IT Voice

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  • HOW DOES COMPANY CULTURE AFFECT ONLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE?


    The culture of your company has a big impact on the way your customers experience your service. Think about the last time you had to call a customer service line. Could you tell that the employee on the other end of the line was bored? Or perhaps that they were having a bad day? Can you tell when the customer service agent is smiling and happy to be at work? Most likely the tone and inflection used by the customer service agent plays itself out in the way they ask and answer questions. A company with a positive culture will encourage their employees to share that positivity with customers online and through the phone.

    What Kind of Culture Are You Promoting?

    The first question you need to ask yourself is what kind of culture you currently have within your business. Do your online customer service agents take their job seriously? Do you take steps to make their job interesting and enjoyable? Often the companies with the worst customer service are not the ones with a “bad” culture, but rather with a lazy or uninspiring culture. It takes real work to create a culture that makes people want to come to work and do a great job. Remember, your customers can tell when your employees would rather be doing anything but helping them. It shows in the speed of their responses, their choice of words and their willingness to make the situation right at all costs.

    Are Your Employees Empowered?

    One of the most common excuses that customers get from customer service agents is “I can’t because I need manager approval.” That response comes in many forms, but it boils down to the fact that employees are not able to do anything to help the customer without asking for help. From the perspective of the customer, this just looks like inefficiency, and perhaps unwillingness to solve the problem. It usually results in another phone transfer, or waiting a few extra days for a response by email. Bob Farrell’s famous “Pickle Principle” is often used to teach employees to put customers first, and do whatever it takes to solve the problem. It shows that employees need to be confident in their ability to offer solutions without delay, and without fear of being reprimanded later.

    Do You Have a Written Customer Service Strategy?

    Maintaining a positive culture for your customer service agents means writing it down and referring to it frequently. Your online customer service agents need to know what matters most when they are interacting with any customer. Many companies, like Slappey, have written pledges that they use to remind customer service employees of what they should be focusing on. Writing down your strategy and discussing it with your team members helps ensure that everyone keeps the principles fresh in their mind and contributes to a culture where these tenets are central to everyday operations. Nobody should be able to say that they don’t know when asked about your customer service pledge.

    Companies who promote a strong culture of great customer service are rewarded with more loyal customers. If all of your online customer service agents are held to the same standard, customers know that they will always receive consistent service they can trust. Building that culture takes time and regular reviewing of online customer service cases to determine whether or not your agents are able to give customers what they really need.

  • 5 Ways SMBs Can Save Money on Security


    5 Ways SMBs Can Save Money on Security
     
    Small-to-medium sized businesses and large enterprises may seem worlds apart, but they face many of the same cyber-security threats. In fact, in recent years, cyber-criminals have increasingly targeted SMBs. This is because it’s widely known that SMBs have a smaller budget, and less in-house expertise, to devote to protection. Thankfully, there are several things SMBs can do today to get more from even the most limited security budget. And, no, we aren’t talking about cutting corners. Far too often, SMBs cut the wrong corners and it ends up costing them more money in the long run. It’s a matter of taking a smarter approach to security. Here are five smart approaches to take

    • Prioritize – Every business has specific areas or assets critical to its core operations. Seek the input of valued staff and team members to determine what these are. Is there certain data that would be catastrophic if it was lost or stolen? If hackers compromise a network, or prevent access to certain applications, how disruptive would it be to daily business operations? What kind of potential threats or vulnerabilities pose the greatest risk to the company or your customers/clients? Focus on the most likely risks, not theoretical risks that “could happen.” Asking such questions gives you a clearer and more complete perspective as to where to focus available security resources.

    • Develop and Enforce Policies – Every SMB needs to implement a security policy to direct employees on appropriate and inappropriate workplace behaviors relative to network, systems, and data security. Merely drafting this document isn’t enough. Employees must be held accountable if they fail to adhere to policy. Such policies should be updated regularly to reflect new technology and cultural shifts. For example, a document written before social media took off, or before the BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device) movement, doesn’t necessarily apply today.

    • Education – Ongoing end user training must be provided. Many security breaches happen because employees fail to recognize phishing schemes, open emails from unknown sources, create poor passwords that are seldom changed, and don’t take proper precautions when using public Wi-Fi connections on personal mobile devices also used for work.

    • Take to the Cloud – Running applications and servers in-house is a costly endeavor. Leveraging the cloud today allows SMBs to cut costs while also strengthening their security. Cloud operators typically have built-in security features, alleviating SMBs of the burden of maintaining security themselves. Today, not only can SMBs shift much of the burden of IT to the cloud, but they can also outsource much of their security by taking advantage of the remote monitoring, maintenance, and security tools provided by Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

    • Don’t Aim for Perfection – There is no such thing as perfect security.  Striving for perfection is expensive and can prove to be more costly in the end.  Improving protection and response would be a more ideal allocation of funds.  It can take a hacker several months to figure out your systems and do real damage.  Having the ability to quickly detect their presence, and mitigate any potential damage they may cause, is a more realistic and less expensive approach than thinking you can completely remove any probability whatsoever of a hacker breaching your system.
     





  • CONVERTING TO A VIRTUAL PHONE SYSTEM: WHAT TO EXPECT


    When it comes to converting to a virtual phone system many of the changes come in unexpected place. Most likely, many features of the new system will remain the same for your users on the ground level, but additional features will open up. Here’s what you should be expecting when you make the move.

    User Experience
    It’s important to understand that a virtual phone system is one where your software resides on a server rather than on your local computer. In many cases, the software used for managing your phones in a virtual system is actually identical to the software you were using before, or is only slightly different. This is a good thing for your employees who are used to working in the system day in and day out. They may not even see a big difference in the commands that they use most often, and the transition requires little additional training.

    Added Features

    Despite the fact that the user experience for the virtual phone system is very similar to your old system, you will have a whole new suite of options available to you. This includes more call routing, data analysis and virtual support features. These are the value added features that create a better experience for your customers.

    Change in Responsibilities

    If there is any one difference that will impact your employees drastically, it is the shift in responsibilities and expertise that may be needed to handle your online support systems. Now that you have email and chat-based support easily available to your customers, you need to know that your existing employees are able to transition between those types of contact and phone contact easily. Alternatively, you need to have a separate team of individuals who answer online queries full time. Depending on your setup, the crossover between phone and data is usually the only area that really changes for your long-time phone system users. You will also likely need to spend a little bit of time training and working your way up to speed with the online systems.

    Realistically, your virtual phone system will use much of your existing phone system and make improvements by opening up new areas of customer service. For phone system employees who have been around for a while, little will likely change in their day-to-day operations. However, management of the phone system will be enhanced, and the addition of online support will be the biggest difference as far as personnel is concerned.

  • Assessing your MSP in the first appointment

    Assessing your MSP in the first appointment

    Handing over your IT to a MSP is a major decision. Who do you choose and more importantly, how? While there’s no rulebook that will tell you exactly how to proceed, here are a few hints that can help you decide how invested your prospective MSP is into you.

    How well do they know your industry vertical

    It is important that your MSP truly understands the industry-specific IT challenges you face so they can help you overcome those challenges effectively. For example, do you have a commonly used software program or any governmental or regulatory mandates that you must be adhering to. Is your MSP knowledgeable on that front?

    How well do they know you and your values

    How well does this MSP know your business in particular. Have they invested time in learning a bit about you from sources other than you–like your website, press releases, etc.? Do they understand your mission, vision and values and are they on the same page as you on those? This is important because you and your MSP have to work as a team and when start to see things from your point of view, it is going to be easier for you to build a mutually trusting, lasting relationship with them.

    References and testimonials

    References are a great tool to assess your prospective MSPs. Ask them to provide you with as many references and testimonials as they can. It would be even better if their references and testimonials are from clients who happen to know you personally, or are in the same industry vertical as you or are well-known brands that need no introduction.

    Are they talking in jargons or talking so you understand

    Your MSP is an IT whiz, but most likely you are not. So, instead of throwing IT terminology (jargons) on you, they should be speaking in simple layman terms so you understand and are comfortable having a conversation with them. If that doesn’t happen, then probably they are not the right fit for you.

    Were they on time

    Did your MSP show up when they said they would? Punctuality goes a long way in business relationships and more so in this case as you want your IT person to ‘be there’ when an emergency strikes.

    While there are many factors that go into making the MSP-client relationship a success, the ones discussed above can be assessed during your very first meeting. They are kind of like very basic prerequisites. Make sure these basic conditions are fulfilled before you decide on a second meeting.

  • Ethical Crime: Tales From the Red Team

    On this episode, Will sits down to speak with James Webb, the Director of Cybersecurity and Technology Vala Secure.  Vala evaluates security layers from an adversarial party approach, simulating full-spectrum cyber-attack tests to breach the environment, access data and compromise accounts.  Red Team exercises expose risks by acting  just like a criminal-doing whatever it takes to get into your network. James has been in IT over 20 years, and has seen it all. Listen to his Red Team tales in the latest episode of Technology Simplified!

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  • 4 reasons customers prefer contact centers



    4 reasons customers prefer contact centers
     
    You may have read that call centers are beginning to take a back seat to contact centers, where customers and prospects can interact across a wide array of communication modes. Today we’re discussing four big reasons customers prefer contact centers.
     
    As a reminder, contact centers offer customers a variety of communication channels: voice, email, text, chat box, social media, and others.
    1. New generations are very familiar with non-voice communication channels and may prefer these channels over voice. People now are accustomed to using non-voice channels for most of their personal and business communications needs. Voice has become a secondary method, at best, for many users.
    2. Self-service has become the norm. Customers have become accustomed to self-service options that require no interaction and are available on-demand.
    3. Social media has become an important channel of customer interaction. This is a particularly important issue. People use social media for communication with business, not just their friends. They expect a response. Ignoring activity on these channels creates considerable marketing and branding risks.
    4. Freedom to choose. Customers now have many options for communication and they expect to have the freedom to choose. As ever, good marketers know that you need to meet customers where they are ‒ you can bet your competitors will make sure they are there in your place.

  • The Tech Industry Continues to Consolidate as Slappey Folds Eight Brands Under “IT Voice”

    IT Voice Combines World-Class Technology with Hometown Service

    After 39 years in business and seven successful acquisitions over the past two years, IT service provider Slappey Communications has officially rebranded to IT Voice, bringing together Presidium Networks, RevTel/VOLstate, ON Technology, Wycomp, Preferred Business Solutions, and Data Resolution under one umbrella.

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  • Just Because You’re Not a Big Target, Doesn’t Mean You’re Safe

     
    Just Because You’re Not a Big Target, Doesn’t Mean You’re Safe
    Not too long ago, the New York Time’s website experienced a well-publicized attack, which raises the question – how can this happen to such a world-renowned corporation? If this can happen to the New York Times, what does this bode for the security of a small company’s website? What’s to stop someone from sending visitors of your site to an adult site or something equally offensive?

    The short answer to that question is nothing. In the New york time’s attack, the attackers changed the newspaper’s Domain Name System (DNS) records to send visitors to a Syrian website. The same type of thing can very well happen to your business website. For a clearer perspective, let’s get into the specifics of the attack and explain what DNS is.

    The perpetrators of the New York Time’s attack targeted the site’s Internet DNS records. To better understand this, know that computers communicate in numbers, whereas we speak in letters. In order for us to have an easy-to-remember destination like nytimes.com, the IP address must be converted to that particular URL through DNS.

    Therefore, no matter how big or small a company’s online presence is, every website is vulnerable to the same DNS hacking as the New York Time’s site. The good news is the websites of smaller companies or organizations fly under the radar and rarely targeted. Larger targets like the New York Times, or LinkedIn, which was recently redirected to a domain sales page, are more likely targets.

    For now…

    There is no reason to panic and prioritize securing DNS over other things right now. But there is a belief that DNS vulnerability will be something cybercriminals pick on more often down the road.

    Here are a few ways to stay safe

    Select a Registrar with a Solid Reputation for Security

    Chances are, you purchased your domain name through a reputable registrar like GoDaddy, Bluehost, 1&1, or Dreamhost. Obviously, you need to create a strong password for when you log into the registrar to manage your site’s files. Nonetheless, recent DNS attacks are concerning because they’re far more than the average password hack.

    It was actually the security of the registrars themselves that was compromised in recent attacks. The attackers were basically able to change any DNS record in that registrar’s directory. What’s particularly frightening is the registrars attacked had solid reputations. The New York Time’s, along with sites like Twitter and the Huffington Post, is registered with Melbourne IT. LinkedIn, Craigslist and US Airways are registered with Network Solutions. Both had been believed to be secure.

    So what else can be done?

    Set Up a Registry Lock & Inquire About Other Optional Security

    A registry lock makes it difficult for anyone to make even the most mundane changes to your registrar account without manual intervention by a staff registrar. This likely comes at an additional cost and not every domain registrar has it available.

    Ask your registrar about registry locking and other additional security measures like two factor authentication, which requires another verifying factor in addition to your login and password, or IP address dependent logins, which limits access to your account from anywhere outside of one particular IP address.

    While adding any of these extra safeguards will limit your ability to make easy account change or access your files from remote locations, it may be a worthwhile price to pay.
     
    Contact us at Slappey Communications

  • Is the Cloud really risk-free?

    Is the Cloud really risk-free?

    The Cloud presents plenty of benefits that make it a very attractive choice, especially for SMBs who don’t want to be burdened with higher in-house IT costs, putting your data in the Cloud is not risk-free. Just as storing data on physical servers has its security threats, the Cloud presents certain security concerns as well. These include

    • Data breach: A data breach is when your data is accessed by someone who is not authorized to do so.
    • Data loss: A data loss is a situation where your data in the Cloud is destroyed due to certain circumstances such as technological failure or neglect during any stage of data processing or storage.
    • Account hijacking: Like traditional servers, data in the Cloud could be stolen through account hijacking as well. In fact, Cloud account hijacking is predominantly deployed in cybercrimes that require entail identity thefts and wrongful impersonation
    • Service traffic hijacking: In a service traffic hijacking, your attacker first gains access to your credentials, uses it to understand the online activities that happen in your domain and then uses the information to mislead your users or domain visitors to malicious sites.
    • Insecure application program interfaces (APIs): Sometimes, Cloud APIs, when opened up to third parties, can be a huge security threat. If the API keys are not properly secured, it can serve as an entry point for cybercriminals and malicious elements.
    • Poor choice of Cloud storage providers: A security lapse from the Cloud storage provider’s end is a huge security concern for businesses. It is very important to choose a trusted and experienced Cloud service provider who knows what they are doing.
    Apart from the above, there are some common threats that apply to both the Cloud and traditional data storage environments such as a DDoS attack, or a malware attack where your data in the Cloud becomes susceptible because it is being shared with others and at other places.

    Some Cloud security mechanisms that SMBs can invest in to keep their data safe

    Cloud firewalls: Much like the firewalls you deploy for your local IT network, Cloud firewalls work to prevent unauthorized Cloud network access.

    Penetration testing: Penetration testing is a sort of a Cloud security check where IT experts try hacking into the Cloud network to figure out if there are any security lapses or vulnerabilities that could serve cybercriminals.

    Obfuscation: In obfuscation, the data or program code is obscured on purpose such that the system delivers unclear code to anyone other than the original programmer, thus mitigating any malicious activity.

    Tokenization: Tokenization is the process of replacing sensitive data with unique identification symbols that retain all the essential information about the data without compromising its security. 1

    Virtual Private Networks (VPN): Another, more commonly used mechanism is the VPN. VPN creates a safe passage for data over the Cloud through end-to-end encryption methodology.

    Investing in a good Cloud security system is a must, but, in the end, you also need to remember that Cloud security is not only about antivirus software, firewalls, and other anti-malware tools. You need to pick the right MSP and work closely with them to implement a Cloud security solution that works for you.

    1 https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/tokenization

  • What does VoIP offer your employees?

    What does VoIP offer your employees?

    VoIP, the acronym for Voice over Internet Protocol, can offer a lot of great conveniences for your employees that make their work environment dramatically more flexible and user-friendly. VoIP offers many features that just are not possible using more traditional PBX systems that have been the mainstay of commercial telephony for decades.

    First of all, VoIP systems provide each end-user with a range of new features that transform workplace communications. Because voice signals are now carried by packets and their movement is not limited to the restrictions of specific telephone “lines,” VoIP allows for dramatic new communication options. Here are just a few examples. A user can forward the desk phone to a mobile phone. The user can also set rules for forwarding. All calls can be forwarded to voicemail after a certain time. Specific numbers can be forwarded to a mobile phone or to voicemail. More intriguingly, telephone messages can be transformed to email or text message. The user can check voice messages via email. Voice communication is no longer restricted to a physical desk location. [Note: PBX systems can handle call forwards, but not the complex variable, rule-driven options described here. And, of course the voice to text idea wasn’t even on the radar of PBX technology]

    Run a call center? Because you are using IP/TCP ( transmission control protocol) you can use other media formats. In call centers this can allow a link to a CRM, which has greatly enabled the development of unified communications centers, allowing businesses to interact with their customers and prospects across multiple media platforms.

    In addition to greater options, these features no longer need to be configured by a trained PBX administrator. All of these options can be managed from your computer, tablet or mobile phone using a simple interface. The user sets and resets the rules on-demand. This is a fantastic convenience for each of your employees, but saves you considerable costs for re-configuration. Check with a managed service provider to learn more about what VoIP can mean for your business.