Having a spread out team working remotely can pose some difficulties. Since you are not all in the same office space, you don’t know if your coworkers are on a call, away from their desk, or taking lunch. Presence statuses show you which of your coworkers are available or unavailable—an invaluable feature when you are working remotely. It’s an underrated feature that keeps calls organized, and gives a little extra feeling of being together.
What Is BLF?
BLF, or Busy Lamp Field is a key VoIP communication feature that gives you knowledge into your coworkers’ presence. On your VoIP phone, this allows you to see which extensions are currently busy or available. It indicates the real-time status of a user or line on your phone system.
With a quick glance over to your desk phone, it informs employees if a particular colleague is busy on a phone call or available to take one. This uses simple colors that indicates if a user is currently on the phone (red), available/not currently on the phone (green), or offline (gray/blank).
CallHarbor doesn’t stop at physical hardware when it comes to presence, though. We make the presence feature available on both our web softphone and our mobile app as well. In the softphone apps, presence is the same simple color code phone icons next to a user’s name or phone line as on physical phones. CallHarbor’s softphone displays real-time presence statuses in the Contacts list on the main dashboard. Each coworker in your Contacts list has their presence info shown next to their name.
Phone Presence on CallHarbor Mobile App
On the CallHarbor Mobile App, a user’s icon will automatically turn red when they’re on a call, show green if they are not on a call, and display gray or not filled in when they are offline. You also have the option of writing a status message, so if you out to lunch or going to be away from your desk for a while, you can let your coworkers know and they can avoid sending calls your way.
Presence on CallHarbor Attendant Console
Yet another application you can use to see presence and conduct/transfer/park calls from is our attendant console. For a receptionist that answers a high volume of calls, or a receptionist that has a lot of extensions to keep track of, our attendant console is a great feature to alleviate some stress. The list of users can quickly dial down by site and department, as well as organized into call queues and auto attendants. You can pull this feature up on any web browser, and would work great on a tablet that can move with the receptionist.
When you have an active call, you can easily drag and drop it to another extension to transfer the call. You can also drag and drop the call into a parking lot, where the call will sit until someone picks it up by dialing the parking lot extension. The color of the circle next to a user’s name indicates their availability status. A red circle indicates that user is currently on a phone call. A green circle indicates they are available for a call. If the circle is blank, the user is offline. You can also choose to make an assisted transfer, or transfer directly to a user’s voicemail.
Why Presence Is Such a Great Remote Work Feature
Presence is a critical feature because it can bridge distance between employees/teams. If you have a remote or dispersed staff, presence is key in feeling more connected. It can also help supervisors in remote worker management gain the ability to see how loaded staff is. By being able to look at their presence by easily glancing at their hardware, softphone, or mobile app, it’s simple!
Facilitate Team Communication When Remote Working
By glancing at presence statuses, remote workers can quickly see if a coworker is available to get on a call. Rather than spending time dialing extensions, waiting while the phone rings, and then hearing voicemail greetings, the remote worker can see if the coworker is already on a call or offline.
Improve Customer Service
If an employee is on a customer service call and needs to transfer the call or ask a coworker for help, being able to see coworker’s presence in real time will make the process much less messy. This is helpful, especially in customer service scenarios, because you can get questions answered faster while subjecting the caller to the least amount of hold time.
Transfer Calls to an Available Coworker—not a Voicemail
Piggybacking off the last section, transferring a caller to a coworker only to have the caller reach a voicemail is not a good customer service experience. This can lead to a very angry caller who may think he was just pushed off on voicemail. Before transferring a call, a remote worker can check to see if their presence shows as green/available.