Mobile Apps - A Tool for Productivity and Continuity

Recently one of my carriers experienced a technical issue that effected the desktop phones for some of mine and their customers. It was a real pain but fortunately it was short lived and within the hour all my customers were back up and running. However, the entire experience really got me thinking about redundancy and back up. The first step for creating redundancy is moving your phone service to the cloud. If you choose to do nothing else, do that. Because, once the service is in the cloud you can be assured that phone calls will, at the very least, go to voicemail. But, what is the next step? How do we make it so your office is up all the time?

Look how happy she is getting coffee, taking calls and being mobile.

While many will tell you that implementing multiple internet services over an SD-WAN device is the best next step, and I am going to write a blog about SD-WAN like I promised to do in my last blog post, I am going to disagree with that opinion. My personal feeling is the next best step is implementing your mobile apps. For the very simple reason that it is included in most services now a days (when I say most I mean all, but if your does not offer a free mobile app lets talk and get you switched like today). That means it’s free and I think free is pretty darn cool.

In addition it is a super tangible thing that the staff will like right away, why? Because it allows them to be mobile. Meaning if they aren’t at their desk all day they can still receive calls, transfer calls, and block calls like they would with their desk phone. If they are home sick or their kid is home sick and they can’t come in they can open the mobile app to make and receive calls, with out giving out their personal cell. Or if they have a job that requires them to be on the road they have a way to keep their work and personal calls separate. Trust me, people love mobile phone apps and will be more productive if they are encouraged to use them.

But, beyond being a big hit with employees mobile ucaas phone apps allow insurance that if your internet connection is lost your employees can still work. That’s right because your mobile app can work on cellular data. While it is better to use the mobile apps on wifi in the case of an emergency, when there may be no wifi, the mobile app can will remain connected over cellular. This will allow customers to call in, colleagues to stay connected, and things to still run smoothly. So I am sure you are thinking the next question, how do you get the mobile apps up and running?

Well, it is pretty easy first you ask your administrator the name of your mobile app, your username, and password (if you don’t already have those). Then go to the Android of App Store and download the app, plug in your credentials and you should be off to the races, or to get coffee, or wherever you need to go because now that you are mobile you won’t have to worry about missing a call.

If you already are using a service that provides a mobile app then get that thing installed and working. If you are a customer of mine feel free to give me a call if you need assistance. If you don’t have mobile app available to you then you can give me a call as well, because offices really should be using this technology. Oh, yeah, here’s my number 310-622-9731.