Snom: Communication during times of crisis

A survey commissioned by Snom reveals how businesses have adapted their communications

During the coronavirus pandemic, nearly everybody had to make huge changes to their way of living and working. For office-based businesses, communication via phone and video became even more important for staying in contact with team members and customers, with the majority working from home.

As an internationally recognized manufacturer of IP phones, at Snom we’ve seen an increase in demand for our devices, including for our headsets and conferencing tools, and an increase in interest in solutions that will make the transition to home working easier.

To learn how our customers and partners have adapted during this time, we recently launched a survey amongst our partners to find out how communications have changed over the last few months. Here were a few of our key findings.

Mixed opinions on impact

Unsurprisingly, 90% of survey respondents said they had been working remotely due to the pandemic. However, opinion over whether this had affected their methods of communication was more close cut – 58% said it had impacted them, while 42% said it hadn’t.

The fact that the latter figure is so high might come as a surprise to some, given that many people have been uprooted from their traditional office environment and had to adapt to a new set up at home – but the reality is that it confirms the acceptance of unified communications and the ability to access a company account across multiple devices. Many businesses are already well-equipped for remote communications.

Powered by technology

Of course, most participants explained that they used smart- and softphones most often (86% of all respondents), while 54% also told us they are also using their desk phone for remote work.

For us as Snom employees, this result was not surprising as we are already aware of how easy it is to install a Snom device at home. The main advantages? You can still be reached by everyone directly via your office number, have access to the company directory, retain all of your speed dials/favourites and other features of the business device – including excellent sound.

A desk phone has more surface area for better speakers than can be implemented on a smart phone for a far superior audio quality experience. Perhaps something for those to consider who were particularly dissatisfied with the audio quality of the smart and video solutions used (more than a third!).

Video/audio conferencing quality

Poor connection quality was also raised as an issue by around a third of our respondents. No doubt the majority of us have experienced the frustration of an unstable internet connection to some degree – dropping out of an important video meeting or having to deal with delayed audio or video from one of the participants.

So clearly there is still a great deal of potential for future solutions in this area!

With 60% of our respondents saying they will be having fewer personal meetings post-coronavirus, being prepared with the right tools and technology so that virtual meetings can run smoothly will remain key.

All things considered, it looks like we’ll be continuing to connect virtually for a good while longer, which makes a good home set-up and a willingness to adapt, essential.

Survey respondents also mentioned remote conferencing etiquette as an important factor. People in conference calls forgetting to self-mute when background noise or parallel conversations were taking place proving to be especially irritating and detrimental to the willingness to permanently switch to remote conferencing.

Despite these enforced cultural and technological shifts in how business is done.

More than 1200 people were invited to participate between 1st – 31st July in this survey, which proves once again communication is a key factor in everyday business life. To integrate it successfully in a virtual or remote environment requires more than just the provision of any old audio device and/or any kind of video. Quality, stability, security and reliability are essential.

Sourced from: Snom. View the original article here.

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