By now, you have probably heard about all the fantastic advantages that VOIP offers over traditional telephone services. For small and medium businesses there is simply no better option than switching to a VoIP phone system. The long term savings brought by VoIP Technology are already a huge incentive to make the move, yet the benefits do not stop there.
Your top-of-the-line VoIP system, either based on the Cloud or on-premises, can actually do more than what you might expect and bring huge cost-efficiency. Its mobility, functionality, and exceptional open-source nature has defined the communications of the future.
In this article, discover 10 fabulous things a modern VoIP phone system can do for you.
1. Have a Local Number for International Presence
Organizations nowadays are moving beyond the boundaries and are expanding to make a global footprint. Making global VoIP calls is about as inexpensive as it gets. You can also embrace the added advantages of having “global local numbers”. The advanced DID (Direct Inward Dialing) feature of a VoIP system allows you to own a virtual local number that can actually be reached from callers in other countries.
If you do a lot of business in Malaysia, for example, you can buy a local number that serves as your caller ID and support your Malaysian customers with a virtual local presence when you are in the United States. VoIP, in essence, allows you to have a local presence anywhere in the world and no matter where you are.
2. Take Your Number with You
Voice over Internet Protocol, as the name suggests, VoIP only requires an internet connection to function, which means that you can practically take your business extension anywhere. This could be handy for on-the-go workers who need to keep their business identity while keeping personal numbers private.
On top of that, VoIP apps that coordinated with a VoIP system can turn just about any devices into simply offsite extensions of a business phone system. Simply by using a laptop, desktop, or smartphone, you can easily take advantage of your office extension features, make and receive business calls via company phone line regardless of your locations. Productivity will no longer suffer from being away from the office building.
3. Build Your Brand from the First Touch
As a business owner, you are likely to keen on providing exceptional quality at every customer touchpoint. And one of the very first points a customer may come across is your telephony services, be it IVR, music on hold, or voice prompts. Customized greetings and voice direction attract and retain guests while building brand loyalty.
A modern VoIP system allows you to upload and deploy your own brand voice to add depth, warmth, and personality to your automated voice prompts. A clear message combined with a specific tone or background music, for instance, a carol background for a Christmas holiday announcement, will surely resonate with your audience and improve your customer satisfaction.
4. Unfold Customer Insights Upon a Call
Your telephone system should not function to merely make and receive calls. It can be integrated with key business applications to increase productivity and enhance the overall customer experience. A great example is the integration of Yeastar Linkus Unified Communications App with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamic 365 CRM.
VoIP CRM integration provides businesses with a powerful cross-channel platform to unite data, context, and conversation. It improves the quality of customer interactions by automatically delivering pertinent information along with each call. When properly integrated, a “screen pop” upon a call can provide a holistic view of the customer. The information unfolded might include basic caller information, call logs, keynotes, and others depending on the CRM platforms you use.
5. Empower Real-time Team Collaboration
If your phone system is capable of unified communications, great news! You are then equipped with extensive tools to fuel real-time team collaboration. A robust UC system joins the enterprise-grade IP telephony, messaging, presence, and file-sharing technologies in one single platform and provides dynamic ways for team communications, which is often to do with a value-added desktop/mobile application for a VoIP phone system.
For instance, UC application like Linkus for Yeastar Cloud PBX and S-Series VoIP PBX (on-premises) makes it easy for users to start a group chat and share file no matter where they are. The additional benefits of the enterprise directory and presence status also strengthen team collaboration by allowing users to easily know if their colleagues are available and what is the best way to contact them.
Figure 1. Yeastar Linkus Desktop VoIP Softphone for Easy Collaboration Anywhere
6. Offer Audio Proof Where Necessary
The ability to record and listen to calls is a total game-changer for sales and support services, which can be a valuable asset to retrieve vital messages, mediate disputes, and comply with industry regulations. Typically, a VoIP phone system offers a call recording feature and does not require extra applications. You can also have fine-grained control over who can record calls, under what circumstances, and whether or not to include a voiceover that informs all parties about the recording. All it takes is to turn on a setting on your PBX or press a button in your phone applications. With user-friendly interfaces, the retrieval of recording files is also made as easy as pie on your PBX system. You can easily playback or even download your recording files to provide necessary proof or materials for your calls wherever and whenever necessary.
7. Deliver Easy Agent Coaching
To ensure a consistent level of customer service, new agent training is inevitable, especially in call center services. While the training and orientation applied before an agent is hired should provide adequate preparation, call monitoring offers an ongoing easy means to continue agent coaching. With the call monitor feature of your PBX, managers can easily assist new agents by providing coaching on live calls with customers. While the new agent is able to hear the managers, the customer does not. This feature allows managers to guide new agents through real interactions, delivering a worthwhile training experience.
8. Make Your Website Come to Life
Have you ever seen web pages with “call me” buttons on? It’s a great way for businesses to build a customer-oriented experience and can be realized by the advanced API of your phone system. By properly connecting your web page with your telephone system via specific APIs, you can put a VoIP “call me” button on your website and let your customer’s input automatically initiate a call from your PBX system.
Another method to embed communications into the web interface is to set up WebRTC click to call. For instance, with Yeastar Cloud PBX WebRTC click-to-call feature, you will be able to enable click-to-dial services on your website without additional plugins or software.
9. Save Your Time and Investment
A top-notch phone system can save your time and money in system administration and maintenance. With intuitive GUI, your system administrator can manage your phone system easily with quick and obvious settings. The installation can be made easy and fast as well as the plug-and-play capability and auto-provisioning. With auto-provisioning, a large number of telephone sets can be remotely configured and upgraded concurrently, drastically decreasing the IP phone deployment time and making ongoing management possible.
10. Offer Essential Failover and Business Redundancy
Even in a small organization, a phone system failure can have immediate and hurtful consequences. That’s where failover solutions come into place. In event of an emergency or system outrage, your business’s essential VoIP PBX system can be backed up with a resilient hot standby, where a redundant PBX server mirrors your primary phone system in real-time and take over instantly upon failure of the primary PBX. This minimizes business downtime and prevents potential business loss.
On top of that, in case of short disruption in Internet service, a pre-configured 4G LTE failover on your PBX can provide immediate, cost-effective, alternate connections when your primary internet connection is lost.
11. Voice Enable Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a world-leading collaboration and productivity tool that provides its users an easy approach to communicate and collaborate with co-workers and engage with clients and customers at any time, from anywhere across the globe, and on any device of their choice, as long as there is internet access.
Bridging the gap for remote work, Microsoft Teams jumps 70% to 75 million daily active users. There are normally 2 ways to voice-enable Microsoft Teams. One is to enable the Phone System and Calling Plan in Microsoft Team natively, and the other is to use SBC direct routing to connect your phone system to Microsoft Teams.
Yeastar VoIP PBX: Your All in One Business Phone System
Easy to use, reliable and feature-rich, the award-winning Yeastar S-Series VoIP PBX (on-premises) and Cloud PBX are designed for businesses like yours. With all-inclusive features, they allow you to take advantage of Unified Communications(UC) and enjoy easy communications anywhere anytime with included Linkus softphone. The inclusive rich API, easy interoperability with 3-party systems, whether CRM, call center, hotel PMS, or other business-critical applications, cater for your specific needs while delivering smart communications. Just take time to dig deeper and learn more benefits it brings.
Related: 5 Reasons Why You Need a Business Phone System in Your Company
