CJNBlog

Before my current job I'd never used computer integrated telephony. Yes, Skype and other VoIP systems but not CIT proper. It's interesting to see the results of the system trying to understand the tones it is 'hearing' it really isn't very good at it. What I hear as a slight 'blip' in one network's ring tone (I think it's O2) the computer obviously hears as the ring tone stopping, so it serves up the next page ready for an answered call to be logged/coded, even though ring tone is continuing. Of course these tones were originally intended for human ears/brains and with the legacy public switched telephone network holding out this kind of lumpy system will continue. In the old analogue days the phone system worked by setting up a metallic speech path from caller to called party. The callers exchange (IIRC) would send ringing current down this path to the called party's phone toring the bell, and the called party's exchange would put ring ton...

The person that actually fixes a broken window or a leak or whatever has a problem if people keep phoning to check progress on their job. S/he will never get anything done. To ameliorate this problem there will be someone who answers the phone/emails etc to prevent the tradesperson from having to do so.  But this someone has annual leave and maybe sick leave and there's not enough work to take on two people. In a large enough organisation resources can be pooled so there can be an admin team who can between them cover the necessary hours. However they will all need to be able to access up-to-date information about the actual work so that they can tell the customers. It is fairly easy to see how this scales up to a contact centre, where all calls and emails are answered and all updates to actual jobs are available. And once you have a mega database of people and jobs, it is a small step to let the customers add details of jobs directly. But what then happens is that you get peopl...

It is fairly clear that national government really doesn't want councils to be social landlords. Many councils have sold off their housing stock and left housing associations to be the providers of social housing in their areas. This is an acceptance that the private sector, in theory the provider of all goods and services, cannot, for some reason, provide low cost housing for those that cannot afford the private sector. Where I live the council has historically been a big provider of social housing, but this is changing and many people refuse to accept it. Despite the massive funding cuts made to council funding in recent years and the general opposition of the government to councils being direct service providers, rather than just place shapers and commissioners of services, people continue to blame the council for social housing woes and persist in claiming that if only the council were more efficient and less extravagant it could basically carry on as before. I think the attitu...

Despite the existence of messaging apps like Facebook's and What's App, and programs like Skype, the phone number persists. The landline is fading - many people see no point when they have a mobile phone, but mobile phones have phone numbers. We don't have e-mail numbers, or Facebook numbers, so why do we have phone numbers? People might want to keep a landline number that they have had for years for the purposes of remaining in contact with those who call it; there is not much point in losing or changing a number anymore than there is in changing your e-mail address, but a land line is really an anachronism. We know that we can conduct interactive voice, video and text calls over the internet. The fact that there are so many ways of doing this may be the reason that they are apparently not serious platforms is that there are so many, but in the serious world of business there are two protocols that are coming into more and more widespread use - VoIP and SIP. VoIP is ...