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Five Reasons Why the Desk Phone Will Disappear
Introduction
A number of things have crossed my travels recently that lead me to wonder whether the venerable telephone will go the way of the pager in our office environments. This may seem hard to fathom considering how much of a staple the desk phone is, and how much businesses depend on their phone systems to do just about everything. Arguably, the phone is the most indispensible business tool we’ve ever had, but I would contend that is changing.
It’s in my nature as an analyst to be objective, and this is the first of a two part Focus Brief. I’ll start with the contrarian view and make the case for why the desk phone will disappear over the next few years. This will be countered in my follow-up brief which will defend the phone and explain why rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated. If you want to know what I really think, you’ll have to read both briefs, take your best shot, and try to drag it out of me. Hint – I may get back to you by email. With that said, here are five reasons why I believe the desk phone will disappear by the end of this decade.
Analysis
Reason 1 - I’m not at my desk – call my mobile
How often do you hear that these days? Modern technology is supposed make communications more efficient, but half of all phone calls still end up in voice mail. This is not a very good success rate, but to be fair, some of this is by design. While voice mail is an invaluable failover for missed calls, people also use it defensively to ensure that calls don’t get through. That may be counterproductive and an unintended consequence of voice mail, but in reality, it’s actually a good survival strategy that helps us manage the volume of messages coming our way every day.
Regardless, the point here is that we’re increasingly not at our desks, and if people really need to reach us, they better call our mobile phones. Of course, callers may just as likely get voice mail again, but at least they have a chance of getting you live – wherever you may be. If this pattern persists, people will eventually figure out there’s no point in calling the desk phone. Once behaviors around this change and calls go straight to mobile, that will serve as a death knell to the desk phone.
Reason 2 - I don’t make a lot of calls and nobody calls me
Most of my research is qualitative or anecdotal, but it’s hard to dispute the fact that we just don’t use the desk phone as much as we used to. I think most will agree that we make fewer calls on the desk phone, as well as receive fewer calls there these days. The desk phone works perfectly well, but our habits are changing. Voice is still the preferred mode of communication, but we’re increasingly using other channels – namely mobile devices, soft phones and PC calling. Video calling and video conferencing are also voice channels, and their adoption is growing rapidly, providing even more alternatives.
Another related factor, of course, is the proliferation of text-based modes – email, chat, texting, IM, etc. – and there is little doubt that these are serving many communications needs that would otherwise be taking place over the phone. Aside from the convenience of these modes, I believe that privacy is another key driver behind their popularity. Open offices have become the norm, and with closely-packed cubicles, private phone calls are all but impossible. The same could be argued for concentration – open offices tend to be noisy, and there are many scenarios where a quiet space is needed for calls. Again, as a survival mechanism, many office workers have simply shifted away from the phone to text modes to mitigate the challenges around privacy, noise or both.
Reason 3 - It only does phone calls
For better or worse, multi-tasking has become the norm, especially among the Internet generation. Technology gives us a lot of great tools to be productive, but it also overloads us with information from all directions. Developing multi-tasking skills has become critical for managing all this, and this stands in direct contrast to the desk phone.
Whether you’re using a PBX, IP PBX, Key System, or just a basic unswitched phone, it pretty much does just one thing. These phones handle telephony rather well, but aside from the very latest and most expensive models, they do not do much else. Prior to the PC, of course, this was all we had, so the desk phone was highly functional.
Back then, we could do most of our job with only a telephone, but the exact opposite is true today. We still need to make calls, but this activity is almost always connected to other things, which requires us to multi-task when using the phone. This mode of working is manageable, but not always efficient, and as we figure out other ways to make calls that make multi-tasking easier, the desk phone will fall out of favor.
Reason 4 - Web calls are free
This factor may resonate more with the CIO and CFO than with employees, but free is hard to beat, especially for businesses that do a lot of long distance calling. Historically, this has been a major cost factor, but LD charges have come down significantly with the advent of IP networks.
In fact, a strong selling point of IP PBXs is the ability to bypass toll charges by routing calls over IP. As such, desk phones can save the business some money this way, but there are even better options online. Businesses have been reluctant to embrace Web-based calling services, but to varying degrees, all the major IM platforms offer them – namely Skype, Google, Yahoo and MSN. Not only do they offer low per minute calling rates for domestic LD and international markets, but calls within their federations are entirely free. This is a feature that no desk phone can match, and for global businesses, it may be the best reason of all to dispense with them.
Reason 5 - I work from my desktop – that’s where I need to be
Long term, this may be the biggest driver of them all. At home or at work, our world is becoming increasingly web-centric, and most of what we need to do in our job is on the desktop. Communications technologies have shifted from being hardware-based to software-based, and along with that we move from the physical world to the virtual world.
Until recently, telephony was separate from the desktop, and underneath that, voice and data were managed from completely separate networks. Today, for a variety of reasons, those networks are converging, and voice is becoming integrated with all forms of desktop applications. As this trend continues, it becomes less practical to keep supporting voice with a standalone endpoint, especially since everything else is taking place at the desktop.
Conclusion
I’m in no way advocating getting rid of your desk phone today. These phones are still invaluable to any business, and in many cases, the sunk costs are too great to make any drastic moves. However, when you consider how our behaviors are changing around communications, it becomes easier to imagine a world without desk phones.
VoIP is still evolving, and won’t totally displace TDM any time soon. However, as broadband technologies get better and cheaper, the quality differential will become a non-issue, and decisions around where telephony lives will be based on what’s best for the business rather than sticking with what’s comfortable.
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11 Comments
Lifespan of iPhone = 14 months. Cost ~350.00 and up
Lifespan of Polycom 450 = 4-5 years Cost ~170.00
Cost of Softphone free - 100.00
Cost of Plantronics headset to make it usable in a business ~160.00
Lifespan 24 months.
Lifespan of sales campaign doing business on cell phones 30 days to laughed at.
I am sure anyone struggling over their online pontifications at a coffee shop will find the communication of a disposable smart phone quite acceptable however real communications equipment are the tools of the business world and are not going anywhere.
I have been a mobile worker for the last 10 years and can honestly say I use a traditional phone maybe 2% of my time.
Even if I am sitting at a desk with one staring at me sadly I will still go for my smart-phone 98% of the time ( 2% = means smart-phone is out of juice).
One simple example of why I go for my smart-phone over traditional desk-phone is if I want to go and grab a coffee while dialled into a conference call which is droning on I can.
We live in a mobile world and the 21st Century knowledge worker does not want to be tethered to a desk, well at least this one doesn't.
I'm in IT. I use a deskphone a lot of the time. Why is this?
- As mentioned by Fred, it's an out-of-band channel if it's been set up properly. When the computers go down, people can still call me, I can still call them, and the staff can still call in and out.
- Softphone interfaces, to be frank, suck. They freeze. They crash. They take up RAM, CPU cycles, and valuable screen real estate, particularly if your staff only have one screen at their desks. They often require multiple clicks to achieve results that a hardphone can do with one button. They actually require moving the mouse to perform basic functions at all. They are subject to whims of the OS, other applications, and the PC itself. About the only thing they're useful for is for interfacing with the corporate phonebook - and that can be done with a simple no-interface dialler app.
- Cellphones, when used excessively, need a lot of recharging. Deskphones don't. Cellphones are constrained in shape by the need to be small, unobtrusive, sporting a screen and buttons etc. Deskphones aren't - they can be big, chunky, and reach all the way from your ear to your mouth. And they don't have the transmission, dropout, and interference problems that can affect cellphones, either. If I'm at my desk - which I am most of the day - and I need to make a call, I'll pick up the deskphone.
- Zillion-button corporate phones aside, the deskphone is a familiar interface for the enormous majority of the population. If you hire older personnel, they're going to know how to use a deskphone without training. Not everyone knows how to use a softphone interface, and are you going to issue everyone in a large organisation with a corporate cellphone?
- Deskphones don't tend to have cameras, WiFi connections, or USB ports. When it comes to security, what kind of phones do you want your people to be using?
- They're cheap. Super-cheap. To the point where you can have a spare half-dozen sitting in a cupboard somewhere against the eventuality that one will break. And when it does, there's no swapping of SIMs or reprogramming needed, generally - just unplug the old one and plug in the new one.
Honestly, I can't see the deskphone dying out any more than TV killed cinema or the Walkman killed home sound systems.
Good article Jon - you qualified all your statements as we all should. As a designer, I still design traditional wall phones and emergency desk phones in nurse stations as well as IP phone in areas that make sense. I was the last holdout (that I knew of) to put IP phones in healthcare for the same out-of-band comments above. But I can't get a traditional phone to really integrate with a nurse call system (for example). I can't send physiological data to a 900MHz handheld....but I can to a smart phone. I can't take my desk phone to the photo copier....I can't walk to the next meeting in another building while finishing up the last call with a D-term.....but I can guarantee it's service (as stated above) and I can fix it in a few minutes by tossing it out and popping in a new one. I can't do that with a smart technology.
As with all new technology, and as you alluded to in the article, there's a balance between old and new, and that balance is tipping toward technology. Good read. Thx Jon.
I sincerely regret your having chosen to title your excellent diatribe "Five Reasons Why the Desk Phone Will Disappear". You gave some outstanding reasons why we will not be using our telephone the way our fathers did and then went on to invalidate your (title) supposition in your concluding statements.
I am pleased you "get it", but I must take exception to your inference phones as we know it will cease to exist. I do so, because...
1. Telephones represent an out of band method of communication (as opposed to anything on a PC, so if the PC fails the phone keeps working) which we all understand intuitively. When you call 911 do you text or e-mail? I think not. Voice is very often the most appropriate tool for a given job.
2. You dismiss the desk telephone because we all have a cell phone. You overlook the fact that the problem here is not which phone a person talks on, but how we contact them. Your arguement assumes one must dial either the desk phone or the cell phone's telephone number. This is not so. SIP supports forking (ringing both phones at the same time) and is used by no less than Google Voice and Broadsoft (the most popular central office IP phone system in the world). Surely, you must agree a desk phone provides a much better conversatoinal experience than a cell phone, simply on the basis of the voice codecs used. So why not publish one number and take the call based on your circumstances - such as, at your desk or at the airport.
2. Computers do not currently allow QoS or voice prioritization. VoIP has been around for some time now and I can only assume OS manufacturers are not interested in providing this necessar component to real time applications, such as voice. Why expose the voice experience to this potential failure if it is not necessary? Use a desk phone when you can and use whatever else you can when you need to.
3. You fail to mention not all desk phones are TDM. In the VoIP world, SIP phones are available which are actually mini-computers, providing outstanding voice quality and functionality at a reasonable price. These phones provide multiple connectivity and excellent an excellent UC experience.
4. You equate voice mail with the problem of "voice mail jail", or the problem of disingenuating ones caller. Voice mail is an application and nothing else. How one uses or abuses it is not a part of why desk phones are good or bad. In a truely converged office, voice mail can be accessed from e-mail and/or create IM's and/or tweekt therefore negating the "silo" arguement.
5. Free web calls have nothing to do with where one makes or takes the call. A $20.00 generic SIP phone can just as easily access the free web as can a PC while avoiding poor voice quality and QoS issues, as mentioned above.
And I could go on. In a nutshell, I agree with you. If your point is "we are no longer using desk phones efficiently". We do not do so because very few companies consider UC worthwhile. This is a pity and I'm glad to hear you speak out for reason.
I do wish, however, you had avoided a sensationalist title to make your point.
I don't believe that the title is sensationalist but the same title has been used in some format for quite a few years now, we have all been hearing and believing that desk phones would disappear. However in the past 3-5 years the desk phone has actually increased in price and complexity -- for example the Cisco phone on many desks is the cost of a small computer and has many functions that most users neither understand nor utilize. I do agree that we should move to softphones and more desktop unified communications. My thoughts are below and I know that these solutions do exist now.
1) All voicemail should appear in our email inboxes as audio files. We are all on email all day, we don't think to directly call in to check our office voicemail all that often.
2) We should be able to call someone by clicking on their name in our email/contact application on the computer.
3) We should be able to route calls to our mobile phones or desk phones through a web interface.
When I worked for a small firm we used an outsourced phone system that did provide the above options.
Suggesting that the desk phone will disappear is of course nonsense, except as a way of garnering attention.
While your justifications for increased use of mobile devices are valid, they just as much messages to vendors of conventional desk phones that they must improve the services that they provide to remain competitive. And you have to acknowledge that's this message has already been received and is being acted on. The latest generation of SIP phones are rich multifunctional devices that are highly tuned to providing efficient desktop communications.
Granted there are situations where desk phones do not compete well with mobile communications devices, but for all their advantages, mobile phones cannot, at least for the foreseeable future, compete with desk phone services in one crucial area. Desk phones offer better than 99.999% availability, several orders of magnitude better than the service provided by any cellular mobile device today.
Admittedly, I am torn.
Like Nicholos, I use my phone about 2% of the time. However, I have a NOC that uses them all of the time. That said, I don't think we can make a blanket statement that the desk phone is going away for everyone. Not for a while anyone.
Right now I use my desk phone primarily for these activities:
* Conference Calls
* Webinars
* Listening in on Calls Coming into My NOC for Quality Control and Coaching
I know of very few call centers and NOCs that have gone to an all softphone environment. The technology just isn't there yet, using software phones in the datacenter/NOC represents a single point of communications failure. When you're in the business of communicating, that's kind of a big deal.
Will it go away for sales people and on-the-go execs? Sure... if it hasn't already.
We tend to forget that there are many, many people whose work does not directly involve sitting at a desk and typing, or going to meetings and listening to conference calls. Often these people who, for example, work in a genetics lab or a clean room, or a warehouse, or a machine shop (etc.) share access to a single "traditional" phone. Voicemail to email doesn't work for them (I.e., is no different from email) because they only look at email after their other work is done.
Unified communications work very well if the worker fits the model UC is designed to fit. The omnipresence of the "desk phone" will continue to diminish, but the wired phone will remain a channel of value--and whose value goes up substantially when your network is down or under DoS attack.
I sell Unified Collaboration so I have a bias. UC puts the best of all the comments together in one neat package.
Business don't want to, or shouldn't, give out cell phone numbers mainly as a way to control their customers but also to ensure privacy. UC links the business phone number with a mobile phone.
UC also allows a smart phone to access the corporate wirelss network so cell minutes aren't used and the reception is good when roaming around the workplace or getting coffee at your favorite hot spot.
UC also links all the media: text-based and voice-based to allow people to go back forth as the conversation requires. Different conversations require different media. I just got an email today that a customer is being charged $.93 for an item. I got on the phone to verify that the charge was less than a dollar, not less than one hundred dollars. It was the appropriate way to handle that particular conversation.
Not being able to follow up with a customer/stake holder when promised is unacceptable. If you depend entirely on your PC and cell phone - you will be in that position. But if you have a business-quality IP PBX/Unified Collaboration engine and a desk phone, chances are that you will ALWAYS be able to make and receive calls.
I'll wait until the next Focus article where he gives the other side of the argument - then I may comment.
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