As we delve further into these unprecedented times, even businesses with the most robust disaster contingency plans in place could not have predicted the challenges organisations across the whole world are now facing and the uncertainty of times ahead.

Technology has changed the game

With the right technology, tools and solutions in place, businesses and the teams within them, ARE able to function in new ways, so we’ve been busy working with our customers to implement remote working solutions to enable them to continue to communicate, collaborate and serve their own customers as efficiently as possible, away from the workplace.

A culture of working-from-home has long been embedded at Boxx, so we have been able to quickly make the change to work away from the office ourselves, with no impact to service.

But, we’re conscious that for many this hasn't been quite so easy, so we wanted to share some of ways we’re trying to help businesses through this unsettling period of change, in what we've called our COVID-19 Emergency Communications Toolkit…

Enabling working from home

It is our priority to support businesses in following the Government's ‘social distancing’ advice and encouraging people to 'work from home' wherever possible.

For customers using traditional or onsite telephony solutions, we are able to set up immediate call diverts so that telephone calls can be re-routed to mobile phones.

For businesses who have migrated to a Hosted VoIP solution, calls are accessible via the desktop and mobile applications, so making and receiving work calls from home is easy.

Both of our main Hosted VoIP suppliers also offer a unified communications (UC) upgrade which include additional features to increase remote working collaboration and productivity, such as instant message, conferencing, screen sharing, and corporate directory access.

To enable more businesses to take advantage of these UC features during this period, we are offering a FREE UC upgrade of either; 4 months on our Horizon ‘Collaborate’ solution, or 3 months on our HV Select ‘UC Teams’ solution. To find out more about this offer, you can register your interest here (link).

As you can imagine, there has been a massive increase in the number of businesses wanting to urgently move to Hosted VoIP since the ‘work from home’ recommendations were made.

Usually, number porting timescales mean that provisioning new orders isn’t instant. But, recognising the urgency of the task in hand we have introduced an interim solution in order to get businesses up and running fast. Find out more about our emergency VoIP migration service here.

To support users of Horizon ‘Collaborate’ and to ensure both speedy and seamless implementation, we’ve been holding webinars about how to optimise this UC solution. Find out dates of upcoming webinars and/or register your interest here.

We’ve created a playlist of Horizon ‘Collaborate’ training videos on our YouTube channel to give additional support to users of this unified comms solution.

Communicating changes to customers

Whether you have had to make changes to your opening hours or need to advise of COVID-19 related restrictions that affect the way you do business, it is crucial to communicate this effectively to your customers.

We’ve introduced a half price Emergency Message offer to our professionally recorded on-hold message service, which advises your callers of any recent changes to the way your business is now operating, ensuring customers have access to up-to-date information and reducing the number of incoming phone calls and emails you need to answer.

Our web listings service allows you to update your company information on 50+ online platforms, all in one go using a simple, easy-to-use dashboard.

To get customers up and running fast, with no initial cost, we’re offering 1 month FREE access to this service.

What next..?

Obviously, it is still very early days in this UK pandemic and things are changing at an alarming rate.

Even with the ground-breaking announcements from the government about how they plan to financially support the country, the long-term impact to businesses and indeed the UK (and even global) economy is still unknown.

Here at Boxx we are committed to following the #StrongerTogether mantra and will continue to listen to our customers and provide as much support as we can to enable them to continue to work effectively, throughout these unsettling times.

We are all in this together!