The phone on my desk rang a second time today. I glanced at the console, didn’t recognize the Caller ID and simply ignored the call. A minute or two later a text message buzzed on my iPhone with a transcription of the voicemail left by the caller. I took one look and knew right away:
Yep, another telemarketer!
Just like another call earlier today. As I did my little glance-ignore-wait-for-text-message routine I realized yet again how my communications channels have changed over the years. Here is the reality:
I pretty much NEVER answer my desk phone.
Why not? Pretty simple, really:
The people who I want to speak with already know how to get in touch with me!
And the “how” comes down to: unified communications and mobile.
Unified Communications
For instance, we’re huge users of Skype internally at Voxeo. I have everyone in the company as a contact, and am in a zillion various group chats with internal employees. If someone within the company wants to reach me, they will:
- Check my presence on Skype. Am I online? If so, am I “away”? or “busy/Do Not Disturb”?
- Send me an IM – asking if they can call me if it’s urgent.
Note that second bullet… internal communication starts in IM and then migrates to voice and possibly video if our conversation needs to be “higher bandwidth” than typing.
I can’t honestly remember the last time someone internally actually rang my desk phone, because, if I’m not online, there’s also…
Mobile
If I’m not online, or if it’s urgent, people know to call me on my mobile phone. I carry it basically everywhere. And whether they dial that direct number or they call my Google Voice number that rings that phone… either way they reach me on my mobile.
It’s Not Just Internal
Most of the people who I regularly want to talk to outside my company are also linked to me via Skype or one of the other IM networks (and mostly via Skype) or social networks. Or they have my mobile number. Possibly we’ve connected via some other way… email… Twitter… Facebook… and if we need to go to voice, we’ve exchanged mobile phone numbers… or we’ll use an app in one of the social services (like Facebook Telephone or Twelephone) that connects us via voice through that service. They don’t call my desk phone.
Which Leaves the Desk Phone For What?
Spam! Er… “telemarketing calls”. Usually from someone trying to sell me some service that will magically generate millions of leads… or giving me a “personal invitation” to some event. Randomly there might be someone out there who I actually want to speak with – my deskphone number is on my business card, after all – and if so I will definitely return the call after I see the voicemail transcription.
Otherwise… it just sits there as a number out there to attract telemarketers…
How about you? Do you answer your desk phone much any more? Do people actually call you on it?
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
A good way of dealing with telemarketers is to write their number on http://www.dirtyphonebook.com/ and check to see who a number belongs to. Whenever the phone rings with a number I don’t know, I check to see if their number is listed as a spammer. I caught somebody just today doing that, some guy trying to offer me prize money for some contest I never entered.
You might be amused by this: http://revk.www.me.uk/2010/07/something-has-to-be-done.html
Small business-focused ISP in the UK built a honeypot with 10,000 DIDs and an * server. Rigged the * to pick up the calls and send DTMF 2, so as to grab the operator at the far end. Then it plays back a succession of messages informing the caller that what they are doing is illegal and also trying to keep them on the line. Everything is recorded.
Killer detail: they’re a UK registered telco, so they get to bill the spammer’s carrier for termination.
Future plans include a dialplan app that detects if more than one spammer is in the queue and drops them into a MeetMe conference.
Your use of Skype is very curious. It seems to me that Voxeo is based largely upon open standards like SIP, SIMPLE, XMPP, etc. Skype goes the other direction, preferring proprietary technologies in many cases…except where they can gain commercial advantage by providing services over standards-based protocols.
What you describe also implies that you prefer soft phones over hardware. Do you have a favorite headset? Wired or wireless?
Finally, how do your non-technological friends and family reach you? My parents would never think to check Skype for my status. They don’t even have a cell phone.
@Maria – Interesting… but I guess that’s more time than I really want to spend dealing with telemarketers. My preference is just to ignore them completely.
@Alexander – Yes, that is amusing. Their future plans are cute… would be amusing when the two telemarketers get dropped into a conference with each other. 🙂
@Mjgraves – Yes, Voxeo is all about open standards… but if there is no open standard solution that meets our needs, we’ll use other software (and/or build our own). In this case, the #1 reason we use Skype is the incredible power of its persistent group chats. I *really* need to write a blog post about that! But that’s the big reason we use it today… although we have some ideas for the future 😉
Yes, I personally prefer a softphone over a hardphone for much of my communication. That said… I *do* often use my hardphone (the one pictured there) for conference calls purely so that I can be doing other things on my computer.
Headsets? We don’t need no stinking headsets! I’m on a Mac and the echo cancellation is *outstanding* without any headset… so most of the time I don’t use a headset. Now and then when I need to I use one of the USB headsets I have (or I use my podcasting rig when I need super-high-quality audio).
My non-techie friends/family? They call me on my home landline or my cell phone. 😉
PING:
TITLE: Skype and the Incredible Power of Persistent Group Chats
BLOG NAME: Disruptive Telephony
What is one reason why many people continue using Skype for chat / instant messaging when so many other solutions are out there? Particularly when Skype chat is a closed, proprietary “walled garden” that doesn’t interact with IM networks? After…