Today’s telephone systems are not adapted to today’s communications. Response times are critical to ensure that all business opportunities are captured. It’s time to switch to a telephone system adapted to today’s communications.

Customers are demanding and want an immediate response at all times, or they’ll call the competitor. Of course, some companies don’t care about this, since demand is so high. But this may change over time. The economy works in cycles. Right now, there’s a good chance that the economy will weaken, leading to a slowdown in demand in general, and in all companies.

No company can afford to miss calls or take too long to return calls – for those who do return calls! Every missed call or long response time puts lost opportunities at risk. An opportunity is a potential customer who requests your services, or an existing customer who needs your services. If you don’t get back to them right away, they may understandably call elsewhere. The same applies if they don’t get a response to their request.

Depending on the type of products and services you offer, each call missed and not returned by your team represents hundreds and often thousands of dollars lost. Many companies don’t even realize it, because what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you. However, once you discover how many missed calls, unanswered e-mails and delays your employees are taking to respond to your customers, it may be too late. What we don’t know hurts us.

You need to rethink the way you handle customer requests, and above all avoid missed calls, and make sure you respond to all customers within a reasonable time. A reasonable response time is less than an hour, after which your customer has moved on to your competitor.

Equip your business with an intelligent telephone system today. These phone systems operate in VoIP mode and integrate the power of the cloud, artificial intelligence and automation. This allows you to automatically answer all your missed calls by text message to ensure all your customers are answered. What’s more, your system logs all missed calls with the name and profile of the customer whose call you missed. You can prioritize your return calls. Obviously, there are some customers whose opportunity you don’t want to lose.

These intelligent telephone systems alert you to missed calls and call return times. So your employees can’t forget customer reminders. The same goes for e-mail and text messaging. These intelligent systems integrate text message communication with your customers via your company telephone number.

Finally, these telephone systems offer you precise statistics on your service efficiency. For example, you can see missed calls, call return times and integrate text messaging to reach customers on their preferred channel. Consider that most people work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and it’s hard to answer the phone when it’s easy to respond to a text message. Business texting comes into its own, as it allows everyone, including employees and customers, to respond at their convenience, without the wait and frustration of an unanswered phone call.

Install an intelligent telephone system today to counter your missed calls, ensure a reasonable response time and offer 24-7 text messaging to facilitate communication.

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Missed calls in your company cost a fortune. You lose business opportunities and put your reputation at risk. Find out how to rectify the situation quickly.

Unfortunately, most companies miss calls every day. Even so, it’s hard to answer every call. They may need to spend time with customers at the reception desk, or simply work on a file, or go into the office to ask questions.

Missed calls are inevitable, even during business hours. Of course, every company misses calls during working hours and even after hours.

Remember, people work during the day, and for the most part, they can’t take calls or make calls while they’re working. So they’ll call during breaks or after hours. Of course, they can text! So make sure you have an intelligent phone system that allows you to text your customers.

All those missed calls represent a risk of lost revenue, but also a risk of having to put customers on hold to handle several calls. A customer who waits on the line too long risks hanging up. If they hang up and don’t call back, you lose revenue and possibly a customer.

Despite the traditional display on telephones, few or no organizations take the time to check and return missed calls. Most of the time, the corporate culture is that the customer will call back! If they do, you’re in luck, because they’re far more likely to never call back and call your competitor. And if they’re angry, they’ll leave a negative review about you on Google.

These days, only 1 in 5 people leave a message on the answering machine when their call isn’t answered. The answering machine is used less and less and replaced by the exchange of text messages, which are simpler and quicker to manage. As a result, many missed call messages are simply hung up, making return calls impossible and loss of opportunity inevitable.

You can put an end to unanswered missed calls right now with the Fresk intelligent phone system, where every missed call is automatically answered by text message, 24-7. You let your customers make their request by text instead of leaving a voicemail message. This reduces the frustration of not getting an immediate response. What’s more, you get an alert for every missed call, plus you know the customer’s name and how long it’s been since they called. You can then prioritize your reminders to customers requiring immediate attention, and distribute other reminders to colleagues.

Stop losing revenue and reputation with an intelligent telephone system that can handle your missed calls 24-7.

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With the ongoing tariff war, all contractors are or will eventually be affected. The unstable economic climate fosters uncertainty among consumers, who are likely to cut back on spending in the months ahead. Bombarded by bad economic news, people are worried, and when they’re stressed, they freeze.

To keep your organization healthy, you need to make sure you adapt your financial plan accordingly to a potential drop in demand. Obviously, the severity of the consequences will vary from one industry to another, as will the duration of the crisis.

Remember that many homeowners had to renew their mortgages at double or even triple the previous interest rate. Also, the average grocery basket has exploded. Certainly, consumers are stretched to the limit.

Many companies have already experienced a slowdown in demand for their products and services. Some are wondering what to do. The simplest and least costly course of action is obviously to work on the loyalty of your existing customers. Acquiring new customers is often up to 5 times more costly and time-consuming than activating existing ones.

Your company’s responsiveness is also crucial. Every request from an existing or potential customer is vital to your business. Unfortunately, many organizations have developed the bad habit of missing calls and leaving a long delay before responding to customer requests. This must never happen again, because demand is likely to decrease, and every missed call represents a missed business opportunity. And if requests are becoming scarce, they must no longer be missed.

In these uncertain times, customer service must be flawless. Gone are the days of rude responses, lack of courtesy, missed calls and long e-mail return times. Many organizations have unfortunately forgotten the importance of speed and quality in responding to their customers, as demand has outstripped supply.

Despite this, customer service must remain impeccable, regardless of supply and demand. In the near future, those who are able to serve every customer well will be more likely to get through the crisis with a smile than those who don’t.

Discover the only intelligent telephone system capable of answering your calls 24-7, and giving your company number text messaging capability so you can reach your customers via their preferred communication channel.

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In Quebec, the supply of dental software, also known as business software, is relatively limited. There are just a few players, including Dentitek, Progident, Dentonovo, Ad2.0 and Exceldent.

Le marché du logiciel dentaire au Québec est unique de par notre langue français et surtout de par sa loi sur la langue française qui oblige les entreprises à utiliser des logiciels en français.

The dental software market in Quebec is unique because of our French language and, above all, our French language law, which obliges companies to use software in French.

These software packages were sold for tens of thousands of dollars for in-clinic installation of the software, its configuration on the server, its database and training for the work teams. These mostly “Microsoft” technologies were standardized for Windows computers.

The world of software has changed dramatically in recent years. With the rise of the cloud and, above all, the rise of local Internet connections and the high Internet speeds offered at low cost on cell phones, cloud software has emerged.

Cloud software is installed on a cloud server – a remote server maintained by a third-party provider such as Google Cloud. This is a whole new way of designing software, requiring a whole new architecture. It can be very difficult to move from on-premise to cloud software without having to rebuild everything.

Programming cloud software requires new skills and a significant investment of time and money. What’s more, the revenue model is completely different, since there is no single local installation, but rather a constant service via the cloud. This is what we call “SaaS” for “Software as a service”. The software of the 80s was a product, but cloud software is now a service.

Dental software companies must then transpose their “on premise” software into a cloud architecture. This requires not only the financial resources, but also the expertise to carry out such a project. You could compare it to making a gas-powered vehicle called “atmospheric” into an electric vehicle. To achieve this, you need to break with your current thinking and adapt to the new reality of the cloud. Unfortunately, some companies don’t have the means to do this, at the risk of being replaced by more modern dental software.

Ontario and the United States offer a host of high-performance, cloud-based dental software. The arrival of this modern software could be an asset for Quebec dentists, ensuring a more balanced service offering than is currently the case. qu’actuellement. 

Fortunately, dental software in Quebec seems to be on the way to modernization and a quiet move to the cloud. This will enable Quebec dentists to benefit from more modern software over the next few years. This will make it possible to create connections with other software or even an intelligent telephone system to link patient communications and business software.

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Studies from the Universities of Georgia, Wichita and Utah clearly demonstrate the direct and immediate impact of screen size and the addition of a second screen on productivity and employee satisfaction.

Secretaries have to switch from one software program to another during the day. With only one screen, they have to switch from one software window to another. As soon as you switch windows, you lose focus on the task in hand. The result is wasted time and frustration.

A larger screen will have an immediate impact not only on the secretary’s efficiency, but also on her job satisfaction. With the current labor shortage, this is a factor not to be overlooked.

Two 24-inch screens

Researchers have shown that using two computer screens saves time, improves efficiency and makes work more enjoyable.vail. 

The University of Georgia has demonstrated that certain tasks take up to 2.5 minutes longer on a single screen than on two. Basically, the addition of a second screen means that many tasks can be completed twice as fast.

If you can save 5 minutes an hour, that’s 40 minutes a day in productivity gains. We’re talking about a minimum time saving of 8.3%.

The University of Wichita found that it was twice as easy to work with two screens. What’s more, study participants reported a significant increase in employee satisfaction.

The University of Utah found that using 2 x 19” monitors versus one salt saved an average of 56 working days per year. This represents a 22.2% time saving for each employee, based on a 252-day work year.

If we take an hourly wage of $30 per hour with fringe benefits and multiply by 56 days, this represents a financial gain of $13,440. If you have two secretaries, we’re talking about a gain of $26,880 per year.

Reference

https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/CSG-EN-XX-ALL-Dual-Monitor-Productivity-Whitepaper.pdf

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Phone calls require you to stop what you’re doing and concentrate on the call. The phone call is highly interruptive, as well as being public, since everyone can hear us talking. Remember when the person ordering in front of you at a restaurant counter gets a call and starts talking? It’s as if this person absolutely wants you to listen in on their conversation. Sometimes you wonder if they’re doing it on purpose to attract attention. From now on, taking a call in public, especially in a quiet place, is very impolite. Sometimes, a call may be urgent and necessary to take. On the other hand, people are replacing phone calls with text messages for a number of reasons.

1. Conversation remains private
2. The conversation does not disturb anyone around.
3. Conversation takes place when I am available.
4. I can talk to several people at the same time.

Text messaging is an “asynchronous” method of communication, while telephone calls are “synchronous”. This means that to talk on the phone, both parties must be 100% available and focused on the conversation. What’s more, you’ll quickly notice when you’re talking to someone who’s doing something else during the call. Text messaging is then “asynchronous”, which means that everyone can respond at their own convenience. This is an advantage when chatting in a public place without disturbing everyone around. What’s more, I can interrupt the conversation without upsetting the other person. With text messaging, I can postpone my communication and go about my day as normal, while continuing my conversation when I’m available.

What’s more, text chat means I can talk to several people at the same time without anyone getting angry or feeling that I’m not 100% focused on the conversation.

So text messaging is a highly effective way of reaching and keeping in touch with a wide range of people. Text messaging is becoming an essential means of communication for businesses. Unfortunately, very few organizations are able to reach and be reached by their customers via text message. Why not? Today’s telephone systems are often outdated, or do not offer text messaging capability. Companies don’t believe they can integrate text messaging with their customers, and the same goes for their customers, who don’t believe they can communicate with their supplier via text. And yet, the time and efficiency savings that SMS offers companies are immense.

Remember the time you take to manage your voicemail messages. A simple text message saves your customer from having to leave a message on your answering machine, and saves you from having to stop everything, call your voicemail and struggle to listen carefully to each message and dial manually afterwards. What’s more, you have to manually record the number and name of the customer who left a message. Access, sound quality and the speed at which some messages are left make this a difficult task.

Take the time to observe the year of manufacture of your telephone system. You’ll probably be surprised at how old it is. Yet your customers have a $2,500 state-of-the-art smartphone in their pocket. They’re texting, chatting, taking videos, going on social networks and occasionally making a call. Note that I didn’t mention that they manage e-mail, because they rarely do.

Stop trying to increase your advertising budgets or trying to find out why you’re getting fewer customer inquiries. It’s simple: people call you, but unfortunately you can’t always get back to them, and they don’t leave messages. What’s more, they’ll probably never call back. That’s one lost customer and one lost business opportunity. Less than one in five people leave a message these days. And the younger generation doesn’t call or e-mail. How will they reach you? I have to tell you, they’re only going to go where the supplier is able to serve them on the communication channel of their choice and at the time of their choice.

Equip yourself with an intelligent telephone system to integrate your company’s ability to text your customers. Synchronize your phone system with your customer database to know which customer is communicating, and sometimes prioritize certain customers with more urgent needs than others. What’s more, you’ll quickly be able to distinguish between communications from new prospects versus existing customers, because your intelligent phone system knows and recognizes your current customers, displaying their first and last names. However, this isn’t the case with your prospects, as the system doesn’t know their first and last names linked to the phone number they’re calling or texting with. Hurry up, because your prospects are already going to your competitors, and soon your current customers will be doing the same if you don’t serve them in the way they expect.

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6 out of 10 people, proportion of adults aged 18 to 34 who would rather receive a text message than a phone call in 2024. Reference: Uswitch.

There’s no doubt that Gen Zers prefer texting to talking on the phone in both their personal and professional lives. Of course, this communication behavior doesn’t just apply to Generation Z, but to all generations. Baby boomers will be more inclined to talk on the phone, as they are less familiar with texting and more accustomed to face-to-face and telephone conversations.

Phone calls are intrusive and above all interruptive, since they require you to turn everything off at the moment of the call to establish communication. Young people even prefer to land on the answering machine and leave a message rather than have to talk to someone. It even seems that impromptu calls are a harbinger of bad news. It’s a form of social anxiety, according to the article in La Presse. https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/la-generation-qui-ne-parle-pas-au-telephone/2025-01-18/les-jeunes-preferent-les-textos.php

If we compare phone calls with text messages, each has its advantages and must be used in a specific context. Text messaging enables an “asynchronous” conversation, which means that everyone can reply when they prefer. What’s more, talking on the phone when there are people around is awkward and even disturbing for those around you. Not to mention that your conversation is overheard by everyone. Unlike text messaging, telephone conversation limits the confidentiality of exchanges.

According to many, it’s simply an evolution in the way we communicate. When you think about it, text messaging also allows you to think before you answer. The fact of writing a reply means you can erase it if necessary, and avoid putting your foot in it. Exchanges by text message are written and remain written, forcing each interlocutor to take the time to reread before sending.

Spontaneous conversations are reserved for specific situations, giving way to text messaging for Generation Z and millennials alike. Some would argue that this gives more control over the conversation, as well as promoting better concentration by avoiding having to stop everything to take a phone call.

Businesses need to adapt to this new reality and equip themselves with the ability to text with their customers, otherwise they’ll be wasting valuable time trying to reach their Generation Z and millennial customers. While most office phones don’t offer texting capability, there are now smart business telephony solutions with built-in texting. Texting is now essential for reaching your young customers.

We also need to take note of the 12-17 year-olds, the vast majority of whom communicate via Snapchat. If this trend continues, companies will need to be able to adapt to this communication channel to reach young teenagers who will soon be adults.

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Even today, I have to make a call to a well-known financial institution in Quebec because of a technical problem.

My journey begins with an answering machine with multiple options apart from speaking to a human immediately. After listening carefully and pressing 0 and # a few times, I’m transferred to an artificial intelligence who, unfortunately, doesn’t understand what I’m asking. However, my request is clear and I have the impression that my French isn’t too bad. I repeat myself several times in an increasingly aggressive tone. I get angry and repeat the 0 and # several times. Eureka, I seem to have transferred to a human. It’s weird because I really feel like I had to get angry with the keys to be transferred.

But beware, I’m being transferred to a human, but no agent is available to answer me at the moment. The estimated waiting time is over 15 minutes. The good thing is that I’m offered to stay on the line or call me back as soon as an agent becomes available. To save time and avoid waiting on the line listening to sleepy or stressful music, I select the call-back option!

To make matters worse, I never got a call back. So I had to call back and replay the entire thousand-option answering machine. The most annoying thing is having to wait and listen to all the options, even if 99% of them don’t meet our requirements. It’s a big waste of time and it’s annoying.

It’s at this point that it becomes very difficult to keep smiling and remain courteous, as the answering machine clearly states that I am expected to be polite and courteous to the staff… But I’ve already wasted over 15 minutes listening to useless options, a useless artificial intelligence that I have to train by the sweat of my brow.

I’ll spare you the rest, as the service was excruciating despite more than an hour’s wait on the phone and my unresolved problem. A perfect storm for making customers furious with the staff, who end up “losing it” too.

To provide quality customer service over the phone, you ideally need to

1- Answer immediately: ideally with a human or a text message, not after 5 minutes fighting with an answering machine and an artificial intelligence that doesn’t understand requests.

2- Return the call: If I indicate that I want to be called back, deliver the promise and call the customer back. Even better, make an appointment to call back at a specific time.

3- Remain courteous: To both customer and agent. To do this, you have to respect the first two criteria.

There’s still a lot of work to be done to support customers in customer service without wasting their time and patience. Companies are able to reduce frustration by switching some calls to text dialogue mode to ensure they maintain communication with the customer and avoid waiting on the phone line. What’s more, text messaging allows both the customer and the agent to come back with answers later in the day or week, as well as being able to refer the customer to information links relevant to their situation for support. And not a link to a frequently asked questions area where the customer still has to waste time looking for the answer to his question.

Cloud telephony takes the hassle out of keeping customers waiting on the line by switching them to a communication channel tailored to the customer’s situation and preferences. There’s no longer any reason for someone to ask you for your phone number; it should be displayed on the screen, and they should even know who you are to serve you efficiently and avoid repeating yourself from agent to agent.

Fresk is an intelligent telephone system specifically designed to eliminate this type of situation and ensure impeccable telephone customer service.

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Yet this is the ideal time for customers to call. We’re talking about dental clinics, but many businesses are closed during lunch hours. Is it by habit, culture or lack of personnel that dental clinics close during lunch hours? When you think about it, this is the best time for customers to call their dental clinic. Normally, workers don’t call their dental clinic for an appointment during working hours because they have to work. This is also to respect their employer.

From the boss’s point of view, if employees manage all their personal appointments during office hours, it’s going to end up being a problem. Of course, telecommuting seems to have influenced these norms, and some employees can manage their personal diaries during working hours. But, generally speaking, employees have to manage their personal diaries during breaks and lunchtimes. Unfortunately, this is difficult in the evenings and on weekends, when most companies are closed. Especially professional companies.

Yet many dental clinics are closed at lunchtime. I asked some dental secretaries about this practice. It seems to have something to do with physically closing the clinic for lunch. It also seems to be a habit. Even though the clinic is closed for lunch, why aren’t we taking calls? It’s not that complicated.

Obviously, it can be difficult for a single dental secretary to eat at the same time as patients arrive on site. That’s understandable. However, it may make sense to take calls even if it’s lunchtime. Of course, the dental secretary has to be paid extra for her work.

Every time I give a lunchtime training session in a dental clinic, the phone rings. Current patient or new customer, no business can afford to miss calls. What’s more, a potential new customer will immediately call another dental clinic if there’s no immediate response, since the offer is both large and similar. On the other hand, the patient who’s on a break and can finally free himself up to book his appointment gets stuck on voicemail. And you know the worst part? If the clinic is lucky, the patient will leave a voicemail message (1 in 5 missed calls leaves a message), the secretary will pick it up later in the day if she manages to free herself, stop everything, transcribe the name and number to be called back on a post-it note, dial the number and if it’s right, “BANG” she’ll hit the patient’s answering machine! Why? Because this working patient can’t answer the phone! And yet, it’s normal.

Taking the ridiculous even further, the patient will take a break to listen to his messages and call the clinic. If he’s lucky, he’ll manage to speak to someone who can solve his problem. If not, he’ll have to call back or wait again for a call from the clinic outside his normal working hours. Remember, the average person works from 8am to 5pm. They call after 5pm or before 8am, when most dental clinics are closed.

We’ve finished talking about the problem, now let’s talk about the solution. Why not integrate text message communication into your business. Text messaging works 24-7, and the beauty of text messaging is that it’s asynchronous. That means everyone can respond at their own convenience. So, I call and there’s no answer, your answering machine texts me and tells me to specify my request by text message. I text my request and the secretary answers when she’s free. And that’s it! What’s more, you no longer have to take the time to stop everything you’re doing to listen to your voicemail and transcribe the name and number of a customer whose name and number you should already know on every call. No more transcriptions, errors or lost post-its! Imagine the number of forgotten follow-ups in your company. Virtual communication assistants allow you to dial in 1 click, transcribe your voice messages automatically and even save them in the customer’s file. You’ll always know the name of the customer calling you, and especially the name of the customer whose call you missed. What’s more, you can use text messaging to say you’re unavailable, and switch the customer’s call to text messaging to avoid running from one answering machine message to another.

Protect your secretaries and customer service agents, as well as your current and future customers, by ensuring an immediate 24-7 response, even when you’re away or unavailable. Switch from phone to text to ensure communication at everyone’s convenience, thanks to synchronicity!

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Calls are now reserved for emergency and complicated situations, according to this generation, who prefer texting to calling. More than half of young people associate calls with bad news and anxiety.

This generation prefers texting to phone calls. According to them, they don’t have time to call to check in. Mind you, this doesn’t stop them from staying in touch with friends and loved ones through other communication channels such as texting, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram or SnapChat.

Enjoy listening to Phil Roy, who proves that the younger generation doesn’t want to make or receive calls.

This texting generation says that calls require a higher level of intimacy, whereas messaging is detached and allows you to connect without feeling vulnerable or exposed.

These days, it seems that time has become more precious than ever, and these young people want to protect it. According to them, calling a friend forces us to interrupt everything to devote our attention to the call for a few minutes. This now seems very difficult for young multitaskers. Of course, young people’s attention spans are shorter than those of older people.

The trend towards non-verbal communication combined with teleworking is slowly contributing to the disappearance of real voice conversations. Also, good old-fashioned informal conversations at the coffee machine are on the way out in many companies.

We may be in the midst of a major paradigm shift in communications, much like the switch from fax to e-mail some twenty years ago. Whether we like it or not, the world is changing, and we have to adapt to survive and avoid being mummified. Is your company ready to communicate with this new generation of telephobes? Equip your company with the ability to text your customers.

Référence : https://www.20minutes.fr/high-tech/4107229-20240827-fragilite-anxiete-effroi-viennent-complexes-gen-z-repondre-telephone

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