excUCes
Unified Communications is a variety of tools and services intended to improve business processes. But as with all technology, sometimes the results are not what was intended. In Unified Communications there are various issues or "excuses" people use when things go wrong. Communication failures happen with and without technology.
People sometimes confuse "UC" with "communications" or even worse, "collaboration" with "technology." I will just point out that Webster defines "Collaboration" as "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor" and makes no mention of any technology whatsoever. Technology can facilitate collaboration, but it is not required. There was no UC technology involved at all when the Captain uttered the famous line "What we have here is a failure to communicate" in Cool Hand Luke. But technology is usually to blame when such failures happen today.
Technology does fail, but the vast majority of the time it is falsely accused. More often the problems are human related; especially training, expectations, and implementation. The following are some common excuses that get used, and what I really hear.
I haven't called because you are never around (presence). What I hear: "You are dead to me if you are not working on your computer."
When it comes to IM, presence means everything. There is no value in sending someone an IM if they are not at their computer. When it comes to other forms of communication, presence is misleading. The core issue is people incorrectly assume a presence icon equates to availability. Availability has nothing to do with being at the computer. At best there is a medium correlation. It is an inaccurate indicator both ways. There are plenty of times where I am at my computer working (and unavailable). And there are plenty of times when I am away from my computer when I am available.
Sorry, your message was in my SPAM filter and I didn't see it. What I hear: "I am confused and email has a series of complex tubes."
This situation is a result of three separate factors; SPAM is a real problem, we overly depend on email - sometimes as our primary business communication method, and the imperfect science of SPAM detection. The first issue is a side effect of a highly efficient means of communication. The fact we rely on email when it is so incredibly flawed is really just silly. The imperfect science bit sounds a bit like it might be the technology's fault but it isn't. It isn't technology's fault we can't cure many diseases either. Technology has created a reasonably useful detectors for SPAM, but relying on them 100% is a human failure. It is the receivers responsibility to manage their incoming email. If they receiver opts to read all emails personally, hire an assistant to do so, or use an automated filter mechanism - that is their choice. Checking SPAM daily is difficult, so I am a bit tolerant - but only a little.
Sorry, I was in an area with no coverage. What I hear: "I live in America".
Mobile technology has come a long way, as has its adoption rate. The U.S. has always been behind Europe with mobile telephony largely due to allowing four incompatible networks. The amount of money required to build four national networks is roughly three times the cost of one truly national network. Unfortunately, all four carriers concentrated their build-outs in the same places. Adding insult to injury, now the nation is wondering why we still have copper lines. A national copper network is a huge asset that is now considered a liability. So now we are heading toward an abandoned network so we can continue to build-out incompatible wireless networks. Hopefully the next generation of wireless will offer more compatibility.
I will be out of the office on business for the next few days and won't have access to messages. What I hear: "WILMMAAAAA!!"
Either your employer invested in a UC solution from Bedrock Telecom, or the user has no idea how to use your technology.
General failures rather than excuses:
These issues pop up frequently enough to warrant inclusion, but not usually as an excuse.
Ring-All goes to voice mail: Many UC telecom solutions have a form of Ring-All which means the incoming call gets forked into multiple incoming calls on several devices. This is a great feature, particularly for really important calls that can't be missed. But sometimes things go wrong. A common failure is the cell phone is out of range and the incoming call goes directly to voice mail. All phones ring until one answers; including the voice mail service. So that important call may never ring the nearby phone since its being "answered". The situation can go unnoticed or even worse, depending on the situation the user is unable to change the settings remotely. There are multiple fixes to this problem - such as the requirement to accept the call with a DTMF.
Power failure affects phones/voice. In the old days, the good ol PSTN provided power to the phones. That meant a local power outage never affected the phones and we all enjoyed our god given right to dial tone during power outages. Technologies change and analog disappeared from the enterprise - and the new instrument requires local power. The common solution is to use POE with power backed-up switches. But many organizations still use local power bricks. This means a power outage kills the phone. Easily avoidable and unnecessary.
No! (yech), you can't use my phone. The phone, along with the stapler and calculator are "ours," yet they are not really personal devices. "Can I use your phone?", "Sure". But due to the ear plug type headsets, we are not so sure about sharing our phones anymore. "Can I use your phone?", "maybe, do you have your medical records with you?" Headsets used to be complimentary to handsets, but now with soft phones that is all there is. Someone needs to invent an earbud condom. This retro hand/head-set is also a good option to consider from
Think Geek.
Thanks for coming over and explaining it to me, can you send me an email now? Sometimes email, even a phone call, is not sufficient for communication. Sometimes, I actually make an effort to communicate face to face. This works amazingly well and I recommend trying it when you have nothing else to do. The buzz kill comes after the face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and mind-to-mind communication exchange. "Could you send me an email later?" This is a result of so much of our processes involve/start with an email, and a face to face conversation effectively breaks the process. What to do what to do? I know... call "false-start" and redo it properly. The novice response is to make the request "send me an email"; wrong. Here is my suggestion: If someone goes out of their way to personally communicate, don't punish them with extra work because your process is limited...send yourself an email.