I popped over to Lewis and Hickey Architects in Marylebone yesterday afternoon to have a chat with Ben Mareschal (he's the bloke on the right), who's reponsible for bringing Skype to their 40 strong London team.

Lewis and Hickey now use Skype for internal calls as well as phoning their clients. Instead of expensive land line calls to their Japanese client, for example, they use SkypeOut; if their clients are at their desks, they can transfer files without having to interrupt their conversations.

Interestingly, despite other employers' views to the contrary, Ben quite likes instant messaging:

> People used to rely on email, but with Skype you can get an immediate response to a query without disturbing the whole office — especially if you are using the instant chat feature.

And loves the conference call features:

> It gets used much more than our specialist system ever did, plus it’s free.

The third big selling point is cost — Lewis and Hickey have saved 7.6% on their total phone bill over the last six months, and over the next 3 years plan to reduce their costs by 50% by using Skype.

Of course, all of this came with very little risk — the team at Lewis and Hickey just had to download it, plug in a few headsets and give it a try. No contractey nonsense to sort out, no waiting to get set up, and no commitment.

Do you run a small business? Or do you use Skype at work? If so, I'd love to hear from you, whether your experiences are good or bad — your company could feature in a future blog post.