The design and functionality of your office could be affecting your employees’ productivity. Giving your team things such as the right lighting, adjustable desks and comfortable temperature control may actually increase their performance.  But that’s not all.  Here we share what we believe are the technologies that every office space should have to improve productivity.

Today around 70% of offices have an open floor plan. But are they really all they are cracked up to be?

A report recently released by the Smarter Working Initiative says that Britain’s small business owners should be paying a more attention to the work-life balance issues faced by their employees, and offer more options for flexible working.  

Sales people are notoriously friendly, talkative and good at relationship-building. It is part of what makes them effective at their job.  But these same qualities often make them inefficient.  Hours are lost chatting, while other important tasks are left undone.  This need not be the case however.  Avoid this situtation with VTSL’s top 5 tips on how to make your sales team more efficient.

We have all experienced it.  The customer service rep who is rude, makes the problem you need solved worse, tells you that it is your fault, or has no idea how to solve the problem. No doubt the effect this has on your impression of the brand and product is lasting.  Your time is valuable and as a customer, problems should be solved quickly and respectfully. 

Gamification is a strategy that’s been gaining increasing traction. But despite its growing popularity, managers are still in the dark about how to effectively use gamified tactics to their benefit – particularly when using it to improve customer service.

Businesses that take card payments over the phone are required to adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security standard (PCI DSS) compliance regulations. Businesses that don’t may be liable for non-compliance fines, and may be forced to stop accepting payments by card.

Back in the early 2000’s, VoIP wasn’t taken seriously as an option for business telephony.  In fact, virtually no companies in the UK had business-grade VoIP phone systems. But by 2010, it was catching on quick, with tens of thousands of companies adopting IP based phone services.  And by 2025, nearly all companies will have VoIP telephony solutions as BT turns of the traditional IDSN and PSTN phone networks.

Sales professionals are usually gifted with people.  They know how to make someone comfortable, build rapport and explain complex things in an understandable way.  But they don’t necessarily know how to use the latest technology to their benefit. Technology after all requires investment, learning and integrating into existing methods. Why bother? 

It is happening in industries across the globe. We used to revel in the money saved by large corporation’s economies of scale, but now everyone from the SME business owner to the average retail shopper wants the specialist version—the exact right product, for them.  One may think that the larger utilities may be an exception to this—things like telecoms for example, things that historically there was only one major player, or very little difference between the few that did exist.  But the telecommunications industry is going niche too, and businesses are benefiting.  Instead of telephone systems, and on-site PBX’s, businesses are opting for modern Unified Communications as a Service Providers—providers that can offer more than a telephony service, and instead introduce communications solutions that transform an organisation’s sales, service and operational functioning.  The communications solutions include telephony, but they also include integrating it into the core applications of the business—from CRM to Order Management, as well as other mediums of communication such as chat, browsers, mobiles, and more.