Cheaper is Not Always Better
Summary:
I work for a
large insurance firm in the northwest, in an office with over 500 other
employees. Management recently decided
to replace our existing phone system as the old system was no longer meeting
our needs. I and my co-workers were
under the impression that they were going to update the system, as in
"make an improvement", and that we would have late-model phones with
technological advancements galore. Boy,
were we in for a surprise?
Keywords:
Telephone,
telephones, phone, phones, telephone systems, telephone system
Article Body:
I work for a
large insurance firm in the northwest, in an office with over 500 other
employees. Management recently decided
to replace our existing phone system as the old system was no longer meeting
our needs. I and my co-workers were
under the impression that they were going to update the system, as in
"make an improvement", and that we would have late-model phones with
technological advancements galore. Boy,
were we in for a surprise?
One day a few weeks ago, we all came in to find new phones on our desks. These were not the state-of-the-art
communication devices we had in mind.
Instead of the sleek, sophisticated, caller IDing, multi-line handling,
LCD displaying wonders of the modern age we all dreamed of, there was a simple
phone with a keypad on the receiver...not unlike what you might have had at
home 15 years ago. In addition to the
new phone, there was a sheet that explained in graphically painful detail
exactly which series of buttons one would have to push to make this
thing function properly. We had to now
enter a digit to put someone on hold, enter a three-digit code to transfer
someone (one digit, dial tone, two digits), and enter a ridiculously long series
of numbers to access our voicemail.
Needless to say, we were in shock. I
knew it wouldn't take long before the roars of complaining would drown out the
usual office din. Sure enough, by
lunchtime, our office manager came in to tell everyone that we were simply going
to "try it out for a while" and that the company had saved thousands
by choosing this option. I and the other
employees were fairly certain that we had already lost thousands in reduced
productivity that morning alone. Oh,
well...it's their company, we just bring in the money for them.
For the next few days, we tried to get used to saying "Hold, please, while
I transfer you", removing the receiver from our faces, and trying not to
curse as we made a lame-duck attempt at pressing keys, listening, and pressing
more keys. It was a nightmare. We were getting pretty fed up with it but
just assumed that this was what we would have to deal with. Then, out of the blue, we came in one day to
find real phones with real features at our desks. No more looking at the receiver while we
frantically tried to key in numbers fast enough not to drop the call. No more ten-digit voicemail
"pins". No more of having no
idea who was calling or where the call came from. Ahhhh, relief at last.
Later the same day, we heard a rumor circulating around the office that the VP
of operations had returned from a two-week trip to New York. His words, upon seeing one of the phones
management had originally purchased on his desk were, "get rid of
them". All it took were those four
words from a higher-up to set things right. Unbelievable.
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