The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting every level of the U.S. and its economy with unprecedented challenges. Schools have been cancelled, restaurants and bars closed, and millions have been left unemployed. For businesses that have remained operational there have been significant shifts in the way they conduct business, with most employees working remotely.
Remote offices and working from home are nothing new, in fact many businesses are built on this model. However, for businesses responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the change was abrupt, and they had to adapt quickly.
Telecommunications is one of the most essential aspects of business, communication between office employees and customers is key. Breaking or changing this communication can prove to be detrimental to businesses.
At Class5 Technologies we have been designing and installing communications systems for decades and are experts in business phone systems. For businesses built with remote workers from day one this is easy to plan and prepare for when designing your phone system. But many of our clients have their business phone systems setup for traditional in-office use. When the Covid-19 Pandemic hit, and local businesses were forced to change the way they communicate with customers, Class 5 started working with clients to quickly modify their business phone systems to support their employees need to work from home while communicated effectively with each other and customers.
The phone systems we support are uniquely different which offered different solutions.
Our on premise Toshiba CIX, Toshiba IPedge, and Avaya IP Office clients used features like call forwarding of telephone lines or extensions, remote VOIP extensions, and the Toshiba and Avaya cell phone Apps. Our Avaya clients could also make use of Twinning, which allows your phone and cell/home number to ring simultaneously on incoming calls. Forwarding and Twinning work well with incoming calls, but doesn’t help users making outbound client calls. The remote VOIP phones and cell phone Apps allow the users to accept calls but also make calls to clients while showing their offices telephone numbers and not their home or cell numbers.
We have 2 hosted VOIP platforms, Avaya within our Vancouver data center, and Wildix which resides within the Amazon (AWS) data center of our clients choice. These platforms allowed their users to grab their phones and go! We had to provide quite a few power supplies, but employees had no restrictions. Many users didn’t even take phones home. Instead they used the web browser or cell phone app and a headset. The web and cell apps are standard features with the Wildix platform.
During this time we have had existing and new clients leave their traditional on premise telephone systems and migrate to our Wildix platform to support employees working from home. We can spin up these new systems in 24-48 hours for emergencies.
So, will this all be the new normal? It is likely too early to tell, while many businesses are eager to open up, it will likely still be months before offices are operating as they were prior to Covid-19.
For information on how Class5 can help your business communications, visit our website or call us at 360-949-1381 or 509-493-4353.