What are your business goals for 2020? For many businesses, increasing sales, lowering costs, and better serving their customers are three things on their list of goals in the new year.
One of the technologies that can help you achieve all three is a cloud-based VoIP phone system.
In the last decade or two, voice over internet protocol (VoIP) phones have gone from being a “cheap choice” to being not only a cost-saver, but also one that provides businesses with more customer-facing options for their phone system.
Features like hold music and dial-by-name directories are available for much less on a cloud-based system than used to be the case with large landline based phone set ups.
Businesses have been realizing that moving from analog phones to a VoIP system isn’t a step back to cut costs, it’s actually an upgrade in multiple ways (while still cutting phone costs!).
In 2017, there were approximately 1 billion mobile VoIP users, and that number is expected to triple to 3 billion by 2021.
Cloud-based phones have a lot to offer both in cost savings and your customer experience.
Customer Service and Cost Saving Benefits of Using VoIP
The experience a customer or prospect has when calling your business will be a deciding factor in whether they decide to buy. Not being able to get in touch with a live person or getting lost in an endless phone tree are both frustrations that can cause people to stop calling you altogether.
51% of customers will never do business with a company again after just one negative experience.
Having more options with your phone system that don’t cost you an arm and a leg, mean you can give your customers a better experience when they call you and help them get transferred to the right person faster.
Here are several ways you can improve customer support, grow your business, and lower costs in 2020 using a VoIP cloud PBX solution for your phone system.
Find Me/Follow Me Feature
Did you give your customer your desk number or mobile number? This is a common worry when you’re about to leave the office and are expecting an important call.
With a VoIP system, you don’t have to juggle numbers, your main desk number can follow you wherever you go and ring to your cell phone when you’re away from the office, so you never miss a call.
Reduce Your Phone Costs
You can lower your calling costs considerably in several areas when upgrading to a cloud PBX solution. Beyond just the international call savings, there’s less hardware to purchase and keep maintained and new businesses have a much lower cost for initial setup of VoIP than for a landline system.
Here are some of the estimated savings of switching to VoIP:
- 90% savings on international calls
- 40% savings on local calls
- 75% savings on operational costs
- 30% savings on phone bills
Auto-Attendant
An auto attendant can help route a customer to the person or department they need faster and can handle multiple callers at once with the same precision. They also ensure each caller receives the same cheery greeting when they call, no matter how stressful a day it’s been at your office.
Multiple Ways to Get Messages
You just got out of a long meeting and have five voicemails. You’re about to go into another meeting and need to quickly know which calls you need to address first. This can take a while if you have to listen to each of them, but with VoIP message handling options you don’t have to.
You can have voicemail transcriptions done by the system automatically so you can easily scan down the messages in moments. Your voicemails can also be sent to your email or smartphone via SMS.
Easier Conference Calls
Making conference calls with a cloud PBX VoIP system is easy by using audio conference bridges and call quality is crystal clear. This eliminates the need to sign up for an expensive conference service and makes it easy for everyone from different locations to join.
Group Pickup and Simultaneous Rings
If you have a caller that has a product question, the old “single ring” way of doing things would be for the receptionist to transfer them to one person on the team. If that person didn’t pick up, the caller went back to the receptionist who then had to try transferring them to someone else. A time-consuming and frustrating process for the caller.
VoIP offers features like group pickup and simultaneous rings, which would change the above scenario to something like this: A caller calls with a product question, the auto attendant transfers the call to the sales team – all the phones ring for the whole sales team, the first available person pickups up and the customer gets a much better experience.
Mobile Friendly
VoIP is mobile friendly and allows you to use your “desk line” from a cloud PBX handset, your computer, tablet, or smartphone. This makes call handling much more fluid and mobile-friendly, plus VoIP reduces costs for mobile carrier plans because you’re not using as many of those minutes.
Learn All the Advantages of Upgrading to a Cloud PBX System
We’ve just touched on a few of the advantages of upgrading to VoIP… there are many more! Connect2Geek is a proud SherWeb partner and can deliver simple and flexible VoIP solutions that fit any size business.
Schedule a free consultation to learn more by calling 208-468-4323 or contacting us online.