Sergiy Lapin

How long does it take to set up & start using an IVR system?

Call Center Technology

2 more topics

Oct. 27, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 4 other people answered this question

Depends on application and complexity anywhere from 15 minutes to a year or so.
Please give more details in order to get more specific answer.
List all the features you expect to have such as database verification or matching of caller id, DTMF entry, voice ... more

I know VOIP is great Technology, but would it make sense to go completely VOIP in a Medical Center?

Contact Center Software

4 more topics

Oct. 7, 2010

Sergiy Lapin recommends this answer by Paul Harned

Hi John,
If everything worked on copper pairs from the CO then what you saying would be true. The fact is most POTS lines are provisioned on SONET carriers today and they are dependent on battery back up in case of power failure. That will ... more

What will it really take for telepresence to gain widespread adoption?

Sept. 30, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 1 other person answered this question

Telepresence is a complex system way outside of trivial video and teleconferencing. While video conferencing is gaining popularity due to cheaper bandwidth and cheaper equipment, telepresence will be available for large corporations only which can afford to pay for design and implementation of the system. ... more

Unified Communications Implementation

Focusiucs

Unified Communications

Sept. 30, 2010

Sergiy Lapin answered this question

Which vendors provide UC applications for virtualized environments?

You can take a look at Mitel UC solution.
It has everything including virtualized desktop using Sun-ray terminals.
You can run call control and media processing engine in VmWare using their proprietary set of VmWare tools which allows to allocate real-time resources from inside of ... more

What's the difference between VoIP and Sip Trunking?

Telephony

Unified Communcations

Unified Communications

2 more topics

Sept. 30, 2010

Sergiy Lapin answered this question

VoIP - Voice over IP is a broad term referring to any method of voice transmission using IP networks as a medium.
For example Skype is VoIP, ICQ, Google and some other messengers have VoIP plug ins
SIP trunking is a method of delivering voice ... more

What is a good reason to NOT implement an IP phone system?

Sept. 30, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 6 other people answered this question

The answer is the same as for the good reason to not use Internet.
Also most likely you already use IP for long distance calls when carriers route your calls into IP network for long haul.
Let's limit the scope to a single office.
IP ... more

Delivering Superior Customer Service

IP Ohone System

Phone System

Telephony

May 19, 2010

Sergiy Lapin recommends this comment by Gail Wallace

I think that there is an essential service that has been missed although it has been hinted at in several areas.
Customer Service as part of Crisis Management can make or break a company. You suddenly cannot supply your customer with a product or service due ... more

April 10, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 1 other person answered this question

What’s your take on used office equipment?

There is nothing wrong in using refurb equipment. You just need to make some extra effort to select sources. In many cases you can buy two or more used units and still save comparing to brand new product. Plus very often vendors make you buy ... more

Small Business

Equipment

Office Supplies and Equipment

April 10, 2010

Sergiy Lapin recommends this answer by Elodie

What's the difference between call centre and contact centre?

We used to use the term "call centre" but then political correctness / business jargon / PR people caught up with us and we started to use the "contact centre" term instead.
The main difference really is that the new "contact centre" term reflects the change ... more

April 9, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 7 other people answered this question

Do you really need a PBX?

Using PBX gives you flexibility and redundancy in your choices of service providers. Let's assume you are connected to a hosted solution and the provider goes out of business for any reason. Don't think it cannot happen to a large company, for example AOL used ... more

Are there any disadvantages to VoIP?

March 25, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 14 other people answered this question

Network "crash" should not be considered as disadvantage of VoIP. Properly designed and maintained network will work trouble free for years. I have some network segments with over 4 years of uptime. No maintenance, no outages, no reboots.
Regarding staff training. Yes, it is important ... more

Can VoIP lower our company's international calling costs?

Feb. 17, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 1 other person answered this question

Since you use hosted IP network you are pritty much stuck with set of allications provided by your hosting company. I know for sure that Mitel has a Mobile Extensions application which can make any cell phone work as a company phone system extension. So ... more

Why should I choose a Hosted PBX Solution over Cisco Call Manager?

International Calling

Unified Communications

Feb. 15, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 7 other people answered this question

I always recommend to go with "Integrated" packages. Hosted services should be provided by the same company as your Internet access service. You will be surprised with intermittent voice quality issues when you use conventional Internet access. Just consider this scenario. You are on the ... more

Feb. 15, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 1 other person answered this question

What are the advantages of a private branch exchange?

Could you define traditional phone system term a little bit clearer. There were at least 3 generations of traditional phone systems during the commercial usage of telephony itself. Starting from manual switchboard with wires, analog key systems, hybrid and digital TDM (Time division multiplexing) switching ... more

PBX

Why are hosted ip pbx systems so popular?

Feb. 15, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 5 other people answered this question

I need to add 2c about quality. Internet connection is a "best effort" kind of service. There is no SLA (Service level agreement) of any kind with your ISP. That means if interconnect from your ISP to your telephony provider will become congested of unavailable ... more

Hosted

Ippbx

Feb. 6, 2010

Sergiy Lapin answered this question

TELECOM EXPENSE MANAGEMENT COMPANIES - GOOD OR BAD?

We have evaluated few TEMCO services and here are my personal conclusions.
First of all it is 100% hosted service. Should you drop this service all your information becomes inaccessible. None of them offered raw data in any open format besides normal reports and billing ... more

Answer this sales objection: "I have no budget"

Jan. 20, 2010

Sergiy Lapin recommends this answer by Jill Konrath

If this objection occurs in your initial conversations with people, it is an obstacle that you've created yourself. So instead of focusing on how to best respond, you should focus on eliminating it all together.
For example, I sell training programs. If I called someone ... more

is true voip good for midsize businesses with call centers?

Jan. 19, 2010

Sergiy Lapin answered this question

I would assume that question is regarding VoIP as the engine of internal enterprise phone system with multiple call centers.
Also I assume that it is correctly implemented, so there are no technical issues.
The answer is yes. It is much more flexible, much more ... more

Who makes the best business notebooks? Mac, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, HP?

Jan. 19, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 1 other person answered this question

I would place your picks in following order:
Dell - broad range of options.
Acer - relatively low price
HP - I don't know... Personally I don't like HP laptops, they don't look durable enough
Toshiba - you can find something decent for the money ... more

Small Business

Notebook

Jan. 19, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 2 other people answered this question

Are call center consultants worth the trouble?

It really depends on the scale of your call center. Running a call center which handles10,000 calls per day is a real science.
Try to answer a few simple questions - How many phone lines your business needs? Can you calculate it and give exact ... more

Jan. 13, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 1 other person answered this question

Do I need a consultant to setup my IP phone system?

Actually a training from a prospective vendor of your system should give your IT team members a good start. There is a few key points in whole VoIP technology such as packetization, codecs, QoS. They just need to learn how to implement this with existing ... more

Consultants

What is Automatic Call Distrubution?

Staff

Jan. 8, 2010

Sergiy Lapin answered this question

Automatic Call Distribution

Customer Service Call Center help?

Jan. 7, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 2 other people answered this question

call center planning is a kind of science. First of all you need to set your goals. Is it acceptable for your business to keep customers in a queue? If so, then for how long? Is there any pattern in call volume which will affect ... more

Is there a free document management software?

ACD

3 more topics

Jan. 6, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 2 other people answered this question

I like Alfresco. http://www.alfresco.com/
Redmine is good for project management.

Documentation

Management

Software

Jan. 6, 2010

Sergiy Lapin and 1 other person answered this question

What are the challenges of information security management?

The challenge is to overcome internal resistance. You can plan whatever you want, create a super plan and crash it when top-managers will reject your offer to have complex passwords and change them every 30 days, demand to provide access to "everything" through VPN from ... more

General Management

Management

Security Requirements

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