Presence Management & How It’s Enhancing Communication Between Employees & Customers

Want to increase communications and productivity between employees and customers? Then, presence management is the way to go. This wonderful technology gives all individuals within a company the ability to know what everyone is else is doing in real-time. Is someone in the building or even at their desk? Are they in a meeting? Are they on the phone? By having this information one can determine if and in what manner to connect with another person. That’s essentially the purpose of presence management and it’s enhancing the way we communicate. Having this information presents one with an array of communication options that’s dramatically driving up productivity for those companies – both large and small deploying presence management.
Unified presence management is driven off of a company’s voice and data system and empowers people to control every facet of their communications. It includes and functions off of all devices such as computers, cell phones, Voice over IP (VoIP), and personal communications services. As soon as someone logs onto their computer a pop up window appears containing the names of fellow employees and their current activity as well as their location. Essentially, the technology lets you see the presence status of others, send emails and voicemails, receive faxes, control all your phone calls via desktop phones or a softphone, send secure Instant Messages and voice messages, launch a collaborative web conference session – all with a single mouse click. Users may also put notes into presence for everyone to see. For example, a note may have the time when an employee will be back in the office from lunch or say an off site meeting. Another user may make everyone aware that they may be working from home that day. Knowing everyone’s availability offers greater options to rapidly assist with everyday business issues.
The power of presence is absolutely incredible. For instance, a customer may contact your facility with a question and the individual that answered the phone may not have the necessary information to respond appropriately. Immediately, the employee can view presence and see who is available to assist the customer. They may send a question via an instant message or put the caller on hold, contact their colleague to gather the information or directly transfer the call while giving the colleague a heads up. The flexibility of presence is tremendous and one can assume that it is easily driving customer satisfaction levels through the roof. A basic phone system cannot operate in this fashion and unfortunately those that utilize traditional telephony are missing the boat.
Included in presence are such features as find me follow me. This unique technology gives people the ability to reach a specific individual anytime, anywhere based on the implementation of a few easy to set rules in the system. A can call come in and the caller has the option of finding the person on their cell phone or at another predetermined location. The user may also have all calls set to directly transfer to the cell as well. Another relatively new feature is twinning – a setting that rings both the desk and mobile phone simultaneously. Reaching the person you want to, has never been this easy.
Time is more important than ever in today’s business environment. Presence management saves an incredible amount of time because of the technology’s innate ability to drive efficiency and productivity. Every business owner realizes the positive impact that even a minimal amount of improvement in this area can have on an organization’s bottom line. Not to mention the empowerment an employee has to make better-informed communication decisions that in the end drives satisfaction in the workplace. Presence management is a true win for everybody!