Chicomm Blog

As we’re starting a new year, it’s a good time to ask yourself – and your agency: Is our command center stuck in the past? Your center has countless moving parts, all of which need to be properly maintained, serviced and upgraded. But budget concerns, higher-profile priorities and a shortage of resources may mean your upgrades keep getting put on the back burner.

The beginning of a new year offers the opportunity to put your command center front and center. Here are 5 new year’s resolutions to strengthen your command center:

Two-way radios are continuing to evolve in exciting ways as more industries and agencies discover their superiority over cell phones – yes, even smartphones – for both everyday use and emergencies. When it comes to durability, reliability and clarity, two-way radios are better than cell phones on all counts.

We’ve had our eye on a few trends for two-way radios over the last year, particularly expanded offerings in terms of size, use cases and even color. So here are some predictions for two-way radios to watch in 2017:

Your legacy workforce management system probably isn’t just one system – it’s a series of disparate solutions that don’t talk to each other, don’t offer real-time updates and, worse yet, actually make it more difficult for staff across your office, plant or warehouse to communicate.

If you’ve just been putting up with your workforce management system’s shortcomings or haven’t shopped around for a while, you may not realize how stuck in the past your plant or office operations have become or what new, economic options are available.

To help decide whether you could use an update, here are 5 signs of an outdated workforce management system.

The best mobile apps for customer service will take you even farther toward putting your entire business or operation in the palm of your hand, allowing you and your team to remotely track, answer and resolve customer service issues in real time. As you’re well aware, exceptional customer service can be that special something that puts you ahead of the competition, so being responsive and available is key.

Luckily, the best cloud and on-premise customer service platforms offer mobile versions for handling on the go. Most offer similar suites of capabilities for responding to customer calls, emails, social media inquiries and other contacts, so it’s worth giving several solutions a test drive for a free trial month to see which of them is the best fit for your team.

Once you get your mobile app up and running, you’ll wonder how you ran your business or operations without it. Here’s a sampling of the six best mobile apps for customer service:

To make the case for a BDA, or bi-directional amplifier, for your agency, start by painting a picture of life without dead zones. Imagine a world with no more spotty reception, no more half-heard or misheard conversations and no more standing by the windows yelling, “Can you hear me now?” There's no doubt that agencies wasted resources paying staff for down-time when they simply can't do their work because they can't connect.

The BDA solutions for cell phones and two-way radios are different, but the big benefits of both are the same: better, crystal-clear communications. As you’re working through your wireless communications wish list, here are some suggestions for how to make the case for a BDA at your agency. 

The health care industry has some of the most complex communications needs imaginable: in addition to the safety, security and privacy of patients and staff, the industry has mountains of patient data to handle and technology trends to track. 

There is no shortage of innovation in health care when it comes to communications, and things are getting more high-tech all the time for patients, health care professionals and staff.

Here’s a look at 6 things the health care industry is doing to improve communications.

As the end of the year approaches, how you spend your technology budget can impact not only your current communications operations, it can affect how much money is allocated to you next year. If you don’t use all of that money wisely this year, you likely won’t get an increase – or even as much – next year.

To preserve your technology budget and your ability to serve your organization, you need to make investments that show you’ve improved communications and overall efficiency. Fortunately, there are some great solutions available that serve a variety of wireless communications needs. 

Here are three savvy ways to spend your end-of-year technology budget. 

Public safety blogs are a great way to keep up on the latest trends in technology for first responders, the new upgrades that are available and the innovative ways that agencies are using communications to keep communities safe.

The best public safety blogs represent a variety of perspectives and geographies, and they’re written by everyone from police chiefs to telecommunications executives. Many are updated frequently to keep readers consistently informed about public safety issues, and some of the ones we’ve compiled may be helpful gems that you’ve previously overlooked.

As we look forward to the new year, here are six public safety blogs to read in 2017:

Official Blog of the International Association of Chiefs of Police

With new posts several times a week, the blog of the IACP features insights on various aspects of policing, from community engagement to the group’s Benchmarking and Analytics Tool. It’s a good place to learn about what kinds of interventions and technology other agencies are using and have found to be successful.

Manufacturing communications may be one of the most misunderstood parts of the diverse manufacturing vertical. People either underestimate the reliability and enhanced functionality of radios for manufacturing, or they don’t fully appreciate how effectively wireless communications can increase uptime, productivity and safety.

Given the dynamic needs of the sector, technology provided by one-way paging or cell phones just isn’t robust enough. Two-way radios and other wireless solutions are key.

With that in mind, here are the seven most misunderstood facts about manufacturing communications.

As your boss keeps reminding you, it’s your job to make sure wireless communication at your company, campus or property is something that no one is talking about because all is well: You’re effectively using communications to enhance safety and security, you don’t need to improve wireless communications with a stronger network and dead zones are a dead issue.

But if your communications are still a topic of conversation, there are solutions available.

Here are four things your boss wishes you knew: