The old traditional phone system is nearly 134 years old now. It may be time to look ahead to new and better things. Currently, VoIP has replaced an entire third of this network in the United States. One DV advisory group is looking at June 2018 as a date for when the entire thing will be completely replaced. This means that a lot of companies that rely on the old phone network may be in serious trouble. It’s true now more than ever before than you either adapt to new technology or you end up in history’s waste bin.
Old Methods
Many companies that rely on the traditional phone system include inbound and outbound call centers, and various enterprise organizations that are invested in the old technology. Really though, absolutely any company that relies heavily on traditional phone lines are in serious trouble. The next 5 years will be a sort of harrowing test for any company that hasn’t already seen the writing on the wall and changed over to the new models. Most of the smartest and newest companies have already done this. But the last stragglers may feel stubborn about it, change is sometimes forced on people. They get so used to a particular way of doing things that they can’t imagine it being done any differently.
Call Centers
One specific example of a potentially doomed model is the call center. These are either wings of businesses, or entire businesses to themselves that get outsourced work from businesses that don’t want to deal with customer phone calls themselves. Call centers will answer questions from customers and provide general customer service functions. But the problem is that a huge number of customers are turning away from phone calls as a way of getting the help they need. Customers are now using simply online FAQ pages, or actually just emailing someone for help instead. Instant messaging is also important for many customer service operations. Many sites actually have an instant messaging service built into their site for this.
Internet for Everything
There’s also the fact that the Internet is becoming the center of everyday life across a number of categories. For example, social media is growing like crazy, and networks that make use of social media connections will almost always do better than those that are unrelated. This is because people love having the ability to look up their friends on Facebook, click on their name there, and then immediately call them over the Internet using something like VoIP protocols. This means that the future of VoIP is probably going to entail massive integration. People won’t really want to use traditional phone lines anymore when all of the stuff they want to do is on the Internet, so why can’t they just make calls through the Web too?
Overall, this is why a hosted PBX solution or something similar may be the best bet for heading forward into the future. Many companies are reluctant to do this of course, partially due to a stubbornness born of over 100 years of traditional phone service, but it can also come down to cost. Some are so invested in the old ways that switching over seems like an enormous cost and people will drag their feet on it as much as possible. The problem is that those who don’t switch over soon will face more and more difficulty in the long run. All they are doing really is kicking the can down the road though, since the next 5 years are probably going to constitute a time period of upheaval and revolution in the field, and the stragglers may well be lost.
