Boxx Communications Ltd

Simplifying telecommunications for businesses large and small!

Voice

Nuisance Phone Calls & Texts: What to do!

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Nuisance Phone Calls & Texts: What to do!

Despite the long-standing ability for users to register with the Telephone Preference Service and be taken off marketing call lists, nuisance calls and texts are still a reality of life for most of us.

Whilst registering can help, it takes time for records to be updated and if you are a business, the service has to be regularly renewed. It also does not cover text messages.

So, registering with the TPS aside, what can you do about what Ofcom calls an “irritating and annoying interruption to our daily lives”?

To assist, they’ve put together some pointers on how to reduce the number you get, and what you can do if they are causing you problems.

The first point is the most important – be careful who you give your personal data to. People can only ring you if they have your number – but unfortunately you can’t guarantee that companies you give your number to for one reason, such as a contact for a sale, won’t go bust, get bought out, or sell on their records to other companies at some point. So take care of your information– and that goes for online activity and face-to-face discussions as well.

Where a company requires you to leave contact details, for example for a delivery, make sure you tick the marketing opt-out box to ensure they can’t cold call you with offers. The opt-in boxes are sometimes ticked by default, and often in the small print, so careful reading of everything you sign will help you in the long run.

When you receive a nuisance call, one option is to let the call go to answer phone, in the hope the person calling will get fed up and take you off their list. But if you do answer, you should ask them directly to remove you from their database.

Nuisance calls aren’t always just trying to sell you things, sometimes they’re out to scam you – so never give out personal details, especially relating to your bank or credit cards, unless you’re certain of who you are talking to.

Unfortunately, the problem isn’t restricted to voice calls, as spam texts can also be annoying. If you know the number the text came from, replying with STOP should get you taken off the list.

To report a spam text from a sender you don’t know to your network provider, forward it to 7726 free of charge.

Complaining to the Information Commissioner’s Office also helps take action against the worst offenders as this independent authority was set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promote openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

Helping MK future-proof it’s businesses

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Helping MK future-proof it's businesses

With BT phasing out ISDN, here at boxx we are making it our mission to ensure that businesses are ready…..

We’ve decided to grab the bull by the horns and encourage fellow local businesses to get together, learn what they can do to future-proof their businesses in preparation for the change and network with like-minded businesses along the way!

The first networking event went down a storm…..

Dean (one of the directors here at Boxx) gave a short presentation about why we are doing this and what businesses can do to get ahead of the game.

Dean Burgin - Director

We also had representatives from two of the industry’s leading suppliers GAMMA & Daisy.

Having them both present isn’t something that often happens, but it demonstrated how totally independant we are here at Boxx and not tied into agreements with any one supplier. We did have to sit them at opposite ends of the room though…. Only joking!

Prav - GAMMA Dylan - Daisy Wholesale

Everyone who attended seemed to not only enjoy the refreshments but also took away knowledge of the changes that are coming to the telecommunications landscape over the next few years and more importantly, what they can do now to prepare themselves and their businesses for this.

Chris - Walter Samuel Ltd Audience

We received excellent feedback from all those who attended and like anything successful, it makes you want to do it again! So we’ve just set another date for our next one – Thursday 30th June here in CMK.

If you’d like to come along you can register your interest here. We hope to see you there!

And because images speak a thousand words, this short video shows what you can expect from the event.

Starting a business: Why it has never been simpler!

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Starting a business: Why it has never been simpler!

Starting a business today is simpler than it’s ever been – and we have technology to thank for that…..

Having a great idea and choosing a name aside, a decade ago setting up a business meant finding an office, getting a phone line put in and buying a computer to put on your desk. So a substantial upfront investment in costs was required, including a lease, hardware, and often minimum terms which could leave you heavily out of pocket if you didn’t make a go of things straight away.

And now….? It really couldn’t be any easier. While you certainly still need that great idea and company name, setting up a new business now can, depending on your line of work, be as simple as opening your laptop and logging on to your home wifi. These lower costs mean fewer barriers to access, so starting a business is an option for a lot more people – which can only be a good thing for both competition and innovation.

There’s no need in many cases to even have a premises, although many still want that. Work can now be done on the go, in the café or local pub – in short anywhere that has an internet connection. Often it can be done direct from your phone – and who could have imagined that a decade ago?!

But of course, nothing in this world worth having is ever 100 per cent easy, and while you may be happily and successfully doing your work from the local café, you may well find that your customers prefer dealing with the sort of world they’ve become used to over the years.

Often, this manifests itself in customer service and conventional call handling – people like the sense of permanence and stability that ringing an office brings, even if the business they are dealing with is small or has staff who are often out and about.

Luckily, technology has kept up here as well. Products such as VoIP can be very effective, with the system allowing you to transfer calls seamlessly between users and offices. Perfect for set-ups where everyone is on the go but you don’t want or need the expense of secretarial staff. You can connect wherever you are – and the calls are cheaper too! But this innovation has not come at the cost of quality, as VoIP is also powerful and reliable enough for video conferencing too.

So look into VoIP now to see if it’s a good solution for your company – we’ll be happy to advise you on the options available!

Estate Agents: Keeping ahead of the Game

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Estate Agents: Keeping ahead of the Game

The online revolution has affected pretty much every type of business going and estate agents are no exception…..

Once a firmly face-to-face profession, many of the processes of house-buying now happen online, from the initial searching and viewing of house particulars to booking appointments and liaising as the sale progresses.

As viewings and enquiries can now happen around the clock, estate agents have had to evolve, both in how they work and how they make contact with clients and vendors – both of whom expect them to be available when needed, even when they are out and about.

Additionally, the whole end-to-end buying process is often much quicker and estate agents who can’t keep up to speed will soon find themselves overtaken by their peers.

So increasingly most have found that their standard office phones and company mobiles just don’t cut the mustard in this changing world, and have turned to companies such as ours for help and guidance to find out how their new contact and call needs can best be met.

As ever, technology has effective and competitive solutions that can help estate agents with their increased and changing needs, and Boxx Communications customers Deakin White, for example, chose one of our VoIP packages so that they can run their office seamlessly, even when they’re not actually in it.

As a fairly new start-up, with a small initial team but lots of local interest and big ambitions, it was critical to them to find a way to make all would-be buyers and sellers know they were important, even if staff couldn’t get to the phone immediately.

With our VoIP packages, office calls immediately divert to mobiles if required, they have a call queuing feature and the call monitoring helps them plan – and Deakin White, happy with their tech, are proof that estate agents now need reliable broadband and VoIP if they are to stay ahead of the game.

VoIP packages also feature the ability to put calls on hold, play marketing messages and move calls seamlessly between users and offices so that customers will get the best experience when calling any business, no matter how busy you are.

If you’re an estate agent, you literally can’t afford to be without it!

The History of the Telephone

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The History of the Telephone

When Alexander Graham Bell famously made the first electronic telephone call in 1876, he started a true revolution in communication.

The ability to talk in real time, instead of writing letters that took days or weeks to deliver, has enriched all our lives from that day on, but the telephone has gone through many guises during that time, and continues to evolve even today.

Bell pioneered the gallows frame telephone, which worked by using an electromagnetic signal, which was picked up by a metal reed, then vibrated against a cloth diaphragm.

Candlestick telephones where you held one part to your ear and spoke into a separate hand-held mouthpiece became all the rage at the end of that century and the start of the next, only waning in popularity when manufacturers had the crazy idea to combine both into one handset.

The next move forwards was the rotary telephone, where you had to dial each number you wanted round to the base and then release. A slow process – and very frustrating if you accidentally got the wrong digit at any point, as you had to start again. Thankfully, they were gradually replaced in homes up and down the land as push button phones became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s.

Then, of course, came the answer phone – so if you weren’t home people could leave a message. Originally using mini cassette tapes, they moved to digital in the late 1980s.

Next phones became portable within the home – being able to walk around during a call without being tied to a base unit seemed amazingly modern. Of course, the natural next step was fully mobile phones, and the first commercial one was made available in 1973 – although it looked like a brick and wasn’t mobile at all compared to today’s slim smartphones that you can slip in a pocket.

Finally, in the 2000s, touchscreen technology came to the fore – and the rest, as they say, is history.

But while handsets were evolving significantly over time, the infrastructure used to make calls stayed the same for decades, only really starting to change in recent years.

While many analogue landlines (which are themselves becoming a declining force) still operate through copper wires, the move to digital is becoming unstoppable, particularly with BT’s recent announcement that it is phasing out ISDN over the next ten years in favour of Voice over Internet Protocol service (VoIP) – essentially calls over the internet.

VoIP, which we offer here at Boxx, is very much the future of telecoms, allowing users to get ahead of the game with useful features including call divert to mobiles, moving calls seamlessly between users and offices, as well as being able to put callers on hold and play them marketing messages. Not to mention that it’s often a cheaper!

Get in touch with us to find out more about the packages we offer – and be at the forefront of the telecoms revolution!

Ofcom demand greater competition in the industry

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Ofcom demand greater competition in the industry

Ofcom recently said that BT must open up its cable network and allow greater competition within the industry, as part of reforms to bring superfast broadband to all much sooner.

The communications watchdog’s ‘Strategic Review of Digital Communications’ stopped short of demanding that BT should be broken apart from the Openreach division (which maintains the UK’s largest phone and broadband network on behalf of competing providers), but did not rule it out.

They have told Openreach they must make it easier for competitors to access it’s network and provide comprehensive data on the nature / location of its ducts and poles. This will allow competing operators to invest, plan and lay advanced networks, giving people more choice over how they receive their phone and broadband services.

The evidence from Ofcom’s review showed Openreach, as part of BT Group, still has an incentive to make decisions in the interests of BT, rather than BT’s competitors, which can lead to competition problems.

For example, it found that Openreach’s governance lacks independence from BT Group. The wider company has retained control over Openreach’s decision-making and the budget that is spent on the network, and other telecoms companies have not been consulted sufficiently on investment plans that affect them.

So Ofcom has decided it is necessary to overhaul Openreach’s governance and strengthen its independence from BT, ensuring its takes its own decision on budget, investment and strategy, such as the deployment of new networks. Openreach management will be required to serve all wholesale customers equally, and consult them on its investment plans. There will also be greater transparency over how costs and assets are allocated between Openreach and the rest of BT, with detailed proposals on how these changes will be implemented due out later this year.

Ofcom also intends to introduce a range of measures designed to ensure that all phone and broadband companies provide the quality of service that customers expect.

1) Openreach will be subject to tougher, minimum requirements to repair faults and install new lines more quickly. These will build on measures set in 2014, but will set higher minimum standards and extend to other aspects of performance, such as how often faults occur.

2) Ofcom will also introduce performance tables on quality of service, identifying the best and worst operators on a range of performance measures so that customers can shop around with confidence.

3) Ofcom intends to introduce automatic compensation for consumers and businesses when things go wrong. Broadband, landline and mobile customers will no longer have to seek redress themselves, but will instead receive refunds automatically for any loss or reduction of service.

In the statement released by Ofcom announcing these finding and changes, Sharon White, Ofcom Chief Executive, said:

“People across the UK today need affordable, reliable phone and broadband services. Coverage and quality are improving, but not fast enough to meet the growing expectations of consumers and businesses. So we’ve announced fundamental reform of the telecoms market – more competition, a new structure for Openreach, tougher performance targets, and a range of measures to boost service quality. Together, this means a better deal for telecoms users, which will improve the services and networks that underpin how we live and work.”

We are excited about these announcements and changes and look forward to the future landscape that Ofcom envisage.

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