Remote working and how it has changed your need for Telephone Call Logging

Since the pandemic started and the need to work from home, although those regulations are changing, many businesses can see the advantage of their employees continuing to work, at least some of the time, from home.  The need for smaller premises and all that goes with it can be a financial advantage for the employer, but for the employee, the daily grind of commuting and the huge cost and time implications are a big draw to continue at home.

But how do you monitor their telephone calls? Many companies were in place to simply change the extensions to VoIP handsets and carry on as before, others forwarded the office extension to the remote worker’s mobile. Many of our clients have changed their reports so that they are looking at calls diverted from an extension to a mobile number. These may have been incoming calls from external sources which are diverting out and are suddenly using twice the number of lines/trunks (Trunk to extension to Trunk call) and obviously have an outgoing cost. Internal calls to these extensions that are diverted out (extension to extension to trunk), are also generating a cost and using additional lines. All of these additional costs need to be allocated back to the organisational cost centres.

LUMBERJACK has the ability to have incoming and internal calls with an outgoing cost, charged back to the original office extension that created the diversion.   These allow the reports to run capturing all costs encountered by the department.  Where switch output allows, our reports still accurately monitor the answer delays, unanswered calls, etc.

From a trunk/lines point of view, running our line utilisation and blocking probability statistics, you can ensure you continue to provide the level of service, your users expect and that you have sufficient end points available.

The mobile numbers used by employees, can be imported to clearly show office mobiles verses non-employee mobiles, such as 07777 123456 could have an employee’s name or department in the description, as opposed the mobile carriers name (EE Limited).

In addition to logging the PBX/VoIP, we also allow importing the bill file from mobile providers.  This can be imported using the costs provided on the bill file, or clients can use their existing tariffs to charge the calls.  These handsets can then be allocated to the relevant departments so that mobile costs are also included within their telecoms spend.

LUMBERJACK also allows for user defined fixed costs so that the business can charge back to departments for the handsets used, a monthly fixed fee for the mobile and the allocated package. Typical usage could be a fixed monthly cost for the handset, a fixed cost for the data allowance per month and number of minutes/texts may also have a fixed cost per month. Some clients may have a one-off set up charge for the handset, etc.  Where the data allowance is companywide, our clients have used LUMBERJACK to proportionately distribute the cost based on data usage per handset.

Should you want any information on how to set this up, please give us a call – 01442 200000 or email – support@focom.com.