Desktop Call Control Increases Worker Efficiency

By Author: Steve Norris
Total Articles: 23
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In nearly every business, the largest expense an overwhelming percentage of the time is the cost of manpower. People fuel business, so it's no wonder that companies constantly strive to find ways to help their people be more efficient and more productive. With desktop call control, phone systems give companies an additional tool for increased efficiency.

What is desktop call control?

Desktop call control is the ability to handle your telephone calls from your PC. The era of having a telephone on your desk is being challenged by new technology, and it is quickly being embraced. We spend so much of our productive office time on our PC's, and we often use headsets to handle calls, so wouldn't it make sense that we handle calls from our PC as we move into the world of Voice Over IP?

Based on consumer demand, nearly all major manufacturers have made a form of desktop call control to help meet the expectations of today's tech crazy employees and savvy employers. When an incoming call comes in, you can now answer the call by clicking a popup window on your PC with your mouse. This will either activate your speaker ...
... phone on your telephone desk-set or activate the call on your telephone headset. You can also choose to send the call to voicemail with the same click of the mouse. Simple. Easy. Efficient.

Want to transfer a call? No problem. With the click of a mouse you can select anyone in your office by name or extension. How about paging or conference calling functionality? It's built in. How about calling someone in My Contacts? Done. Click the contact and have your phone system automatically dial the number. Some outlook integration is required with either IMAP or TAPI driver interfaces, but it is so simple to use that offices demand it.

Need to make a call from one of your last 50 incoming or outgoing calls? Choose a drop down box from a docked toolbar and select the number you want. Want to call a number from the web? Copy and paste the number into the toolbar and select dial. It's done.

Desktop call control has made such a huge impact that some inbound call centers no longer even purchase handsets. They use IP Softphones and desktop call control to handle all of their incoming calls. If all of their representatives use USB headsets, what use do they have for the handset? From their toolbar they can place callers on hold, transfer, answer, send to voicemail, disconnect and conference. What more do they need?

The cost of the software is typically in the same range as buying lower end business telephone desk-sets, but often substantially less when purchased in volume. Price aside, businesses choose to buy desktop call control because of their increased efficiency with their manpower. Take a look at this business case:

If a 30 person office all uses desk phones, and on average they are paid $10 per hour, how does one determine if this is a suitable solution? First one must identify activities performed where time is wasted. Do you spend time looking for telephone numbers? Do you look back and forth at your contacts in your CRM multiple times while trying to dial the number? Do you look for the number you scribbled down from that last caller, but can't find it among the mess on your desk? Does it take you more time than it should to get things done while you hold your phone against your ear and type with one hand or look for documents on your desk? Do you have to ask people how to use the features on your phone to conference or try to transfer calls? All of those activities take TIME, wasted time, and there is a price associated with that time. What if having such an efficient application like desktop call control saved each employee an average of 5 minutes a day? What would that mean?

If the rate of pay is $10 an hour, the rate of pay per 5 minutes is 1/12 of that, or $0.83.
Multiply that by 30 employees and you get $25 a day.
$125 a week. $500 a month. $6,000 a year. (By the way, $500 is probably far more than a lease would be, so without looking at any additional productivity enhancing features of the new system, this system pays for itself on this alone)
$30,000 over five years projected savings.

What if you paid your employees much more than $10 an hour? Certainly you can see there is an incredible business case for use of desktop call control, as it can impact your unseen soft costs dramatically. As always, we recommend you consult with your local telecommunications professional on all hardware and software applications.