Telephones...

Additional Challenge: If I have an account where the only address is Venezuelan, I can't indicate that the cellular phone is in fact a local phone number.

Hi Andrew,

We would definitely like to be able to link a number to a person within a record. This is particularly relevant for our education department, as often several customers live at one address but take part in completely different activities and need to be contacted directly on an individual basis about those at short notice. It might even be useful to know the appropriate number for an indidivual in relation to a particular event to allow more flexibility.

Katie.

Right now I would say we're using phone numbers in two ways: Mass solicitation through telefunding/telemarketing and one-on-one contacts with constituents.

For Telefunding/Telemarketing, it is important for us to know where the phone number is located as we are only licensed to do Telefunding/Telemarketing in NY, CT and NJ.  I guess this is why it can be good to have phone numbers tied directly to an address in some way.

As far as individual contacts, I think having the ability specify a phone type and to have it controlled at the organization level is great. We can specify that a phone is "N2 Cell" or "N1 Business" or "Assistant Phone".

I would love to be able to inactivate phone numbers or have seasonal numbers with a date range, or be able to specify what hours are best for calling on a specific number.  Maybe even have "purposes" that are locally created - like in addresses - one of those purposes could of course be Telefunding/telemarketing or not depending on the organization.

I think the system is pretty good right now.  Our biggest challenge is of course training and getting eveyone to add phone numbers in the right place and the right way. 

Dale

Definitely the ability to indicate a phone as "primary" would be helpful, and/or some sort of phone purpose indicator. Like others, I think the phones should be separated from addresses, with the option to indicate that a phone number is connected to an address for cases when it is.

A common thing that also comes up is having a plethora of phone numbers and not knowing who in the account ties to which. I know one can (and we have) create extra phone types (N1 cell, N2 cell, etc) but I'd like to see a standard way of indication what phone belongs to what person, perhaps more like the current n1n2 ind sitch. Unless of course the whole customer account issue goes the route where we start dealing with everyone as one person and then those individuals have some means of being grouped together as households or some such, in which case it'd be a moot point.

I strongly agree with Kevin's point about texting. With the rise and rise of iphones it will surely only be a few years before we are all sending huge varieties of information to phones - multi-media presentations, booking confirmations etc. We will need flexibility to show who owns the phone and for which purposes it can be contacted.

And on a more mundane level, a story re texting directly from Tess:

We do an outdoor concert in the park each year.  In case of threatening weather, we would could broadcast a text message advising whether the concert is going ahead.  The concert is not ticketed, but people could register through the website to receive the broadcast direct from Tess.

Today we’re gathering information about constituent telephone numbers and how they are used in your business.  Thinking about constituent telephone numbers in your business…

What are some challenges that you have surrounding constituent phones today?

Are there trends you are seeing that could impact phone functionality in the future?

What do you like about telephone functionality in existing Tessitura? 

What would you like to see changed/improved about telephone functionality?

Any other thoughts about phones, your business, and Tessitura?

Keep in mind that this may be more than just thinking about the storage and retrieval of telephone numbers.  Try to think overall about how your business interacts with people via phone and how you might expect Next Gen to enable this interaction.

Thanks!

Andrew

Beth,

We always create our calling lists based on current primary address and I guess that works ok but I still think there has to be a better way for people to know where they're calling before they call. 

Not only would it be great to know what state you're calling but also what type of number you're calling - cell, landline, VOIP - and where that number terminates - work direct line, work assistant's line,  home, seasonal home, no specific address etc.

Dale

One more item to throw into the mix is a way to indicate if a specific phone number is TTY.  A person may have a home phone or business phone that is TTY and it would be great to indicate that as well as home, business, location etc.

In addition to what's been said above, here are my thoughts, coming from the perspective of someone who calls constituents on a case-by-case basis regarding enrollment in Education classes:

1. Challenge: "Phone 1" is assumed to be the home phone, but that's often not the case. "Phone 2" is equally undescriptive. Would like to see: Phones should not be tied to an address at all. As Marta mentioned, it would almost be appropriate to have a second tab or something similar to segregate them.

2. Challenge: It's too easy to store a phone number without noting exactly who it is for and what kind it is. It is jarring from a customer service perspective to cold call a number without knowing who's expected to pick up. Would like to see: Tessitura should require that every phone number be described in some way, such as by its purpose (cell, home, work), by its person (N1, N2, etc.) or by both. The WebAPI should also help enforce this so that a customer must tell us what kind of phone they're providing before it's stored.  During education class emergencies, it is critical we can know exactly who we're trying to reach and how.

3. "Out there" kind of thought: There should be an ability to integrate the Tessitura client with the user's phone in some manner that allows the client to dial a call, and the phone to provide an incoming call number to the client. Often when a customer calls I look up their record and their orders as they are talking by searching their number off the caller ID. Automating this function by having Tessitura provide some kind of suggestion ("Is this Mr. Smith calling?") would be phenomenal. There could also be a function where the client prompts the user with a message like "Would you like to store this incoming call number in this constituent's record?"

That's all I've got for now!