Remember that it's still a phone: Everyone knows how to make a phone call. It requires very little, if any training to pick up a receiver and punch in a string of numbers. Unfortunately, the sheer number of features available on VoIP hard and soft phones can make them complicated enough to require extensive user training.
"The phone is the most ubiquitous user interface in the world," Fleming says. "You shouldn't have to train your staff how to use one."
If simple functions like hold are buried three menus down on a liquid crystal display, or if the phone plays a dial tone .wav file whether the network is up or not, you could have some serious problems with user satisfaction. Fleming says that one of the big mistakes companies make is that they forget that, at the end of the day, they are deploying a phone system that has to used like a phone system.
"One thing we now hear companies saying is 'what we really want is a phone system,'" he says.
It's not just an ordinary phone: Despite the fact that VoIP phones should function like normal phones, they can be a bit more complicated to run than just plugging them into the nearest wall jack, Fleming says.
"One of the things that comes up a lot is the question of how you're going to power the phones," he says. "When we ask that, we often get this deer in the headlights kind of blank stare from customers: 'We need to power our phones?' We get the same reaction when we ask if they have UPSes (uninterrupted power supplies) to power their switches in the event of a power failure."
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