What would you do if the phones at your business stopped ringing?
 
More importantly, what would your telecom provider do?
 
We’ve all become so dependent on our voice and data networks that we cringe even thinking about a disaster. But the fact is that they happen.
 
Some other providers may not want to admit this. But no network can be 100% perfect 100% of the time.  At Socket, we do everything we can to avoid network events that cause problems for our customers, but equally important is how we react to them.
 
So when problems do occur, it’s important to act quickly. And creatively.
 
Let me give you an example. In early 2011, a blizzard struck our main office in Columbia, MO. Many of our employees were  stranded at home. So were many of our customers.
 
With remote call forwarding, we were able to reroute calls to employees’ homes or cell phones. Many of our customers never knew any different, so we were able to keep things running somewhat smoothly until the roads were cleared.
 
We have had similar things happen when customers have had disasters at their own locations, like fire, flood or severe weather. Or sometimes it's something as simple as a power outage that can leave you scrambling.
 
You can come up with plans for your business, and we can help you. Of course, it’s best to develop them in advance, and that’s getting easier to do. Our new Hosted PBX phone systems allow you to manage your own services in the cloud, giving you more flexibility in case of a disaster.
 
Not due for a new phone system at this time?  See how we can help you build a hybrid system using your old PBX along with the features you want from ours, like a redundant back up system that can reroute calls on the fly.
 
Some emergencies you just can’t prepare for. And while we can’t promise that you will never have an outage, we can promise that we’ll help you find a way to keep the phones ringing if you do.
 
It’s vital for your business. And ours.
 
 

How much do you know about your company's phone usage? Most companies get a bill with limited details- call durations and price. No real helpful data.

About four years ago we recognized this need as we were helping customers determine how many phone lines they required.  We would call them back on the same day with a recommendation and they were blown away with the timeliness.
 
It usually sounds like “when I tried to get this from my old telephone company it took six months and I couldn’t understand the report.  Oh, and it was printed on dot matrix paper!”
 
We realized that not only could we provide busy reports to customers to determine how many lines they really needed, but also reports that would sort their calls, both outbound and inbound, by the calling area, call number, state, duration, number called, etc.
 
As an example, imagine if you owned a plumbing company and you were trying to decide if you should use billboards or the yellow pages. You could place a unique phone number in both places and then at the end of each month see how many calls came in through each advertising method. It also works well for companies that serve various geographic markets and want to see which markets produce the most sales, service, or miscellaneous calls.
 
If you saw enough demand in one area or neighborhood it might help you decide where your next ads need to be. Many companies like the ability to see time of day as well.  By knowing your call volume throughout the day hiring and staffing decisions can be better managed.
 
You would be surprised how much you can learn about your business based on where it is calling, and who is calling you. Give us a call to find out more.

Our company has started down the road of pursuing the Missouri Quality Award (www.excellenceinmo.org). The basis for this program comes from the Baldrige National Quality Award program, named after Malcolm Baldrige, the Secretary of Commerce in Ronald Reagan’s administration. This program helps American companies improve and compete by defining best practices and establishing criteria for evaluating improvement efforts.

As a part of the process, four members of our staff, including myself, have become Examiners for the Missouri Quality Award program. As Examiners, we are now responsible for evaluating other organizations' applications to determine how they are performing as it relates to the criteria. This feedback will then be used by these organizations to continue to improve their performance. 
 
Our company has always been nimble, innovative and competitive. Because of our size and the giants that we go up against in the telecommunications arena, these attributes have served us well. But as an organization grows in excess of 100 employees, it becomes harder and harder to rely on good communications and good people to make sure everyone knows what this means to Socket and to our customers. This is why this program is so important to us. We are deep in to the Baldrige learning process and I would recommend this approach to any company.  
 
The few things that stand out the most to me so far:
-Everything must have a process.  If it is important and you want it done right every time, then you have to define a process for everyone to follow.
-Cycles of learning.  It isn’t enough to have a process, you also need to have a way to routinely evaluate the process and make improvements, or even decide if it needs to be done.
 
It’s not that our company doesn’t have just as good of employees as we did when we were half our size. In fact, I would say the opposite is true.  It’s about how our size now relates to communication between departments and staff on critical issues.  Everyone is no longer overhearing what is going on with the business, and we believe that by following these criteria we can take Socket to the next phase in our amazing ride.

 
Recent headlines continue to talk about the hurdles Google is facing in their first fiber-to-the-home project in Kansas City (http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/18/3617398/googles-schedule-for-kansas-city.html).
 
I feel for Google. I really do.
 
Our rural fiber project, while much smaller, has faced many roadblocks over the last 12 months. From endangered gray bats that held up our environmental clearances for months, to making sure we were burying cable far enough away from an Indian burial ground, we have seen our share of hurdles. But we have learned many lessons that we are going to be able to put to use on future projects and that is invaluable to our organization.
 
It’s not easy and it’s not the right direction for all companies to go, but we are happy to have our first 30 customers up and running with fiber directly to their homes. We have roughly 200 more that have signed up who are waiting on our installation crews to connect their homes. We are only installing 2-3 per day, but should be at 6 per day in the coming weeks with a goal to get to 10 installs per day.
 
Our goal is to have 500 homes connected by the end of the year. It won’t be easy, but we are up for the challenge.