The End Of The Desk Phone?

One of the biggest discussions running around the telecom world at the moment is whether the old deskphone is dying out. Many people would have said that was obvious, but in fact there are a very large number of office workers for whom a desk phone is a significant advantage – and these are all people who spend most of their day on the phone. Sure it is great to be out and about chatting away on your iPhone and when you get back to your desk why should you switch to a deskphone?

But think about calling for purposes like sales or collections or support calls. These calls happen all day long so comfort is a big factor. They also require you to have facts and information at your fingertips – much harder when even if you have the data available on your phone you have to stop talking, switch away, look up the answer and then get back to the person. You can’t run an effective sales script. You can’t easily enter additional data. The computer can’t put you in a big queue or ring of callers or answerers and queue calls up for you. And so forth.

The issue is that the people who make decisions – executives – are not the people who need desk phones – and they may be starting to decide nobody else needs them either. What do you think? Let us know…