Rolando Rosas 4:32
to how do I how do businesses do that you said such such that something that i i find hard to do you know, we have all of our folks working from from different locations. What What should businesses be doing from you said morale, what are what are you what are you advising your clients from a morale perspective they do.
DeLaine Clifford 4:53
You know, I think you know, everyone’s kind of maybe sick of virtual events, but having that virtual event and having that water cooler, right? Maybe every Friday, you guys have a lunch hour where everyone kind of eats their lunch on camera. This is also a way to use the technology and get more comfortable being on camera, right? Because the cameras not going away. We’re all going to be on camera, you know forevermore now. So being able to also connect with your team, right? Send them little tokens or encourage them and a phone call goes a long way. Right? We send emails, we give high fives virtually, but it’s a big difference when you pick up your phone and just tell someone Hey, I appreciate you and you did a great job.
Rolando Rosas 5:37
Wow. So it sounds like the human touch it as we’re all virtual is is still important, if not more important than it’s ever has been. Agreed? Yes. Wow. Well, Dave, I’m gonna send you a pizza every Friday you like that?
Dave Kelly 5:51
Yeah, I’m trying to knock off the carbs. The quarantine hasn’t been good to me but so me some broccoli and
Rolando Rosas 5:59
you know what we ought to get Hello Fresh and delivery some stuff for you. So if you’re listening to us, hello, fresh, it’s a customer plug for them. Hello Fresh? Maybe you can send Dave? Some broccoli? No pizza? What? The cauliflower pizza? Maybe? Right?
Dave Kelly 6:12
Maybe? That’s a good alternative?
Rolando Rosas 6:15
Well, okay. Well, you know, that’s, I think I think we’re all learning DeLaine. Like you said, this is definitely a challenging time. Working from home for some, like myself, it’s been more second nature than anything. I’ve been doing it for quite some time. And for some, it’s this are new, the new thing. And that actually rolls right right into the next question. So what do you see, as you’re talking to your clients? What are some of the biggest mistakes that businesses are making in this current situation?
DeLaine Clifford 6:52
Oh, I can think of a few. I think number one, investing in an on premise phone system is your number one biggest mistake, if your plan is to be virtual, or eventually go completely virtual with your company, having an on premise phone system is not the most flexible option for your business. So you’re investing all these dollars, and a dinosaur ultimately. So number one, you know, investing in Cloud is the way to go right now, this will support the ebbs and flows of business, right, because even when we get back in the office, we don’t know how long we’re going to be there. So being prepared for anything that comes your way, including, you know, we have a ton of plan to power outages here on the west coast. So being able to work through anything that you know hits your business, you can do that with voice clouds.
Rolando Rosas 7:40
And for some of those design, I’ve had conversations with clients in the past, one of the things you said power outages, but going into the cloud, and and if folks are uncomfortable with that, what are the some of the real advantages, besides the flexibility with being in the cloud that you know, and and on prem. And I think that’s a lot of folks now, or maybe never heard of the cloud or hearing about the cloud. And what what really besides the flexibility is the cloud providing customers versus that unpress on premise equipment that you mentioned,
DeLaine Clifford 8:14
you can literally work from anywhere from any device, right. So if that’s your smartphone, if that’s a soft phone, on your computer, are still taking that hard phone to your home office with you. It allows you to be flexible, it allows you to continue servicing your customers in the same way that you were doing in a traditional environment. In addition, it gives you a ton of statistics, right. So as a leader, as a manager, you’re still able to see that your employees are working, you’re able to run reports, you’re able to see maybe who’s struggling and who’s not. It also opens up different channels of communication, some of these platforms will allow you to text your customers, if you’re not texting your customers, right now you are missing a big, a big thing, right? People want to be text, you’re gonna get a bigger response rate when you’re incorporating text messaging into your business. You also can receive faxes from afar. You can even pull in your social media channels if you if that’s the desire of yours to support your business online through social media like Instagram, LinkedIn, all those things.
Rolando Rosas 9:18
So what are Twitter? So what you’re seeing the cloud allows businesses to basically be more efficient, because if you have all these different platforms, and you’re able to manage them from like, either a central point, whether it’s a dashboard or have visibility on that, that you can actually be more efficient just by going to the cloud versus having on premise equipment.
DeLaine Clifford 9:38
I think even more Yeah, more efficient. Absolutely. It gives your people as well, the flexibility to be successful, right? Maybe someone needs a hard phone and maybe someone’s more going to pick up a headset and be really successful in that. I know when I moved to a home office environment, you know, 10 years ago, I worked harder You know, there was no watercooler talk, it was like let’s pay on the phone, let’s call people that support customers, and allowed me to do that, you know, my own way. And I think that really brings a lot of value to an organization.
Rolando Rosas 10:12
Well, let me ask you this, because this is this is something that for years and managers have struggled with when when it comes to work from home, their opinions may be that, you know, people just are goofing off playing games all day long, and they can’t see them. And from every from from our point of view, and from what I’ve read from every, every consultants, organization, or Ernst and Young and Deloitte, all of them have studied teleworking for years, and they all pretty much say what you’re saying that working from home workers are tend to be happy. They tend to, there’s less turnover, less less churn. They are generally they’re around longer. So So Costco down to businesses, but I think that in this this time is the amount of people that are working for them, it’s probably a good idea to let the folks know what you’re seeing with clients. Are you getting any feedback from those that have worked from home? Are you hearing that employees are generally happier, rather than just what the books say? Are you actually seeing that yourself with your clients?
DeLaine Clifford 11:20
Absolutely, I think people are, you know, I think it’s 80/20, I think 80% are happier to be home. And you’re still going to have that 20% that likes drive into the office and getting in their space and having that social aspect. And then your point on managers, any manager that saying that they don’t know if their employee is doing their job, that employee probably doesn’t have a KPI, right, there’s no key performance indicator that that manager is tracking. So that’s more of the problems and thinking your employees aren’t doing work.
Rolando Rosas 11:48
Oh, interesting. Interesting. And as far as our were concerned, internally, we’ve we’ve been on the cloud for quite some time. And I really liked being on the cloud, because like you said, you have more visibility rather than less. And you have tools at your fingertips that you probably didn’t have before in order to measure performance. So if your manager what how would what would you advise a manager to do? You know, they’re on the fence, you’ve mentioned KPIs, how does Manager Go about instituting KPIs that are measurable and effective?
DeLaine Clifford 12:22
You know, I think it just depends on the industry and what you’re looking to get out of your employees, employees, you know, my personal opinion is employees are going to do a better job if they understand how to be tracked if they understand how to get that gold star at the end of the rainbow. So you know, if that’s, you know, one of my first jobs it was needed to make 30 calls a day, right. And we had a reporting mechanism that told me, you know, you made 50, today, you made 27. And so you know, being able and having that tool, as the employee, knowing where I was at, against what my manager was expecting, allowed me to be a really great employee. And I think there’s, you know, it’s always surprises me when I come across companies that don’t have that.
Rolando Rosas 13:01
And I think that, as you said, 30 calls a day, in depending on what industry you’re in, that could be challenging. In some cases, it could be nothing. But I know Dave, from talking to our clients in the past as to tie this into devices. If you don’t have the right device, in your in your call to action, you know, your KPI is certain number of calls per day that can become even more challenging.
Dave Kelly 13:30
Yeah, absolutely. And you know what, with the software that’s available today, workers are still held accountable. You know, I think about like, customer service for every technical support group. Their KPIs mate might be, you know, receive 50 phone calls a day solve 10 cases, less time on a telephone call is certainly something that some folks on that side of the fence would be measured on. And if they’re using the right device, if they can hear people better if their customers can hear them better than they’ll hit and exceed their the expectations for KPIs that are like that.
Rolando Rosas 14:10
Well, and certainly, you know, we’ve got devices that are set up for a number of different different platforms. So if you’re on Microsoft Teams, or zoom, we have devices. If you’re watching this on our stream, right now, we’ve got devices that you can click to and it’ll get you to the right devices. We have a bunch of other videos that we’ve, we’ve recorded in the past. So if you’re interested in some of those devices, we’re here to walk you through some of that, as well as some of the videos that we’ve put out in the past that actually dive a little deeper into that area. So let me get back to something that I just recently became aware of, I had no clue and that’s why DeLaine is such a great person. She knows all this stuff that’s going on in the communication industry. was Karis law in the array bombs that until about two, three weeks ago, I had absolutely no clue on what that was. And I think I want to think of myself as somebody that’s plugged in. And I guess I’m not. So DeLaine, please explain to our audience what that means and why we should even care about that.
DeLaine Clifford 15:21
Yeah, so it’s a new law that came into effect last year. And then RAY BAUM is a layer on top of it. So the you know, the quick story is, is there was a, there was a murder at a hotel room, and I think it was an eight or nine year old girl tried to call 911 from the hotel room. And because there was a required prefix, she didn’t call 911. So that means that she had to know as a nine year old to dial 9911, right, a lot of our business telephone systems require that prefix number quite often, it’s a nine. And so, you know, it’s, if she was able to call 911, it might have been a different ending to that story. So from their their grandpa, I believe it was really pushed to establish this law. And what it requires is that your phone system, your business phone system today should not require a nine to dial 911. It could require a nine to call out to your you know, all your phone numbers, but 911 needs to work and 9911 needs to work on your phone system today. If your prefix is nine, or whatever your prefix is, in addition to that, it does require you to notify someone within your organization that 911 was called. So that could be your security team, that could be a front desk person. The new addition rate bomb, sacked as of 2021, requires that your telephone system provide the full address. So that’s the street address, the floor number and the suite number. A lot of phone systems can’t do that these days.
Rolando Rosas 16:52
If there was so so good, quite a good follow up. So let’s say you’re an on premise, you have your business. You have an on premise phone system, I think, let me take this into court. What do you do as a business? If you find out my on premise equipment can’t do that? What’s my responsibility or liability if I can’t change that?
DeLaine Clifford 17:13
You need a new phone system. Right? If somebody is your employee, you call 911. And it doesn’t work. It you’re against the law. It is against the FCC law. So you could have you no repercussions for that.
Rolando Rosas 17:26
So you’re saying companies could be held liable if something happens, because they that from their phone system? You can’t dial 911 Right? Correct. Correct? Well, that’s a problem. There’s a lot of companies that have on premise equipment where you can’t dial 911 Straight away you have to do the prefix I’ve been a lot in a lot of visits a lot of customers and dialing out always requires some type of prefix for most businesses.
DeLaine Clifford 17:53
Absolutely. It was I was blown away by the responses in that TikTok video I did. And a lot of them were schools because you know, on TikTok, it’s all youngins are all college students, right? And the comments was like, my college doesn’t allow this, my college doesn’t do this. My college is out of compliance. So, you know, it’s important to have this, you know, regulation vetted out and test it right? How do I know if my phone system does it? Well, you make a test call to 911 so you call 911 You tell them immediately, this is a test call? Can you please confirm my address? And it better be that full address now? Right? So if you’re on floor 10 and suite 312 It should show floor 10 You know, suite 312 After your street address.
Rolando Rosas 18:37
And so if businesses don’t know how to do this, is this something that you’re an expert in this field? Is this something that you can help businesses get in compliance if they don’t have somebody? Let’s say they don’t have an in house telecom person then they want to do this, you know, you have the tools and and know how to take help businesses do this?
DeLaine Clifford 18:59
Absolutely. A lot of it depends on your phone system, right. So some of those older phone systems are not going to be in compliance with this. Or they’re going to require a software upgrade. A lot of the software upgrades that rolled out in the last two years included this feature as an add on to on premise phone systems. Taking it a step further, you know, if you are a cloud based solution, this is baked into all the top providers both the no prefix as well as the full details on the address. But if you even think about a step further, everyone’s working from home. So if I call 911 I can’t outpost my, my headquarters phone number. I have to outpost my home address when I call 911 Right. So there is an even you know, an even a thicker layer now because of COVID. And because of most you know a lot of us working from home.
Rolando Rosas 19:53
Wow. So so if I dial like right now my phone is RingCentral phone that sits here If I dial 911, it should it should it because maybe RingCentral is doing it, there’s maybe our admins doing it, it should, they should be able to see my full address here, right?
DeLaine Clifford 20:13
RingCentral does have this feature enabled, but it needs to be set up. So what happens is, you know, when you log into your phone, the first time you log in your phone, it’s going to ask you for your address, right? So most of us when we log into our phone, we’re at our headquarters, you know, back in the day, and so you put your headquarter address in, right, so when you know you’re going to work from home, you need to go in and change your e 911. address to your home address.
Rolando Rosas 20:39
Okay, let me ask you this question. Is this something that falls on the responsibility of the IT administrator, the individuals to do who have the endpoints at home? Who’s Who’s ultimately responsible for doing that?
DeLaine Clifford 20:53
Ultimately, you need to read your employee handbook to answer that for your own business. And you know, this should be in the employee handbook as well, right? So often, I encourage customers to obviously talk to their their law team, but you want to kind of advise, you know, if you’re going to call 911, it is always better from a landline just period, that’s just the best practice. Your cell phone does geolocation, so that’s your second best salute, you know, first, device to call 911. From, but look, when you’re in an emergency, you’re gonna call 911, from wherever you can get your finger on that button. So it’s good to have everything set up.
Rolando Rosas 21:31
Awesome. Well, you know, this is this is a really interesting thing, because I can’t imagine not everybody’s going to be in compliance today. And there’s probably loads of businesses that were not aware that they needed to do this, if they had on prem, as well as if you’re in the cloud did to check that your employees that are working from home are that their address information is built into the endpoint that they’re using?
DeLaine Clifford 21:59
Absolutely. And then maybe if we can put that there’s an FCC link I can share with you guys, if you want
Rolando Rosas 22:04
to put that in the notes of this show? Well, we could we could certainly do that. Or we will have that we’ll have that for our audience so that you can link to the FCC website that that spells that out. So thanks, thanks for letting us know about that. And I want to ask you some of the so the other reason we want you to want to do to be on here was to really tell tell the tell our audience who’s either listening or watching us today? What makes you the consumer go to consulting? What value do you bring to the table for business that’s either looking to migrate to the cloud, they want to go through these, through these, this law and be in compliance? What’s what’s at the end of the day you’re bringing to the table that they’re gonna find valuable?
DeLaine Clifford 22:50
Yes, thanks for asking. So going to the cloud, Oh.
Rolando Rosas 22:54
Are we asking avatar DeLaine? Are we talking to who’s talking here?
DeLaine Clifford 22:54
I don’t know. So going to the cloud is I like to say it’s relatively easy if you know the ingredients that you need to put into your business to have a successful outcome. So with me, you know, I make sure that every you know, I kind of make the roadmap for you, I walk side by side with you coaching you on how to prepare for this big transition. I also like to say that 15 years in the business, I’ve sat with a lot of the sea levels at these different providers. So if things go wrong, I don’t know if you’ve noticed I’m not shy. I have the connections to make the phone calls and get the problem resolved if we do run into any issues. Overall, I think you know, if you ask a lot of my clients my value out as I save them time, right? They’re out there researching trying to figure out you know, what the right thing is to propose to the executives or what the right fit is for their organization. And I you know, I’m I have 15 years so I will give you as much knowledge as you want. I will educate you so you feel comfortable when you make a decision. And I like to walk the path with my customers I’m I make lifetime relationships. You’re I joke that you’re stuck with me. But yeah, you’re stuck with me for as long as you want to be here and I love making sure that we get to the end of that rainbow together in a happy place.
Rolando Rosas 24:20
Awesome. Well, I think that a lot of folks that are listening to us and then even some of those that are going to be probably watching us in the future if you’re watching this as future future you that’s watching us in the future you’ll find that DeLaine is not only a pleasure to work with she like she said she’s she’s been in the industry. We want we really want to thank you but before we go today, there’s a couple questions that we ask our folks this is just some rapid fire questions just what you think, well, there’s no right or wrong answer. Let’s put it that way. So let’s start off with what’s your fav just to sold out? audience get to know you a little bit better, right? What’s your favorite musician or musical group?
DeLaine Clifford 25:07
I have so many. So Linkin Park came to mind first, but I’m a big Queen fan as well.
Rolando Rosas 25:12
Oh, those sorts of Queen is heavy hitter. That movie. Did you watch the movie? Oh, yeah.
DeLaine Clifford 25:19
Great One,
Dave Kelly 25:20
you know that that performance with Live Aid wimpleton that they did in the movie. I remember seeing that I’ve streamed that multiple times way before that movie ever came out? I think that is one of the best live performances, period. Any band, anyone that’s out there that show that event was amazing.
Rolando Rosas 25:41
But I think the movie captured that. Well, I that’s probably one of the last movies that watching the theaters are probably second to last and watching it in the movie theater. It I’m not huge on musicals, per se. But it the production of that it felt like you were in that concert. And you were watching them in watching the concert rather than the movie. And I thought they wove that in very well. Yeah, good one. Good answer. Good. All right, the next one. What’s your favorite app that’s on your phone?
DeLaine Clifford 26:17
Right now it’s TikTok because I just started playing with it. But you know, I like LinkedIn, all the social media ones are probably my favorite.
Rolando Rosas 26:24
And for those look, go ahead. Alright, show the folks what Delaine There we go. This is what she does on TikTok, she does it better than any better than anybody I’ve seen on tic tac. Thank you. And so a big, big, big, big ups. Big ups to Delaine on the TikTok circuit. So keep it up. Next, I want to ask you about this something near and dear to my heart. What’s your favorite food? Huh?
DeLaine Clifford 26:57
I mean, chocolate chip cookies. That’s probably my favorite. Yeah, steak and cookies. I’m one of those.
Rolando Rosas 27:11
There you go. And you’re on the west coast. So I love when I’m out there because the food is so good anywhere from Seattle all the way down to San Diego. I love a good taco place. Like liquid Mexican. I’m a sucker for good. Anywhere good with tacos. I’m there. So latterly now. Now, this is something that I’m really curious about because it’s a lot of conversational and in terms of jet different generation. So I want to get your thoughts on this one. In terms of communication. What’s your preferred method of communication? Do you prefer email? Do you prefer texts, a phone call? Or instant messaging kind of a DM kind of thing?
DeLaine Clifford 27:51
I’m much better with my words and my writing. So definitely emails my least favorite. I would say I still like a traditional phone call. I definitely text message but I’m not as eloquent as I am, you know, via voice.
Rolando Rosas 28:05
Okay, so So picking up the phone or in this case mobile phone? Do you have an actual phone in your in your house still or is gone?
DeLaine Clifford 28:13
I haven’t had a phone and I don’t know, six or seven years. I taught my little babies how to dial 911 on the iPhones.
Rolando Rosas 28:21
Nice. So home phones are gone. Your mobile and you like talking rather than texting or typing? Yeah. All right. So what we want to do is, before we wrap up, Dave, I know we had a trivia question. Yep.
Dave Kelly 28:41
So the trivia question, or if you can throw that back up the trivia question was which one of these brands was associated with laying telegraph wire between Europe and Northern Asia? So the answer is, DeLaine, I’ll ask you. Do you have any? I guess the answer just came out. That’s all right. The lane if you were thinking Jabra, you are correct. Or not? Yeah, so Jabra has been in the communications business for well over 150 years. Their parent company is their GN store Nord. 1869 they had an agreement with the Russian government to start laying wire. The wire was completed I believe it was like 1897 and the first telegraph station opened in Japan at that time, so Jabra has been in communications for quite a long time. They are certainly pioneers. And we’re proud to represent their brand.
Rolando Rosas 29:42
Well, thank you, Dave. That’s a as I’m serious. That’s I would have thought it was going to be AT&T. How long AT&T has been around. I don’t know DeLaine. Who did you think that would have laid the first transit or Trans Pacific in this case cable?
DeLaine Clifford 29:58
I thought it was AT&T as well. Oh,
Rolando Rosas 29:59
Oh, yeah, I’m wrong. I don’t have any problems admitting I’m wrong. So that’s great. Thanks, DeLaine. Any parting words for our audience as we wrap up?
DeLaine Clifford 30:11
No, I just I appreciate all your time. And if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, I try to educate my followers so you can get this kind of education from my LinkedIn page.
Rolando Rosas 30:20
All right. So if you have a need for somebody to come in and get dirty with the cloud, or something to get you onto the cloud DeLaine is the person that you want to talk to hit her up on LinkedIn. Follow her follow her on TikTok, what’s your Twitter to remember that I can’t say what is your TikTok handle so that folks can follow you on tick tock as well?
DeLaine Clifford 30:43
Sure, it’s @communication_ace,
Rolando Rosas 30:47
@Communication_ace you heard it here. Thanks for watching us today, and we’ll see you next time.
Outro 30:53
Thanks for listening to What The Teck? Be sure to check out our other episodes featuring awesome tech and amazing guests. Find them on circuitloops.com or wherever you consume your favorite podcasts.
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