It is common in modern homes these days to find that there isn’t a physical phone installed. Rather, people are opting to rely solely on their mobile phone. However, should the same be the case in businesses? Is it time do away with the desk telephone? There are of course advantages for retaining the physical phone in the workplace but this will depend largely on the nature of the business itself. In some organisations, the entire working day may be spent at a desk without any requirement for staff to be contactable outside normal hours, so a landline phone makes sense. Take another company, where employees spend a lot of time away from the office and are spread over several locations, and the challenge is to keep them connected. Relying solely on a desk phone will render this impossible. Tempting as it is to think the best answer is to switch entirely to mobile, there are much more suitable solutions that provide fully-integrated communications that improve not only operational efficiency but vastly enhance the customer experience. Utilising advances in technology coupled with the internet can allow organisations to manage all their communications as a single unit, rather than an array of phones and other devices. Using a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system, business users can use any device under their control, be it a mobile, tablet or laptop, to make a call as if they were using their desk phone. They can also choose to do so using a single telephone number. We are already used to sending an email from a single address but from a variety of devices – now we can do the same with a phone number. There are significant pros for inbound calls also. Rather than clients...
How often have you heard someone in business say ‘I use my mobile for everything’ and then ask whether or not they really need a telephone system at all? It’s certainly one of the most common points of discussion when I meet with perspective clients, particularly those operating at a micro or small business level. And in an era of the smart phone and what appears to an infinite number of applications, it is of course a fair question. There are a number of important considerations to be made before arriving at an answer, however. For instance, do you and those in your business make many outbound calls, and do you often share calls with more than one person? Further, do you have a requirement to maintain a record of the calls you make, or are made to you, and do your sales depend on a single number? If the answer to all these questions is no, then a number management system could be considered. Such a system, which is particularly suited to smaller businesses, enables a telephone number or set of phone numbers to be hosted in the cloud to be routed to any set of phone numbers or other IP devices. What does this mean for businesses? First of all, it may take a shift in thinking about what the function of the telephone number is. A telephone number could be considered a digital address for the business – similar to an email or website address. Then how do you want calls to that number – and your business – to be managed? Take the example of a plumber operating from their van with just a mobile phone. He or she can only take calls when they are physically present with the phone, but what happens when they miss a call, or receive voice mails or perhaps emails that go...
In recent times the trend of allowing or encouraging employees to use their devices at work has become increasingly popular for a variety of reasons, including potential increases in productivity and reduced cost to business. Companies should however assess whether the benefits of a ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) policy outweigh the risks. It has been claimed that the most considerable benefit of BYOD is an increase in productivity. This is largely owing to the fact that employees are already familiar with their own phones, tablets or laptops, meaning there is no learning curve when they start working off their device. Most people take their phone everywhere with them. If an employee is using their own phone for work this means they can essentially work from anywhere. The more flexible and mobile your employees, the better they can maintain a competitive edge. Another benefit, especially to small business, is the reduced cost that comes with a BYOD policy. Instead of having to pay for multiple devices that employees do not need or want, the business need only pay for the mobile phone plan of each employee. Conversely, the risks associated with BYOD can be significant and security is a key concern. Due to their portable nature, devices such as phones, tablets and laptops can be very easy to leave behind or have stolen. Once out of an employee’s hands, not even encrypted date or device locking passwords can keep experienced hackers out. This leaves company data vulnerable and confidential information can be compromised. Another risk is reputational damage. If an employee is found to be posting or accessing any...
As the range of available communication options expands, many businesses are returning to more familiar, mobile communication methods similar to SMS or ‘text’ messaging. Business text messaging is one way that companies can adapt to suit their customers’ busy schedules and preferences, and can be part of an overall telecommunications service, whether relying on traditional or internet-based phone solutions. Texting is a quick and easy way to communicate and solve a problem as agents can often respond to customer texts faster than they can to live calls. Text messages have a higher opening rate than any other mode of communication. If your customers are opening the message, at least 90% of them are reading it. Thus, text messaging can make it easier for you to reach out to customers. It may seem like any new way of doing business is restricted to large businesses with sizeable budgets, but small businesses and text messaging are a great fit. SMS is an affordable, efficient and convenient way to contact clients and can be used to improve your customer service, no matter how many or few people work for your company. There’s no complicated interface when dealing with mobile-to-mobile messaging. Just a message and a recipient. Many businesses may worry that this practice is intrusive or unprofessional, though it is rarely viewed that way. The biggest issue businesses have with using text messaging for customer service is that texts are perceived as personal. This concern may be justified when text messages are used for mass marketing. However, business text messaging for customer service is personal due to the one-on-one nature of the conversations between customers and...
Ask any businessperson what they view as the most important factor when choosing new technology or telecoms solutions and more often than not, they’ll say reliability. After all, having the latest technology at your disposal would be totally useless to any company if it does not actually function when required. Solutions that fail to provide reliability will, rather than improving your business, end up incurring additional costs through unplanned downtime, missed leads, and dissatisfied customers. When it comes to choosing a phone system, reliability becomes all the more important. That’s one reason why increasing numbers of businesses are turning to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) solutions. No longer a new service – and fast becoming the business standard – VoIP now provides a mature and stable option for commercial telecommunications. The plethora of additional features available on a VoIP system meanwhile, such as automatic call forwarding and voicemail to email, mean it can actually be considerably more reliable than a traditional landline, should a problem with the connection occur. Of course, as VoIP relies on the internet, the stability of the system is tied to the dependability of your broadband connection. However, given the tremendous reliability of modern internet connections, this shouldn’t be a concern and it will be boosted further by ensuring the internal communications infrastructure of your business is fully up to date. It is worth, therefore, carrying out a full audit of the physical lines and cables within your business premises to ensure they are of the requisite standard to fully realise the benefits of a new telephony system. That said, even the most advanced solutions can require downtime to enable...
As consumers and businesses, we are producing and sharing more data than ever before, from personal details to information such as when and how we interact with each other. For businesses, collecting this data is so simple it can accumulate automatically without any concerted effort on the part of the company itself. How that information is used by the organisation is more complex however, and requires a strategic vision and plan that, if implemented effectively, can significantly improve operational efficiencies. When it comes to our business telephone systems, we can now find out precisely how our customers interact with us and how we respond to them. You’ll often have been told your conversation with a call centre or customer service line is being recorded for training purposes. Such recordings are commonplace and provide an important function for the business by revealing, for example, where some employees may require additional coaching or how customers respond when engaging with staff. Analysing the number of calls received meanwhile can help to identify any spikes in activity, either high or low, and determine whether these are recurring. This information can enable managers to amend staffing levels, ensuring adequate call handlers are available during peak times and fewer when they are not needed. The result is that clients or potential customers are less likely to experience long call waiting times and therefore enjoy a positive service experience. Call spikes may unearth deeper issues other than staff timetabling however so it is worth not just analysing the time period of the peak but considering the nature of the calls as well. For example, queries spiking...
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