This was posted by Liam Martin;
One factor here is that our telephone system is based in London and managed by BT. Internal DDI numbers to staff members here are all 0870 numbers. We don't have 0114 number ranges to point at it.
And this was posted by Ian Wild
That said, I'm very keen we make changes that set us apart, and it's just this sort of discussion we want to be having.
I have said this a couple of times on the Force 9 forums and I’ll say it again here, no disrespect to BT but don’t let a third party run your telephone system, take the system ‘in house’ and run it yourself.
I ran a Meridian and Symposium system for 6 years and am a qualified administrator and script writer for Symposium and I have personal experience of BT script writers. They are good but don’t always program for the most efficient running of your business.
Your telephone system has experienced far to much ‘downtime’, in fact so much downtime that I would have been given my marching orders long before your system was up and running if it had happened to me. Your IVR is rubbish and as for cutting callers off, that is rudeness in the extreme and I would be in front of the director and questioned as to why long ago.
Meridian systems usually have at least 4 hours backup by UPS and system changes take only seconds to perform, Symposium can and does cause problems if the scripts are incorrect and the server becomes overloaded but a quick re-boot only takes a couple of minutes and can easily be completed remotely. While the re-boot is taking place the underlying ACD software of the Meridian should seamlessly handle the calls without the caller even knowing your system has a problem.
So get a couple of guys to Stone and get them up to speed then take over scripting remotely yourself and give your customers the call experience they deserve.
End of rant, regards, Colin.