Customer Feedback on UC540W with SPA Handset

[David Trad]

Hi Cisco Team,

From time-to-time I request feedback from the clients after an install, usually about 5 days after it is installed, below is a capture of the questions asked and the feedback received, to which I hope we can work on together.

Q: How are you finding the system so far?

A: So Far so good, we are getting use to it however some people still say it’s hard to us and for us to hear them

NOTE: This is a reoccurring message from many clients where the SPA phones are installed, whilst cheaper the audio quality seems to also reflect the price which is a shame, they certainly do not look cheap, but their performances are when compared to other phones

Q: Ease of operation of the system?

A: Ease well something different so taking a bit to get ahold of, not seeing the incoming lines or being able to see lines on hold from another user etc.

NOTE: I understand this comes down to training as well and am mindful of this, but it shows though that moving from a KTS system to a PBX style system can be a major adjustment, the process is now to get them to stay the course and get used to the operation without me having to make major programming adjustments to the system to cater for the FXO lines as shared lines.

Q: Quality of the handsets you were sold?

A: Quality seems good time will tell

NOTES: The SPA handset quality I.E the weight of the handset and the build design seem to work well with customers, this is always a positive selling point.

Q: Voice quality of the calls both incoming & outgoing (This is measure the differences between Analogue lines and Digital lines such as ISDN/PRI service for our internal notes)

A: At this stage the voice in not as it was before it feels distance and people having trouble hearing us at times

NOTES: Again I will point out that this comes up with every single installation, it is clear the SPA phones have a long way to go in terms of voice quality, they are simply not comparable with the 7900 series phones.

Q: The functionality of Cisco Office Manager (If you see features that are missing and would be of benefit in it please list them)

A: I need to be able to update the side cart buttons and not sure how to do this , I would like to get it done straight away and for Tara as well

NOTES: This could be a "ME" issue as I simply cannot work out how to use it myself, I can only see small places where changes can be made, I cannot work out how to change buttons on a phone, have a button watch another extension or change that button to watch another extension, either I am missing something here or it just does not do it, it lacks a lot of configuration ability, in essence it was designed to replace the web GUI but yet does not cater for even 10% of what the web GUI can do, and because of that all the feedback we receive now is identical to this one, I now have to resort to giving them access to CCA and training them on how to use it so they can make the required changes to their system, simply put they had it with the web GUI but just do not have it now, which means we have to give them access to a configuration tool which they should not have access too... Let me stress this again, it is the same for every install, they all require the ability to control their systems even if they still wish to contract us for the adds/moves/changes they want the ability to make changes on the fly and common changes as well.

I will continue to keep taking sample surveys as internalley I find it important to measure my sucesss with the install and how I went with the training, I have taken some pretty bad criticisms from doing so but it has helped me immensley to improve on how i approach things like training and also the deployment process, so I figured it was time to maybe share this with Cisco so you can see some of the feedback which is received from the clients.

I am now 2 installs away from completing 300 UC deployments [Clarification: UC being UC500/300 and 2800/2900 series, and some are complete rebuilds not fresh installs... Should point that out], whilst hardly a milestone to go all yeehaw over, you can learn a fair bit in during this time, most importantly customer perception and product operations in the real world.

Is there a place we can provide this type of feedback or are these forums the appropriate place to do it so others can share their experience as well or even take heart in some of the feedback being received?

Cheers,

David.

[David Trad]

[UPDATE]

With further testing conducted with the client, we have narrowed down on the voice quality issue relating to the SPA phones.

• If using a Plantronics Bluetooth headset plugged into the SPA phone, there is no prevalent issue of audio quality
• If the user ensures that the handsets speak is directly in front of the users mouth there is no audio quality or it is recognized by the (B) end as much better
• If the user lowers the speaker of the phone down towards their Chin or lower the audio sounds like you are talking down a tunnel
• Cannot replicate or produce this issue with a 7900 series phone, this indicates that the receiver/microphone on the SPA handsets is not of the same quality as the 7900 series phone
• This is a well known issue with the former Linksys SPA-900 series phones, you could get around this by upping the gain on the system (Only ever did it with Asterisk cannot vouch for other systems) but this would produce unwanted reverb/echo so it was not much of a success

I do not know if this can be resolved by a firmware update, but the client last night did quote to me from Cisco's own marketing material listed up on their website for these specific phones, HD voice.... I have to say it is a far cry from this and there is only so much sugar coating one can do before the client says "Take the system away".

Please have your engineers inspect this issue, tests on our Lab system produced the same results, tests on a SPA phone connected to a UC320W is now also producing the same results and I now have a second client issuing the same complaints.

All SPA phones are operating on the latest firmware, all UC's are operating on their latest SW pack or firmware respectively, and on behalf of these clients I will make sure I do the right thing by them and see that this issue is resolved one way or another with Cisco, so here's to hoping we can sort this problem out

Cheers,

David.

[bill.roland]

Wow.  I had to make sure the respondant on this survey wasn't in my mind, because this would be almost exactly how I would have responded to each question.

Just to hit a couple of high points, I agree with your observations of the SPA series phones.  They look high end, but that's where it stops.  The pre 525Gs, anyway, are just sub-par to me.  We had 11 508Gs and the audio quality on all of them was very poor, and they suffer from some "interesting" glitches from time to time.  We have replaced them all with 7900 series phones, the difference is night and day.  My user satisfaction level has jumped an order of magnitude.  I kept the 525G's because the audio quality seems decent enough and they seem to work better than the 508Gs.  There is definitely nothing "high def" about the 508G's.  The 525G's sound ok to me, the 7900's sound great, I only wish CCA would let me turn on G722, at least for internal to internal calls so we could REALLY exerpience HD audio, but I digress at this point.

[David Trad]

[UPDATE]

Well this morning I plugged a couple of 7900 series handsets/hand pieces into the SPA phones (508, 509 & a 525G2) and conducted some internal tests (At client site who is a good friend) and a couple of tests over the ISDN line.

Results were outstandingly different, the audio quality was much higher and it is noticeable as well, you could hold the 7900 series handset a full arm length away, talk, and the other person would you hear you clearly.

So to clarify the test further we plugged back in the SPA handsets and carried out the exact same tests, the results were very "POOR" and just could not compete with the 7900 series phones.

So just to add insult to injury, I tried it using an LG-Ericsson hand piece and again the results were vastly different to the SPA hand piece (It is at this point I was feeling hopelessly lost). Just to be even more devilish decide to plug in two hand pieces from an Avaya handset... WOAH!!! They faired up almost identical to the 7900 series and in a couple of the tests showed better pickup... GAH!!!!! Right now I just didn't know what to think, I have become disconnected with what I have been evangelizing, I know now something is wrong.

I am seriously considering purchasing today some 7900 series hand pieces, but they look out of place with the VM light on it and also one on the phone itself, will have a chat with the client and see what they want and most likely the company director wouldn't agree to this anyway.

It is clear the problem is related to the hand peice and not the phone itself, using the headset (2.5m Jack) or Bluetooth shows no symptoms of audio issues.

I am thinking of pulling apart one of the SPA hand pieces and comparing it to a 7900 series one, I am interested to see if the hand pieces of the SPA phones are weighted to make them feel heavier or if indeed they do have a heavy speaker in them, and to also compare the receiver against a 7900 series hand piece.

I need to ask if any QA testing or LAB testing is conducted on the appliances before they are shipped? And also if spot checks are carried out on random batches? This completly out of the norm for Cisco, deep inside I know Cisco would not release hardware like this, and it could be something simple like bad batches, or is it too much blind faith in Cisco???

Cheers,

David.

[EDIT]

I forgot to point out that I do not recommend to anyone to do the above testing, I was conducting this with a friend who has been in the industry for a while and could modify the hand piece wiring of the LG and Avaya hand pieces to ensure they worked with the Cisco phones, plugging them in normal without modifications will just get you dead air....

[Steven DiStefano]

I reported this to the PM for the phone team.

He told me to ask you to open a case.

They will help you and can provide handset replacements if needed.

[David Trad]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for posting, haven't seen you on here in a while thought you might have gone on Holidays or something

Dave sent me an e-mail regarding this subject and I am in the process of logging a case, it is a little time consuming to do so I am just finding the right time to get it done and also for the client to give me a little more feedback.

NOTE: The replacement of all the handsets is a big undertaking and cost the company will have to bear, which will not make the director all too happy that I will have to spend quite a fair bit of time on it   To date I have been doing all the testing in my own time with the exception of some LAB tests, so I really have to be careful with coordinating this, if you can understand where I am coming from.

Cheers,

David.

[David Trad]

[UPDATE]

Case# 617733495

Has been created and all the handsets should be RMA'ed, the client is a little at ease now knowing that, although I am not looking forward to reprogramming all the handset but hey that's life right

Cheers,

David.

[Steven DiStefano]

What has to be reprogrammed?

[David Trad]

I have to change the MAC address of every single phone and do them one by one to avoid disrruption to the office... So was thinking just do it in CCA using the following methods (Please feel free to correct me if there is a better way).

• Unplug phone
• In CCA change the MAC address and wait for the dialogue to say it is done
• Plug the new phone in to replace the other one

This shoudl work right?

Or is there a better way to do this that I am not aware of???

Cheers,

David.

[Steven DiStefano]

i thought the handset is being rma'ed, not the whole phone?

[David Trad]

i thought the handset is being rma'ed, not the whole phone?

I promise you if that is the case I will do the potato dance

Gee I hope you are right

Cheers,

David.

[Steven DiStefano]

I prefer the "Potato Salad Triplets Dance" myself

And its because I have not found a way to get a phone to 'unregister' from CME without reloading the router.

The other steps you mention are good, but after unplugging and deleting, I think a reload is required and then rebuild.

Hence why we would rather not :-)

[David Trad]

Steve,

I prefer the "Potato Salad Triplets Dance" myself

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaate!!! You ask for way to much, how young do you think I am?????????????

And its because I have not found a way to get a phone to 'unregister' from CME without reloading the router.
The other steps you mention are good, but after unplugging and deleting, I think a reload is required and then rebuild.

This has been an issue since CME version 4.1 But there is a way to do it, you have to unplug the phone first wait 30-60 seconds, then remove the ephone and you can then reinstate the e-phone with a new MAC and "BOB's Your Uncle" she works

That little trick took me 2 weeks to work out, actually it was during the "CCC" EFT days when I was building one system using CLI and another using CCC, I was throwing pens at the wall and calling Dave Harper at the same time with my grievances... Those were the good old day... Errr actually that still happens

Well if it is just the hand peices being replaced I am real happy with that, it is something they can do witout me having to go out there to do it, I can assure you I will be crossing every thing I can cross on my body to make the problem go away when the new hand pieces arrive.

Anyway it is really good to see you posting again

Cheers,

David.