An event in 2025 concerning telecommunications will have a huge impact upon how practices run their businesses. John Greenshaw, owner and Director of Merlin Telecommunications Ltd explains what the change will be and how practices should prepare for it.
In 2025, we will see a major change to our telecommunications and data networks in the UK. This is a change that has been on the horizon for many years, and it will help to bring the UK telecommunication system up to what I would call ‘international standards’.
To put things into context, the UK has been first to develop many things over many decades. Our telecom system started at the beginning of the last century, and we’ve had every iteration of telecommunications that has ever existed. So, when the UK comes up against international competition such as China, we look very bad and the main reason for that is we have to deal with all our legacy systems.
From copper to fibre
So, what has been agreed with Openreach and Ofcom is that in 2025, all legacy systems become obsolete and are terminated. The new technologies that have been adopted by China and others is fibre connections, which are data only connections. So, the numbers that used to be associated with copper lines, such as the analogue line coming into your house, or the ISDN2 or ISDN30 circuits coming into larger businesses, become obsolete and get switched off. It’s a big tidy up of everything that’s gone previously.
Now, those numbers don’t disappear, but their direction will need to be managed. So, that means deciding whether you still need them, and if so, where you will host them. This is because, in essence, they go from being located at your local exchange to sitting within the internet cloud.
So, all your data connections that are currently associated with a line number, such as a line and broadband, will become a data only connection with no line associated with it. If you get a fibre connection coming into it, it’s just a fibre connection and it passes data. All your voice communications will then change from being copper lines out to the exchange to bits of data on a data connection.
Preparations well underway
Telecom suppliers are already working hard to help their customers prepare for the change. At Merlin Telecommunications we’re going through all our client base and talking to all our customers to make sure that they’re 2025 compliant. Any new installations are already compliant and good to go. There is an awful lot of work to achieve this, but as a supplier, we need to make sure that customers are aware and know the consequences if they fail to do anything. So, if your telecom supplier is bothering you, it’s worth maybe having a conversation with them to make sure that you are compliant if nothing else.
As opposed to seeing this as a problem, customers could view it as an opportunity. I have found that we uncover the greatest number of opportunities when we are dealing with practices that understand what they want and what their clients need; where they appreciate what their requirements are.
That means understanding the number of calls coming in, how they want people to be answered, how quickly they want to be answered and what messaging they would require. Such as, keeping people informed about what is happening to their call. Not everybody wants to have long wait times, but to know how long you’re going to be waiting is an advantage. But it’s also about the practice owner knowing what resources they’re prepared to put into answering calls quickly to make sure that their clients are well looked after. This is the double-edged sword of providing a service to your clients that’s going to make sure that your business thrives.
A good example of success we’ve had in dealing with dental practices is subliminal messaging. So, when your call gets answered, the message is, ‘if you are an existing patient, please press one’. The subliminal message there is, ‘our existing patients are important to us. We’ll deal with them first.’ And then ‘if you are hoping to become a patient, please press two’. The messaging there is ‘I want to become a patient because I know that they’re going to look after me, because that’s the message’. It’s as subtle as that to get those messages across to your patients. And then when you are being transferred to those options, it’s about how quickly you would look after those patients to show them a bit of love and provide that service.
It is always worthwhile giving some thought to how you, as an organisation can put resources into making sure calls are answered professionally, efficiently and quickly. And secondly, how you want your clients to be greeted by the telephone system itself.
Opportunities
As well as giving greater functionality, the right phone system allows you to think more about your customer service on the phone. You can personalise things. We can offer professional voiceovers, which is wonderful. However, when the practice owner records the message that puts their own brand on the call. Not everybody wants to do it, but for those that do it says ‘I’m here and I care. I know you’re waiting and we’re going to look after you,’ and it’s coming from the horse’s mouth rather than a professional voice actor. Little things matter. So, it’s about being able to have a wishlist of what you would like to happen for your clients.
The right phone system can also provide your practice with data, so you become more knowledgeable about the call flows into your business. Ten as you get more data, you can become better at managing those call flows. For example, you can see when your busy times are, such as Monday mornings. At those times, do you have more people answering the phones because there’s a huge volume of calls coming in, or do you let people wait? Now you have more data, do you change the behaviours of the practice to meet the call profile? It allows you to better manage your practice during the peaks and flows of calls coming in.
It comes back to the phrase, ‘if you can measure it, you can manage it.’ So, it’s about having a system that’s going to provide you with the data that will allow you to manage your business while allowing you to provide a great service for your clients.