2008 Survey Objectives
A number of customers noted that the current voicemail length was too short at only 1 minute per message. A class of service change is being made to all voicemail boxes to increase that limit from 2 minute to 4 minutes. While this will be satisfactory to the majority of customers, there are those that suggested voicemail should be an unlimited length. It’s important to us at Telecommunications to meet the needs of our customers; unfortunately, unlimited voice mail lengths are impractical and would require an undue investment in telephony hardware.
It’s clear from the survey that many campus customers are unaware of Telecommunications services and policies due to no fault of their own. As Telecommunications moves forward with investments in new technology and new services are offered, it will become increasingly important for the department to communicate those services and the benefits of the new technology to the campus community. Starting in the spring of 08, Telecommunications will begin offering a regularly distributed newsletter as well as becoming more involved with new faculty and staff orientation.
While it’s true that campus telephones will begin transitioning to VOIP later this calendar year, there are no plans to abandon those customers still relying on the traditional telephone system, or to ignore the infrastructure problems that affect those systems. Degrading underground telephone wires have been plaguing quality of service to some campus buildings; most notably Chemistry and White Hall. In February Telecommunications completed a project to pull new cable to the Chemistry building and into White Hall. Customer experiencing problems with call quality will be moved to this new cable shortly.
Customers reporting similar problems in areas of Thomas Beam Engineering, will have their issues addressed as the Science and Engineering Building is completed and new infrastructure is installed to support that facility.
While the Telecommunications website does host some guides for the use and operation of both telephones and voicemail, two things are clear from the survey. One, not many people knew the guides existed or were available. Two, the guides are insufficient.
Telecommunications will immediately begin working on new telephone and voice mail manuals to be published via the website in a format that is easy to download, print, and understand.
A number of customers mentioned troubles with the monthly billing. This is an area of acute concern for Telecommunications as well. Printing the monthly bill and distributing it to campus customers is a time consuming job that is not only prone to error due to the paper distribution method, but also wasteful as it takes more than 4 hours to print the 5000 pages of the bill.
Telecommunications is currently implementing a new billing system that will allow us to distribute the bill via email or download in friendly .PDF format. This system will allow us to more swiftly get the bill to customers and more easily correct errors when they occur. Telecommunications hopes to have this system ready for use by the second quarter of 08.
Many areas of campus receive their telephone service on antiquated equipment, both in the case of telephone sets, as well as the hardware in the background that routes telephone calls and that customers rarely get the opportunity to see. Some of this equipment, despite its age, is still serviceable, while some is in dire need of replacement.
Before the end of the Spring semester, Telecommunications will be paying in excess of $100,000 to upgrade the hardware and software on the Nortel switch that is responsible for routing all telephone calls on and off campus. This upgrade is expected to increase reliability and potentially introduce common features that were among those requested by customer during the survey.