Celebrating Mitel’s Phone Innovation on Telephone Tuesday
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4 Blogs.MinuteRead
Every Telephone Tuesday, businesses and government organizations around the country light up with extra phone traffic as school returns to session and vacationers return to work. The day after Labor Day is historically the busiest day of the year for phone agents, with an average of 34% more inbound calls. While it might not have caught on as a national holiday, it’s one of our favorite days here at Mitel. Since we were founded over 50 years ago, we’ve built our reputation as innovators in business communications.
From our first circuit boards to the latest high-tech collaboration tools, Mitel has always been a pioneer in the telephone industry. Over the past half-century, we’re proud to have contributed so many “firsts” to the history of telephones, including these highlights.
1971: Michael Cowpland and Terrence Matthews founded the Mitel (short for MIchael and Terry ELectronics) Corporation in Ontario, Canada, putting together high-tech printed circuit boards for telephone switches.
We’re not even close to being done yet! Mitel’s engineers are hard at work coming up with game-changing new ideas daily. You can check out some of their latest work in this blog post about Mitel’s annual Innovation Day.
Of course, we aren’t creating all these world-first inventions just for innovation. We develop cutting-edge products so our customers can make the crucial connections they need to move the world forward.
Here are just a few ways Mitel phones make a difference every day.
In a healthcare environment, efficient and timely communications can mean the difference between life and death. Mitel phones can be found on nursing stations throughout hospitals around the world.
One feature that sets Mitel’s phones apart for healthcare providers is their large number of programmable keys for one-touch speed dial and other telephony features. Having numerous dedicated buttons to facilitate vital communications is ideal for nursing stations, where quick access to required personnel and departments is crucial.
Providing a clean environment is also paramount in healthcare settings, and Mitel’s pioneering antimicrobial IP desk and cordless phones are ideally suited to maintaining hygiene standards in every workplace.
With the heightened concern for student and staff safety in today’s world, effective communications throughout school facilities have become paramount. Mitel’s phones are found in some of the largest K-12 school districts in America, including Chicago Public Schools and the New York Board of Education.
From the classroom to the front office, Mitel phones provide the tools for administrators, students, and teachers to stay connected. Users in education can quickly sign up for classes, log on for virtual learning, and make important calls during emergencies.
Look behind the front desk of most hotels in North America (and elsewhere around the globe), and you’ll find a Mitel phone hard at work. The front desk of any hotel is the critical point of interaction with guests, whether checking in or answering requests for wake-up calls or extra pillows.
Mitel’s console and desk phones have been the workhorse of many hotels worldwide, facilitating excellent customer service by providing practical communications tools for interacting with guests and fulfilling their requests. They’re also doing important work behind the scenes, helping back-office staff keep hotel operations running smoothly.
The ongoing balance of home and office working will drive the evolution of the traditional desk phone. Companies must address the unique challenges of hybrid work and changes to business settings, which continue to develop even now.
“In the future, we can expect to see a focus on driving higher quality audio with more advanced audio codecs and new background noise filtering capabilities,” predicted Peter Couse, Portfolio Manager of Desktop and Wireless Endpoints.
“Interworking with PC-based video collaboration will also become a key aspect of the future phone,” he added. “The phone will look more like a PC peripheral than a standalone communications device.”
The rise of work-from-home has also driven phone design to be less business-like and more home office-friendly. No longer associated solely with suits and board rooms, the tools to make conference calls need to be accessible anywhere the user happens to be.
Even the phones we see in in-person settings like hospitals, schools, and hotels reflect the shift to a more flexible work style. With multifunctional apps and cloud connectivity, they may function more like our personal devices rather than traditional office hardware.
On Telephone Tuesday (and every other day), the sound of Mitel phones ringing is a reminder of the pioneering contributions we’ve made to the field of communications and the many ways they’re used daily. Most importantly, we’re looking forward to seeing what the future of telephones holds – and we’ve got a few ideas on how to make that happen!
Categories: Business Phones