These results highlight that the majority of the London workforce questioned love their mobile and given the choice would keep this over any other phone. With over half of respondents (55 per cent) also finding their mobile the easiest handset to use, it makes good business sense to allow employees to use just one phone in and out the office – their mobile!
Despite the positive reaction to the mobile, 73 per cent of respondents still claimed that they would be hesitant to totally dispose of their office desk phone just yet. These findings suggest that many felt that the mobile does not yet replace the functionality of the office desk phone, even though the majority of respondents would keep their mobile if given the choice. This said, a quarter of respondents would love to throw their office phone in the bin and use their mobile exclusively – more evidence that the mobile is a clear favourite among employees who would prefer to use their mobile in the office over and above all other phones. Skype and other VoIP systems barely registered in the poll (just one per cent chose it as their favourite and no one thought it was easier to use than their mobile or desk phone).
Francois Mazoudier, CEO of GoHello commented; “With mobile the undisputed favourite handset among workers, it’s telling that most businesses and employees are not yet ready to entirely dispose of their desk phones. While addressing their flexible working requirements, until now the mobile has struggled to offer the functionality and management tools found in a traditional office telephony system. This research is reassuring for GoHello as our ALLmobile telephony system for businesses has been designed to plug this gap. We can address the wants and needs of both the business and employee by delivering an ALLmobile enterprise solution with the functionality of the desk based phone.”
So why aren’t businesses going ALLmobile? Mazoudier explained; “The mobile phone has always been seen as inherently expensive compared to the clunky old desk phone. However, today this is not necessarily the case. ALLmobile phone systems can be competitive against any fixed-line phone, especially when taking into account the cost of calls from fixed-line to mobile. With today’s anytime, any network tariffs, calls from mobile to mobile are much cheaper than calls to landline to mobile. Businesses also have this misconception that employees prefer their desk phone but these survey results prove this theory wrong. When the phone restricts people to just their desk it’s it hard to like. If an employee really does love their desk phone, businesses can supply desktop mobiles, giving employees the best of both worlds – ease of use but with all the functionality and flexibility of their mobile.
“Additionally, a number of small businesses have been waiting for a long promised unified communication solutions to be offered from their phone vendors to resolve their mobility issues – they still have a hefty wait. Why wait when an ALLmobile solution can deliver unified communications now and much more cost effectively.”
GoHello provides a simple ALLmobile solution that means employees can be reached anywhere via one single phone and one single number, whether they’re in the office or not. GoHello™ enables employees to always be “at their desk”, regardless of their location and provides all the functionality of a desk phone but via the mobile. Calls made to the office number get handled exactly as they would on an ordinary PBX telephony system; the only difference is that every call is directed to the user’s mobile phone (for free) on any mobile network of choice, rather than over the office fixed-line telephony network to a desk phone. Customers won’t even realise that employees are not at their office.
Mazoudier continued; “Because GoHello is ALLmobile and hardware independent, no investment is required on expensive, complicated PBX boxes from equipment vendors that have, for so long, ruled the telephony roost. GoHello provides a fresh look at telephony. As no hardware equipment is needed, apart from the user’s mobile handset and a PC connected to the web, the solution can be up an running within ten minutes and means businesses no longer need an office switchboard; a communications room for equipment; a service or maintenance contract; telecoms engineers; telecoms equipment and fixed handsets on every desk – which also lead to expensive power, maintenance and phone bills.
Even with unified communications, this complicated equipment is still needed. For me it is so refreshing to think of an environment where there is no need to forward calls when out of the office, give out multiple numbers to customers and uproot the whole office when moving desks around or changing location. Going ALLmobile is the future and these survey results well and truly prove this is what the workforce in the UK wants!”