Page 15 - Telecom Reseller January February 2016 2017

December/January 2017
Telecom Reseller 15 AThe State of IP Phone Satisfaction
ccording to a recent AOTMP research COLWELL when evaluating equipment – physical desk study, enterprises report a 9% increase sets and so phones – and conduct a thorough in satisfaction with IP-based phone evaluation of the options available to select
equipment over the past 24 months. While the By Timothy C. Colwell, SVP the best solution for the environment. Users increase is positive, overall satisfaction is 7.8 Ef ciency First® Adoption – transitioning from traditional desk set devices to
Ask the Telecom Pro
Q: My telecom billing is horrendous. Is there anything I can do to hold the vendors accountable for their mistakes?
A: One solution to the problem is a billing service level agreement (SLA). The keys to a successful billing SLA are creativity and speci city. Examples include (1) an organization paying nothing on an invoice until it is deemed correct by the organization (2) an organization paying only the charges deemed correct while the incorrect charges go through a designated dispute process and (3) an organization keeping record of the amount of time spent correcting billing errors and then obtaining a courtesy credit from the vendor for the time spent.
Billing SLAs should be addressed during the RFP process. This will indicate the importance of the
issue to the provider, and allow the organization an opportunity to gauge the di erences in response. Billing SLAs should then be negotiated and included as part of the contract. This will ensure both parties have reached consensus with regard to the handling of any future billing issues.
Q: My long distance vendor rep told me that the FCC prohibits them from issuing credits for overbillings that occurred more than six months ago. Is this true?
A: No. The FCC does not have
a ruling that states that long distance vendors are only required to issue credits for incorrect billing that occurs inside a six-month window. Your rep’s statement is most likely one that was given to them as the company-line answer
to such a question. To back-up your claim that credits should be issued for overpayments that occurred more than six months ago, review your contract and associated vendor service guide to make sure that there is not a contractual provision creating a six-month credit window for overpayments. Then, request that your vendor provide o cial documentation to you substantiating their statement. If there is not contractual or service guide language binding you to a six-month credit period, consider escalating to the vendor’s executive complaints division or ling a complaint with the FCC to gain resolution on your issue.
on a 10-point scale, hovering in the moderate satisfaction range. Quality and reliability of equipment are the primary drivers for this rating.
Taking a deeper dive into the demographics, the retail industry and education segment rate highest on the satisfaction scale, 9.0 and 8.4 respectively, while the nance industry reports the lowest level of satisfaction at 6.4.
Variances in satisfaction by industry and market sector are attributed to the volume of use in each industry and the value of each call transaction to the business.
AOTMP (www.aotmp.com)
so phones may also require adjustment periods if they are not accustom to using headphones or a computer microphone/speaker con guration; satisfaction with the comfort and so phone interface in uences overall satisfaction with the solution.
Additionally, quality and reliability
may, in fact, be attributed to call quality
and performance, not just the endpoint
device. Capacity engineering, QoS and call prioritization must be designed and monitored to establish call path integrity that in uences overall end user satisfaction. l
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e more use and greater business value placed on calls, the lower the tolerance for performance issues.
ese research ndings indicate that the quality of IP-based phone equipment still has room for improvement. While adoption of IP-based phone systems is rapidly growing, satisfaction lags behind traditional TDM-based systems
Enterprises with IP-based phone system initiatives should consider peer satisfaction
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