What is the Future of the Phone?
Yes, phone system usage is not what it was but remains a critical part of business communications. The last year has seen a huge rise in the use of videoconferencing and according to a recent study, it was found that 82% of participants now use video for all or most meetings. For many of those working from home, mobile phones are used when a phone call is necessary and meeting apps for everything else. This does not mean that business phone systems will disappear, in fact, 24.9% say that phone system use is growing.
While phone system use is declining for many businesses, overall call volumes are often not. The decline is offset by rising volume of calls into contact centers due to an increasing number of remote employees and customer support needs. About a third of the study’s respondents are adding calling capacity, while just under 7% are reducing.
Desktop phones were seeing a decline even before the pandemic, as business calling increasingly shifted to PC softphones with headsets or mobile apps. The ever-growing use of mobile phones creates a challenge for businesses wishing to integrate calling into apps like CRMs with the goal of automatically tracking calls to and from prospects and clients.
Like most collaboration and communications platforms, the enterprise phone system is undergoing an accelerated rate of transformation. The future will see even more meeting apps and a further convergence of mobile devices and enterprise telephony capabilities to provide seamless integration with back-office applications.
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