Virtual PBX Featured Article

How Virtual PBX Helps Bring Expertise to More People

August 01, 2014

Quick: What do doctors and plumbers have in common?

While there may be many jokes that start this way, they do share something in common that isn’t a joke. Both doctors and plumbers can benefit from having their best practitioners remotely connect and offer guidance to less experienced staff.


Doctors already are starting to do this. Plumbers less so, although the opportunity is no less real.

Many healthcare clinics are beginning to offer telemedicine, which is just a fancy way of saying that they bring experts into the clinic via videoconferencing, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and virtual PBX solutions. While a rural healthcare facility may not have medical experts for every need, it is relatively easy to use VoIP and videoconferencing to bring in an expert from elsewhere for a virtual consultation.

Expert medical practitioners also gain from this arrangement. Instead of having to shuttle around to various locations, they can see more patients and rack up less miles on the road by seeing patients via telemedicine.

Plumbers can do the same. The seasoned pros can come in for consultations via a less experienced plumber’s cell phone, assisting with tough challenges where only the wisdom of experience can help.

Any business where there are some on staff who have a wealth of knowledge far beyond their colleagues can take advantage of this approach.

“Let’s say that you own a security company, and you provide installation and monitoring services to your clients,” noted Mike Michalowicz in a recent Nextiva blog post. “You have technicians who work out in the field doing the installation and making service calls when something goes wrong. These technicians are trained, but you’ve got one guy who can always troubleshoot any problem and devise intelligent solutions. But he’s only one guy.”

As Michalowicz noted in his blog post, this is the perfect situation for keeping experts at the ready to come in for consultations.

“The single most important component of this model is a consistent, reliable, and flexible means of communication, because if your communication goes down, the system falls apart,” stressed Michalowicz. “Many VoIP providers offer all the services you’ll need. My team uses Skype, but there are other companies who provide similar services.”

There’s one other benefit to this model. By having experienced pros come in for consultation, it also subtly trains newer employees. They get to see those with experience put it into action, and this prepares them for handling similar situations by themselves in the future.

There’s hardly any downside, which is why the question really should be: What do doctors, plumbers, and readers of the Business VoIP blog have in common? 




Edited by Alisen Downey

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

HOME
READ THE NEXTIVA PARTNER BROCHURE


Key Benefits

  Unlimited Calling & Faxing
  Number Portability
  Auto Attendant
  Voicemail-to-Email
  Instant Conference Calls
  HD Voice Quality



LEARN MORE