Quantifying Phone Tag

How much does playing phone tag cost your business? More than you think! You can get your costs under control with some simple tools.

For my quant friends, how do you measure the cost of phone tag? It is really quite simple. Assume your estimated hourly rate is $50. Each day you spend one hour on the phone, and only 50% of the calls were conversations. The cost of non-productive calls is $25 a day. 260 days times $25 equals $6500 per year, per employee! Ouch!

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Fortunately, RingCentral and now Google (to a limited extent), have products that help keep you connected and receiving calls, whether you are on your cell phone, home phone, or vacation home phone.

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RingCentral utilizes your internet connection to handle the call hand offs. It allows you to keep a central number, including area code, and then forwards the call to one of a set of numbers you provide. Additionally, RingCentral also provides similar products for fax solutions.

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Not to be out done, Google is soon to offer a service called Google Voice. Although it is only available by invite only (?), it is said to offer call forwarding, screening, voice mail, etc. It appears this will be a "free" service, but I don't have anything definitive as of 01 September 2009.

From Google:

Google Voice is a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more.

Clearly, missed phone calls are costing companies thousands of dollars a year, as well as lost productivity, lost business opportunities, and general frustration. Fortunately, with products from RingCentral and Google, businesses can better manage these costs.

Telco Competition Creates Efficiency

The modern telephone system is about 100 years old, though it faces new competitors everyday. Competition from VOIP, hosted fax and telephone services continue to drive down costs and force innovation.

Having spent about 5 years directly in the telco business, and 10 more years dealing with data solutions, I have witnessed the changes, innovations, and cost improvements. One of the biggest drivers has been the internet and the data-centric thinking from it.

While none of this is news, what is news is that more and more people consume telco services from non-traditional telco providers such as RingCentral and eFax. RingCentral Online - Free Trial plus 10% Off

RingCentral is a hosted solution which offers individuals and businesses toll free numbers, fax services, as well as hosted and managed PBX. Here is a description of their products:



RingCentral Online
Toll Free and Local hosted phone & fax service for small businesses & mobile professionals delivering all the power of a “big company” phone system but with no hardware to buy and nothing to maintain.

RingCentral Office
Complete, hosted phone and fax system that combines virtual PBX and VoIP phone service with unlimited calling and full-featured IP phones ready for use.

RingCentral Fax
Easy, secure, and affordable internet fax service for small businesses and mobile professionals.

While the traditional telcos, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint also offer these services, RingCentral is focused on the smaller business.



Another competitor to the larger telco, particularly in the fax arena is eFax. This is a product I have used, and my spouse at a large firm uses as well. eFax allows the user to send and receive faxes over the internet, without a fax machine. This is a great advantage for the road warrior sales rep or consultant. Additionally, eFax is convenient for the home user, as it offers of subset of its products free. Try eFax Annual Plan For 30 Days Free - Get $34 Off the Monthly Rate

In both cases, the internet has been the catalyst or enabler for RingCentral, eFax and others to compete, at least at the fringes, with the larger telcos. As the recession of 2009 continues, businesses large and small will be looking to stretch their communications budgets further than ever.