If you’ve ever been to an FCYB meeting, or know anything at all about the way I try to run FCYB, you’ll know that I use words like “accessible” and “convenient” a lot. Specifically, I want people to come in when it’s “convenient” for them and I want organization information to be “accessible” whenever possible. I believe I’ve adopted these goals for two reasons:
- Where I live. Living here in the middle of nowhere really makes it difficult to have things going on in town and whatnot. Living an hour away is inconvenient for everyone, and missing out on the information and whatnot is also a problem.
- The fact that virtually every other non-profit organization that high school students are forced to work with don’t care about our schedules. Being a student-driven organization, I believe it is our responsibility to provide as many opportunities to as many people as possible, while at the same time not interfering with their other volunteer requirements or school or work. This also weeds about people that want to work with us “just cause.” Only people that are truly interested in working with us will set aside the time and make the time convenient to work.
SO, with these two facts in mind, lately I’ve been focusing a lot of attention on how to keep communication flowing between members as much as possible, and how we can start communicating with each other easier, quicker, and more reliably.
Obviously the first tactic I took on was the forum. It has its glory moments and it has its failures. The first failure: only about half our members are registered on it! Not good! Second failure point: those members that are registered, don’t necessarily check it as often as they should. Glory moments: see any conversation that has had more than Don or myself contribute to it. This leads me to another failure point: see the Members list. Don and I have the highest post counts. A majority of my posts are responses to Don’s posts.
I believe the forum is fixable, though. I think we should write some rules for it (I especially like the idea of three-before-me, like used in Socratic seminar in Ms. Sayers’ class, although we’re not verbally speaking so I don’t think that’d be an issue. Essentially I want to avoid open questions turning into conversations of who just so happens to be on the forum at that point in time.) Once we write rules or whatever, I think it’s doable.
The second thing I tried was the e-mail list. Generally there was lots of cross-reference between the forum and any e-mail that I send out. However, e-mail is unreliable. Messages get caught in junk too often, or you have former presidents of the board who just don’t have the time to check their e-mail. Damn I feel bad for her.
So we’ve got written communication down. There’s no point in wasting trees and sending out written announcements in schools. There are two problems with written communication: a) there is a delay. E-mail, forum, anything, the messages sit there until the person goes and checks them. Sometimes this delay isn’t acceptable. The second problem: sometimes things don’t get clearly communicated in writing, and therefore need to be reclarified, simply adding more time needed to get your final answer.
To battle this scenario, I’ve proposed purchasing a RingCentral Virtual PBX. Well, I got a 7-day free trial using the company debit card with a phone number I can hardly remember (1-866-408-8..? see? i suck). This 7-day free trial turned into a 1-hour free trial, when I simply upgraded our plan to a paid plan so I could then pay an additional $5 to add a Texas number to do some testing.
Unfortunately, the tests revealed that RingCentral is not powerful enough!
So I reimbursed the organization for my foolish expenses. I sent them $20 via PayPal. I also have to return the $50 wireless card that I purchased for no good reason (actually at the time it seemed like a good idea, then I realized we actually had to fix up the studio), only to then immediately purchase a Boost Mobile phone. (Yes, the idea has changed from T-Mobile to Boost.)
Here’s what I wanted to do with RingCentral, that RingCentral is apparently INCAPABLE of doing (these bullets are summarized, and I’ll explain more below):
- Have multiple toll-free numbers (2, to be precise) that have different menu options.
- Get a local number in my area (the Fort Collins-Greeley metro area. I can’t believe they don’t have it, or Denver! They don’t even have Denver!)
- Have extensions that route to various other extensions
For those of you who do not know what RingCentral does, looks, or feels like, it’s technically considered a hosted, virtual PBX. Essentially, people dial a number (your “RingCentral number,” which is typically toll-free, or a local number if you’re in one of the select markets), and then are either confronted with a variety of options (press 1 for Sales, 2 for Services), or they are routed based on rules you specify to voicemail, your cell phone, etcetera. Hopefully this makes sense.
However, it’s not powerful enough! And I, being the “here’s what you need to do” kind of person that I am, have written up these:
Ways that RingCentral Needs to Improve!
First off, RingCentral oversimplifies the purpose of a PBX. I believe there should be multiple “types” of extensions. These “types” of extensions should be:
- A “Department” extension
- An “Employee” extension
- An “Information” extension
A “Department” extension would be the kind of extension that is pressed when you reach Sales. The “Department” extension, is not really an extension, but simply forwards to “Employee” extensions based on rules specified in the “Department” extension. For instance, in the Sales Department extension, from 9 AM to 11 AM, calls are forwarded to Employee Extension Roberta. From 11 AM to 1 PM, calls are forwarded to Employee Extension Paul. Then, from 1 PM to 5 PM, calls are forwarded simultaneously to all extensions associated with sales, or are rotated.
Why do this? Because then it actually follows the rules of the person the call is being forwarded to! It actually follows the rules as to when a person is available to speak. What a concept, right?
Secondly, multiple people make up a department. So it just makes sense.
The “Employee” extension would essentially be the same thing as what the typical RingCentral extension is right now, where they can forward to a phone number blindly, do complete call control, only take voicemail. The only thing that would be removed is the “Play Announcement Only,” simply because that wouldn’t make sense for an Employee’s extension.
Instead, the “Play Announcement Only” becomes the “Information” extension. And vwala, RingCentral has just perfected its extension system.
WAIT, there’s MORE! RingCentral should allow customers to register a local phone number with a company like VoIP.com, Broadvoice, iCall Carrier Services, etcetera, and use it with RingCentral! All RC has to do is register with the SIP provider, and it accepts calls for it 🙂 It’s a fairly simple and cheap way to get around the problem of having such a limited number of area codes provided by RingCentral.
Now….for the grand finale: extensions should be changeable depending on which toll-free number you’re calling! What we wanted to do was have a business line and a studio line. When you called the business line, you’d hear something like “Thanks for calling FCYB, to do this, press 1, to go here, press 2.” When you called the studio line, you’d hear something like “Thanks for calling (insert station name here). To speak with the on-air DJ, press 1. To make a song request, press 2. To leave a voicemail for any show host, press 3. To reach our parent company, press 4.”
But guess what kids, YOU COULDNT DO IT! Why? Because the RingCentral extensions are THE SAME throughout your ENTIRE account!!!!
And, RingCentral only lets you have ONE account per credit card! Otherwise our problem would be solved 🙂
So. Essentially, what it boils down to, I think RingCentral needs to adopt more IVR qualities than it already has. It’s not powerful enough for even our needs, which is sad because we’re only a group of around 20 teenagers trying to put together an Internet radio station. Nothing major, right?
Apparently it’s powerful enough for real estate agents, though, and that’s all that matters to RingCentral. *sigh* I guess we’ll use up our one month and move on.
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