bbo-2024

Broadband Office Solutions & Kari’s Law No More “9” Prefix to Dial 911

mwalker@brandedmind.com (Marvis Walker) — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 19:31:07 GMT

No More “9” Prefix to Dial 911

In December 2013, Brianna Hunt who was 9 years old at the time attempted to do what we were all trained to do in case of emergency, dial 911. Brianna’s mother Kari, was stabbed multiple times in a hotel room by her estranged husband as her and her other siblings watched.

“She tried four times as her mother was being murdered. What Brianna didn’t know is that in many businesses and hotels — this one included — the caller must dial a prefix, such as the number 9, prior to 911 to get an outside line.” (http://www.govtech.com/)

On February, 16, 2018 President Trump signed into law Kari’s Law Act of 2017, which will require businesses, offices and the like, with multi-line telephone systems to allow direct dial to 911, without any prefix.

“The law says that anyone installing, managing or operating multi-line telephone systems may not install manage or operate such a system unless it is configured such that the user can directly initiate a 911 call. This applies to anyone installing, manufacturing, first selling or leasing two years after the date of enactment of the act.” (http://www.govtech.com/)

Broadband Office Solutions (BBO) had eliminated the need for 9 prefix in dialing an outside line many years prior to the Kari Law. Our systems were designed to access an outside line as soon as you pick up the phone’s receiver. Organizations with older PBX systems, would have to go through the process of reprogramming their systems in order to be compliant with the new federal mandate.

Broadband Office Solutions (BBO) can assist companies interested in making their business phone system compliant with the new federal requirements. Please give us a call at 855-BBO-6100 for a free consultation or visit us at www.bbosolutions.com

The post Broadband Office Solutions & Kari’s Law No More “9” Prefix to Dial 911 appeared first on Broadband Office Solutions .

How Robocalls are negatively impacting your business

mwalker@brandedmind.com (Marvis Walker) — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 19:31:06 GMT

"Robocalling has doubled since from 2.2 million in 2013 to over 4.5 million calls in 2017"

- New York Times

In the past, if a toll-free number was calling my phone I was led to believe it was a telemarketer’s call in an attempt to sell me a product/ service. This system at the time was my foolproof call screening method. Due to the constant evolution of the Internet, this method can no longer be used as a barometer for making decisions on what calls I should or should not answer. Over the last several months, I have received calls from numbers starting with the area code 917, 914, 718, 347, and 516 where if you are a resident of the state of New York, these area codes are quite familiar to you. I assumed that whenever I saw calls coming from these area codes they were from legitimate sources in an attempt to reach me for something of importance. I have answered numerous calls with this misconceptions, only to constantly say “Hello, Hello” with no one replying.

The New York Times recently published an article stating “ The Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the Do Not Call Registry , said there were 4.5 million complaints about robocalls in 2017, more than double the 2.18 million complaints logged in 2013.” That’s nearly 18 spam calls for every person.

Broadband Office Solutions (BBO) a VoIP business phone service in Great Neck, New York stated they have been studying this trend for several years and has made great progress in solving this issue. They posted that Robocalls are not only set up as a system for companies to sell products but is also used for more malicious reasons as well. The numbers are acquired and place in an auto-dialing system to randomly call recipients. They went on to state that the first call is usually a test to see if the number being called is an active one.

Broadband Office concluded that the most effective way of resolving this issue is to work in tandem with their customer base. BBO’s C.E.O. Stan George stated that BBO’s distinction from many carriers is that they work closely with their customer base to isolate the issues by looking at their customers calling data to see and predict patterns. This data is then entered into a system that filters numbers that are being used to spam the businesses phones which if allowed can cost the company hundreds of dollars in monthly recurring expenses. He also stated that BBO in conjunction with their partner carrier will begin blocking calls beginning October 2018.

Unallocated: Any calls that contain a phone number in the ANI from a field that has not yet been assigned from North America numbering plan.

Alpha-Numeric: Any calls that contain letters and/or alpha-numeric in the ANI/ From Field
Invalid: Any calls that contain a character string of digits or letters that do not fully comply with the E.164 formatting and the local exchange routing guide (LERG)

The post Rise Of ROBO Calls How Robocalls are negatively impacting your business appeared first on Broadband Office Solutions.

The Benefits of a Distributed Call Center (DCC) For Multi-Location Health Practices

mwalker@brandedmind.com (Marvis Walker) — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 19:31:03 GMT

Right Care Health Services, an expanding multi-location practice has made attempts to find a cost-effective way to address their high call volume at their busy locations. This issue is more intensified during the busy hours and lunch breaks. Many of the calls go unanswered and ends up in voice mail. Practice Manager, Jesse suggested hiring another receptionist; however, due to the budgetary constraint that was not an attainable solution.

This scenario is common amongst many healthcare providers. Clinics with a high call volume suffer, adversely affecting the loss of revenue and a decrease in patient retention.

After evaluating Right care’s staff scheduling and workflow, BBO’s engineers were able to design a tailored call flow utilizing our Open Cloud – Distributed Call Center (DCC). The idea behind a DCC is to design a system that takes various factors and conditions into consideration.

The call flow design allows Right Care to distribute the calls throughout Right care branches or their various departments. This would increase the practice’s answered call rate exponentially and ensure consistent human presence on all calls.