Technology may not have yet built a better mousetrap, but it continues to make it easier to serve your customers, increase employee productivity and help your business run more efficiently. IP telephony has revolutionized the telecommunications capabilities of companies in a way that allows anyone to remain competitive on a global scale. However, there are some lesser-known features that go beyond basic call waiting and teleconferencing, and they’ll allow you to step up your customer service game.
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Call Reporting/Analysis
This feature allows you to apply one of the most essential business functions – data analysis – to your phone system. Call reporting can analyze calling data both over a specific time period and live, and help you automatically deploy your resources during times when they’re most needed, or scale them back when use is lower. Redirecting your resources when you’re on a hosted system eliminates lag times and bandwidth overloads, and helps provide more efficient service overall. It also aids with staffing by showing you at a glance when you’re most likely to need all hands on deck.
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Follow Me/Find Me Call Routing
This huge benefit is tailor made for the new mobile workforce. In conjunction with the ability to assign local numbers anyplace in the world without racking up international phone charges, in addition to giving you the ability to assign a personal phone number to each member of your team without adding separate lines, hosted VoIP service also provides a feature that redirects calls to any number instead of sending an unanswered call straight to voice mail. This means that even if a staff member is working from home or is on the road, they’re always reachable. All they need to do is program a list of numbers in the order of preference, and the feature takes it from there.
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Auto Attendant
This feature provides a new spin on virtual call centers that allows callers to interact with an intuitive voice menu system that sends calls to the correct extension instead of continually redirecting the call. It also allows calls to be redirected to call centers in different time zones, and it gives you employees the ability to re-route their calls to any VoIP-enabled device, including tablets, smartphones and laptops.
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Call Coaching
You might want to refer to this feature as The Sales Whisperer, and it’s an invaluable feature for helping sales or customer support staff members who are having trouble dealing with a customer. There are two aspects to this feature: Barge and Whisper. One allows you to break into an ongoing call and listen without interrupting the call, and the other will give you the ability to coach your staff member while the call is in progress without the customer knowing about it. This is not only a good rescue feature, it’s also great to use during the training phase for sales staff or call center crew members.
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Voice Mail to Email
This is an automatic transcription feature for those times when you’ve missed a call despite your best efforts. It will send an alert and a full transcription of your voice mails to your inbox so you’ll know immediately when you have a message. That way you can read the voice mail at your leisure, and you won’t have to keep replaying your messages if you miss important information on the first listen. It also allows you to have documentation of your voice mails.
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Line Expansion
Because all of your telecommunications are powered via your broadband connection, you have an almost unlimited ability to expand your business and add new lines without having to install new hardware or infrastructure, or paying additional charges. Since your service is hosted, you also don’t have to worry about maintenance or upgrades, because they’re usually included as part of the service.
No matter what, customer satisfaction is king, and your phone system is often your first point of contact. Whether it’s through help desk support, sales calls or reservations systems, poor quality telecommunications reflect badly on you and your business. Hosted PBX solutions offer the small business owner a way to compete on a higher level without having to put forth a huge financial or human resource investment. You simply choose a provider who has a plan that’s within your budget and includes the features you need. All that’s left for you to do is enjoy improved telecommunications and customer service capabilities without the administrative hassles.