Carolina Digital Phone is proudly celebrating 20 years of providing state-of-the-art cloud-based telecommunications solutions and dedicated local customer service to businesses, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions in North Carolina and across the nation.Commented Nicky Smith, Carolina Digital Phone’s Founder and CEO: “When we first opened our doors, cloud-based telecommunication solutions were still relatively new, and so we spent a lot of time working closely with our customers to provide education and support their success. Even though we have grown tremendously since then, we still have the same commitment to delivering exceptional customer service. It’s in our DNA as...

Some businesses that want to reap the many advantages of switching from a conventional landline telephone to a cloud telephone system — such as saving thousands of dollars a year, connecting their remote workforce, seamless scalability, business continuity, and the list of goes on — are nevertheless hesitant to do so, because they fear that audio quality will suffer. This perception is understandable. Oversubscribed VoIP services like Skype and Google Voice are notorious for static, echo and dropped calls. There are just too many users. Think of it like a hospital designed to serve a region of 100,000 people, instead trying...

A well-established tenet is that it’s unwise to mix business and politics. However, there are exceptions to most rules, and this is one such instance because this article is about both business and politics. To start with, when it comes to politics, we are living in a very confusing and contradictory age. Despite the proliferation of political news and commentary that takes place around us 24/7, as a nation we are drifting further and further away from anything resembling thoughtful, political discourse. Personally, I don’t think this is because we spend too much time talking (and arguing) about politics. Rather, I...

These days, the word “revolutionized” gets thrown around rather loosely. It’s used to describe everything from kitty litter, to air fresheners, to apps that can help find a lost TV remote control (OK, that’s pretty useful, but revolutionary?).  However, there are situations when labeling something revolutionized isn’t fluff and hype: it’s an honest, objective assessment because it has re-invented a concept and established a new category of excellence and expectation. And without question, one such scenario is cloud telephone systems.  Here are five ways that cloud telephone systems have revolutionized business communications: 1. Cloud Telephone Systems Enable Small Businesses to Look and Act...

The year was 1991. The nation’s movie lovers flocked to see Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear (and after demanding their money back, took in The Silence of the Lambs). In pop music, C&C Music Factory promised to make us sweat, Madonna pledged to justify her love, and Bonnie Raitt gave us all something to talk about. In the IT world, Linus Torvalds (no, not the guy from Peanuts waiting for the Great Pumpkin) launched the Linux operating system kernel, while Bill Gates and friends released MS-DOS 5.0. And something else happened in 1991 that changed, well, everything:...

While strategic marketing and advertising are effective ways of reaching new customers, nothing is as powerful or profitable as good, ol’ fashioned word-of-mouth referrals. Consider these eye-opening statistics: Customers acquired through word-of-mouth referrals have a 37% higher retention rate vs. non-referrals. (Source: Deloitte) Customers acquired through word-of-mouth referrals are worth 16% more in profits vs. non-referrals. (Source: Harvard Business Review) Customers acquired through word-of-mouth referrals have an 18% lower churn rate vs. non-referrals. (Source: GfK Marketing Intelligence Review) Clearly, one doesn’t need an MBA to know that increasing word-of-mouth referrals is good — or make that great — for business, and...