go ahead and call me.”
Additionally, the VirtualPBX desktop and mobile phones all share the presence data and include a way to quickly call, message, or collaborate regardless of the platform or location.
With a team spread across the United States and in multiple countries, presence represented the heartbeat of our operations every day. You find yourself looking to see if so and so is online, or one a call. This cut down on the frequent “are you free?” chat messages, emails, and voicemail messages left every day. After all, if you were in an office together, you wouldn’t send a message asking your desk-mate if you could ask them a question.
Cutting down interruptions and communicating transparently through the platform improved productivity and helped our team stay focused.
