Whole Foods Market

POTD: Whole Foods Market Bedford, New Hampshire

clickfo

In recent weeks, the world’s newest Whole Foods Market opened in Bedford, NH. Built on top of the legendary Wayfarer Inn (known more during the Primary Election years), it’s also within hundreds of feet of the now torn down Macy’s.

As proof from Joe the UCX Guy from Chicago, many Whole Foods stores are Cisco shops. Interestingly, the WFM in Nashua, just miles on the Everett Turnpike, is wired for TDM telephony using Toshiba’s Strata system (opened in 2014 to replace a former Market Basket.) Building was totally gutted and rebuilt mostly from the ground up.

The store in Bedford is mixed with 7942s and the 6902s at the cashier’s lane. Paging works, as teenage girls don’t know how to lower their octaves and learn how to page professionally.

The 7900s are still in the market, despite the more cheaper quality sets being deployed more and more. The 7900s are in a depreciation mode. Current generations are all multi lines, Java based and/or colored displays and I was surprised to see a 7942 because I believe its End of Sale.

I snapped two pictures, one showing how much characters you can use to describe your telephone extension. If the characters can’t fit on the top black colored indication bar, it will break the description up in two screens

IMG_5994 IMG_5993

Personally, these devices are just “endpoints” – they are PCs acting as telephones. Sure Mitel, and Avaya and others sell the same thing (and acts the same way), but for sales people or the accountants, its just another device attached to the Internet and it shouldn’t be treated special like a office telephone. These phones are not easy to manage outside of expensive Cisco solutions or if you like to code and reverse engineer – be my guest! I feel like the 7900s were always a 2554 with Internet connectivity and a great audio quality of its SCCP signaling.

Other than that, Cisco just keeps on winning on selling “free” gear and report them as “profits” by smooching up to the CIOs and heads of IT departments at the Fortune 500 companies. You think I am kidding???

Paging Tips

clickfo2 Comments

Some people use a PBX or a KSU system in environments such as retail. And some instances, the most used feature or most liked feature of any telephone system is the ability to page.  However, excessive use and overuse of paging in inappropriate uses can drive customers away if you allow “Open Line Friday*” every day, or allow someone to page and page right after the last page.

*referring to an alleged theme on a major conservative talk radio show that supposedly callers can call in without a narcissist yepping in those 3 hours on such days.

I can’t tell you how Open Line Paging can drive someone with sensory disorders crazy.

Here’s the deal.

Instead of investing in expensive walkie talkies to talk behind the customers back, here is some guidelines in paging.

  • If you have a central extension (such as a customer service desk, where its always manned by someone monitoring the telephone), have that be the go to extension.
  • Instruct employees to dial zero to request a page.
  • Have a structured speech. Such examples
  • “[Person] Telephone call on [Pickup access code]”,
  • “[Person] please dial zero for the operator”
  • “[Person] Please call extension [number]”

Make sure the person is paging has an appropriate tone of voice, do not talk like a high school cheerleader, and do not page so you can hear yourself.

Also in this change of process, make sure you update your Class of Restrictions, Class of Service or COR or COS so the people don’t continue to page at their station or extension. Block access to paging and only enable it to the operator’s or central point of contact’s extension.

Automated paging also will turn away potential customers. Stores like Lowes and Kohl’s have automated paging systems where a user dials an extension to ring out to the automated paging. The real problem is when no one gets to the customer fast enough and the paging system sends more authority. And if you’re going to do “codes” outside of medical centers, reserve that for the walkie talkie. What does “Code 34” mean to a customer when its blasted at like 20db or something crazy like that?