We’ve been on the road “evangelizing” Microsoft Response Point to the telecom and technology communities. At IT Expo East in Miami, Southern Alberta Microsoft User’s Conference in Calgary, Vancouver’s Small Business Server presentation and on national webcasts we’re talking about how Response Point has the potential to create a new paradigm for small medium business communications. Now, ironically, it’s similar to a paradigm change created by a technology industry icon about 25 years ago when Michael Dell gave us a new way to buy our computers. I think it really says something negative about the culture of the telecom industry that it still has not gone through this kind of “empowering the customer” transition 25 years later. Also interesting that it looks like it will be players from the software/IT community that will drive this paradigm shift in the telecom industry. It seems that the telecom carriers changed focus to the lucrative growth areas of wireless and broadband leaving wireline business communications in the 1980’s. Think about it, you got voice mail, IVR’s and auto-attendants in the 1980’s. If you’re a small medium business you likely still have the same telephone deskset you had in the 80’s and it doesn’t do anything more today than it did then. Think of what’s happened to computers and cell phones during the past 25 years; it’s pretty unbelievable we’ve seen so little progress in small business office phone system technology.
This is why Response Point has the opportunity to be such a game changer and create a new paradigm in office communications. Microsoft has got a number of foundational elements incredibly right and created a product platform for real change and improvement. What are these foundational elements?

1. First of all, Response Point is really just software. Sure, the Microsoft Response Point team were smart enough to recruit world class OEM telephone equipment manufacturers (and commit them to Response Point specific endpoints) but Response Point is not about physical handsets, it’s software. Why is this important? Because software is a high margin product that can be sold cheaply with scale (as Microsoft knows from it’s beginnings) and that evolves and improves quickly with upgrades. We’ve seen two major service pack releases from Microsoft within the past eight months and the Response Point team is hard at work on Version 2.

2. Easy-to-use integration with the computer with features that small medium business users want and need. I’m old enough to remember back in the eighties, we were all looking forward to desktop integration when it was called CTI (“computer telephony integration”) and done with protocols called “tapi” and “mapi”. The only people who wound up getting integration with features like call display screen pops, click to call, and links to contacts were call centre agents at companies spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to enable these features. Response point does it with a simple application called “Assistant” that sits in a small window on the desktop and covers everything from incoming call display, to click to dial contacts, voice mail and call forward settings, and green or red buttons indicating whether other system users are on or off their phone.

3. Voice Recognition. What might have been gimmicky but kinda cool is turning out to be one of the real practical productivity improvement features. Imagine no more phone numbers, local extensions or * codes to remember. Just push the blue button and say a name to transfer a call. Or, imagine how happy customers might be when they call, say the name of an employee or department and are immediately, automatically connected. And one more, dial in to your system, ask Response Point to call someone from your Outlook contacts and it places the call. (This eliminates your cellular toll charges, by the way)

4. Mobile integration. The call settings in “Assistant” on my desktop allow me to have my direct number forwarded to any other number immediately or after a set amount of time so it’s dead simple to have my calls ring a couple of times at my desk and then to my mobile. If my calls go to my voice mail, I get emailed with the caller ID and the message. Program my mobile number as an “external number” in Response Point and it treats me like an internal caller whenever I dial in giving me the ability to place calls, internal or external with voice commands or by dialing. Simple, effective high value feature set. (note: Microsoft should add time of day settings to Assistant call settings the same as they did to the Auto-Attendant in SP2)

5. Incredibly Easy Administration. Microsoft has moved telephone system administration out of the closet and on to the computer simply and elegantly. It would be hard to overstate the simplicity of administrating the system so I won’t. If you can read and type then you can move, add and change phones and users to your heart’s content. There is also a vibrant, enthusiastic community of Response Point users rapidly emerging to create and share resources. See http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint or SMBNation, telephonation.com, SIPthat.com or the LinkedIn Response Point group for a few good examples.

6. Brand & Vendor strength. This is important. There have been other good products emerging in the small business phone system market (IP-PBX), predominantly from the open source community BUT they’re from companies still unknown to the majority of small medium businesses and most of them have not done as good a job as making the product as easy to use as Microsoft has. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to get your product on the desktop when you already own close to 90% of the desktop software market.

7. Price. I could have led with this but I saved the best for last. Response Point is tremendously well priced for a business phone system, particularly for a system of this quality, feature set, and ease of management. The Response Point base unit including all the software and fully enabled voice mail, auto-attendant and all the features retails at well under $2000 and supports 50 plus users! Amazing value. I told you it was a new paradigm. Check it out or better yet get yourself one! You’ll be glad you did.