New Phone System

This week has been busy! With only one week left before Christmas break we’re trying to finish up some major projects to make room for our January schedule. CK Sports Online is now live and kicking, check it out at http://www.cksportsonline.com. We’ve also got various rendering projects on the go, but the most interesting advancement this week has been in our phone system. Kyle has finished the hardware upgrades so our new IVR is now live! Calling our toll free number will now direct you to an automated system to better manage our phone traffic. Our local phone service is now no longer necessary, so we’ll be disconnecting our local numbers as of January 1st, 2010. Until then, we’ve set up a redirect so calling our local numbers will still connect you to our office and notify any callers of the number change. What I find so awesome about this new system is that it’s entirely managed internally, so not only have we significantly reduced our phone service costs, we’re now 100% in control of the system. It’s scalable, so as our sales team or production team expands we’re able to add new extensions or lines at will. Calls are also automatically recorded, which has been surprisingly useful – I am notorious for relaying phone conversations poorly to their intended targets, so being able to pull up the call and listen again is actually quite beneficial. Voicemails are emailed to us too, so even if we’re away from our desk or out of the office, voicemails are received simply by checking our email. The whole system is so much more convenient and just plain better!