It’s no secret good communication is essential for businesses. Solid lines of communication bolster productivity, morale, and customer satisfaction, and VoIP features are an essential part of that.
In our last blog post, we gave a quick overview into why your business should switch to VoIP.
We mentioned a few features like call conferencing and virtual receptionist. Those features only scratch the surface. NUSO VoIP unified communications systems help companies stay connected better by making communication easier.
Here are some of the best VoIP features for growing businesses:
Music on Hold
VoIP technology is changing the way businesses communicate. One way VoIP improves businesses is by providing a variety of music on hold options.
Music on Hold can help solidify your brand, help boost sales, or even calm upset callers. While this feature is not new to business phone, NUSO allows for enhanced functionality. For example, you can select a music track or create your own. You can also play different tracks at different times of the week/day.
You’ll want to take care in choosing the right music for your brand. Let’s say you have a dentist office. You should avoid anything with intense cadences and pick a soothing tune to keep potentially nervous clients calm. You don’t have to stick to just one song either, you can have an entire playlist, so callers enjoy variety.
Music on hold is not limited to music. This feature also includes recorded messages to play helpful information while callers wait. Just like you can have a playlist of songs to play, your company can also record several different messages to play while on hold. If a customer calls the billing department, you can play a message with the department’s hours or accepted payment methods. Whether you play music or recorded messages, you can also add a message to let the customer know the estimated wait time.
Call Monitor, Whisper and Barge
This trio of features improves the customer service experience in real-time. The first tool, Call Monitoring, monitors between the representative and customer. Instead of listening to a recording, managers can listen in on the live call. As a manager, you may want to check in to make sure your employee is following company protocol and standards.
Call Whispering allows the supervisor to check in and talk directly to the agent without the caller hearing a word. This helpful feature is great when the agent may not be ready to handle a certain type of call. As a manager, you can discreetly provide direction to put the call back on track.
The third option is Call Barge. This is a powerful feature for difficult phone situations. Pretend there’s an irate caller on the line. Your agent picks up the phone. The agent and customer speak. But as you monitor the call, the caller is just growing more agitated.
Since you’ve been listening to the call from the start, you take over. Essentially, this is now a three-way call with yourself, the agent, and customer.
Call monitor, whisper, and barging are important real-time training tools. They give supervisors the ability to listen to calls discreetly and help in escalating situations.
Call Recording
Call Recording makes sure you never miss an opportunity to improve. Call Recording enables your business to make smart decisions based on interactions of your customers, agents, and partners. With Call Recording, you can analyze, archive, and share calls for training purposes.
Our Call Recording works in two ways. First, all calls can automatically be recorded when answered or dialed. This eliminates missing or not capturing important information. Second, call recording can be initiated by selecting a button on our on-screen dashboard. This is great for those employees who only need to record certain calls.
Once activated, all incoming and outgoing calls are encoded as a voice data file.
Automatically recording calls through your VoIP phone system is easy to set up. Once in place, you can access all your company’s calls through your dashboard. With Call Recording, you can playback positive and negative interactions so you can teach your staff how to handle any situation. This will increase customer satisfaction and improve employee confidence.
Voicemail to Email with Transcription
Voicemail to Email Transcription is a feature that automatically transcribes your incoming voicemail into a readable email. Even if you’re away from the phone, you can still read your voicemail on any computer or smart device. Our voicemail transcription service conveniently sends your voicemail to you with all the necessary information like time of call and the phone number of the caller.
This feature has several benefits. Read voicemails when you’re in a meeting or can’t take a call. Keep a record of voicemails for your CRM or lead generation system. Visually scan your email to locate the voicemails instead of calling into your phone and wasting time pressing buttons and listening to non-essential messages.. Voicemail to Email Transcription makes managing your communication simple.
Hunt Groups
The Hunt Group feature efficiently distributes incoming calls to make sure your employees don’t get overwhelmed with calls giving each team member the chance the answer the call.
Hunt Groups direct incoming calls to a specific group of extensions allowing for an available user in the group to answer the call. We can configure your hunt groups to ring all numbers in a group at once or to ring in a certain, customizable order.
As an example, think about an accounting department with five employees. The accounting hunt group phones all ring at once so whoever picks up first answers the call.
In a sales department, you may want to make the flow of incoming calls fairer. Hunt Groups can also be configured to ring in a specific order, so every sales rep has a chance to answer.
Call Presence
Presence is a feature describing the “status” of the user. Your employees display their availability through the VoIP system. Example statuses include:
- Available or Online
- Busy or Offline
- On the Phone
- Do Not Disturb
This small feature has big benefits. Suppose the VP is in a sales call and doesn’t want to be disturbed. With Call Presence, his status will appear as “On the Phone”. This feature indicates to other employees when you’re available to communicate through phone, email, or chat.
Call Presence is a serious time saver. Instead of hoping a coworker on another floor is available to chat about a project, you can see in real-time if they’re on the phone or busy.
