INTERVIEW ProVu and Counterpath
“With special handling, when the physical layer changes from WiFi to LTE, we don’t drop the
call. That’s a huge benefit.” Todd Carothers, Chief Revenue Officer - Counterpath
A soft approach to desk phones
It’s a staple of the offi ce but new technologies mean they may be phased out sooner rather than later. ProVu’s
Craig Herrett and Counterpath’s Todd Carothers talk through the advantages of soft phones like the latter’s
Bria service and why desk phones are not going away just yet
Though talk in recent years
has turned to the cloud and
collaboration platforms,
one staple of o ce
communications continues to be
the desk phone.
Whilst the line infrastructure
continues to change, it has
remained a staple with Craig
Herrett, Sales Director at ProVu
says that any sales gures that
point to a move away from the
traditional solution may not tell
the whole story.
“I’m not going to jump in
and say desk phones are dead,
because they’re not” said Herrett.
“But what seems to be
happening in the industry at
the moment is more people are
needing headsets because they’re
connecting to other devices.
If we just take myself for
instance, I’ve got a desk phone
in my home o ce that I don’t
use because I use my phone on
my laptop, I’ve got a desk phone
in my o ce that I do use. I’ve
got my Bria soft phone on my
mobile device that allows me
to always be connected be it in
London or wherever I am.
What we are seeing is that,
the desk phones are still growing
but the percentage growth of
other communication devices
is signi cantly higher than the
desk phones. I think most of
that is because the number of
desk phones is already quite high
but more and more people are
now going into contact centre
environments and saying, ‘I
don’t want phones on the desk,
I need a screen I need a dialler’
and that’s it.”
“When I started 11 years
ago I was shown a video where
people were destroying these
desk phones and I said this
is the wrong message” said
Counterpath’s Chief Revenue
O cer Todd Carothers. He
says that user behaviour is at the
heart of the shift away from desk
phones.
“First of all, it’s hard to change
user behaviour. It’s hard to take
away phones, something that
people are used to, and say ‘you
can’t use anymore, you have got
to use this.’
e issue here is cell phones
have all the things that we
can do with a desk phone, but
the question should be how it
integrates and how to use it.
e biggest thing we can do as a
software vendor is make it easy
to use.
For example, on my setup.
I don’t have a speakerphone
anymore, I used to have a
Plantronics, or something
like that, but now I just use
my 5K monitor for my Mac
and it sounds brilliant. It has
echo cancellation built in, how
easy is that? I just answer on
speakerphone and I don’t have to
do anything.
At the end of day, what’s going
to happen is the millennials are
going to get jobs and take that
hard plastic and stick it in the
drawer. If you say ‘the laptop
is what I use, and only use’ the
company’s will say ‘well use a
soft phone’ it may or may not
be Bria, but it’s going to be
something like that.”
Both Carothers and Herrett
said that a phased, gradual
approach, open to all devices is
Todd Carothers, Chief Revenue
O cer - Counterpath
best when adopting a soft phone.
“With Bria I can have it on
my phone, on my desktop, on
my iPad, so when a call comes
in everything is ready for me,
and I’ll take it depending on
what device I want to use” said
Carothers.
“If I’m about to leave, I’ll
probably take it on mobile. If
I’m going to be in front of my
computer, I’ll take it on my
desktop because I can kind of
cruise around whilst I’m talking
to someone. But even if I make
the wrong decision that way, I
press a button and it will transfer
the call from once device to the
other.
With special handling, when
the physical layer changes from
WiFi to LTE, we don’t drop the
call. at’s a huge bene t.”
“People like di erent
solutions” continued Herrett,
“the millennials may come in
and say they don’t like the desk
phone, but you’ve got people like
my mom or aunt or anybody else
in the workforce today, who still
like their phone.
e idea of having the tablet
version, or a mobile device
version, whatever that may be, a
Mac version, a Windows version,
allows you to pick your own
Craig Herrett, Sales Director at ProVu avour.
20 | Comms Business Magazine | February 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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