In our last blog post, we talked about several amazing VoIP features for your business.
Business VoIP features phone systems give SMB and enterprise organizations major advantages. Before VoIP’s prevalence, there was no simple, cost-effective way to connect employees and customers. Now VoIP empowers organizations of all sizes to communicate efficiently.
We had so much helpful information about VoiP, we decided to turn this topic into a two-parter. Without further ado, let’s jump into part two!
Only Pay for What You Use
VoIP is perfect for growing businesses. With VoIP, you only pay for the phone lines and features you need. Your business can easily add more lines as you grow or cancel lines you no longer use. There’s no guesswork trying to predict your future business needs. VoIP uses internet bandwidth to send and receive calls, making it a great, scalable option for business. Unlike other VoIP providers, NUSO’s services don’t diminish your internet speeds while you enjoy crystal-clear calls.
This a radical improvement from traditional phone lines. Traditional phone systems using PRI (Primary Rate Interface) lines were widely used starting in the 1980’s. PRI lines are largely sold in bundles of 23. This old system creates problems for companies needing flexibility.
A company with only 5 employees must pay for 23 lines. A larger business requiring 24 lines must buy a whole new PRI line bundle just to have one extra phone unit.
Business VoIP scales to your exact business requirements. Do you only need 10 lines? You only pay for 10 lines. Does your business ramp up in the summer and slow in the winter? VoIP supports adding phones during your busy season. When orders slow down, reduce your phone needs and let your provider know you no longer require those lines.
Virtual Receptionist
A Virtual Receptionist system is a must have VoIP feature for your business. This feature, also known as Auto-Attendant, saves time and money by completing the same tasks of a real receptionist.
Virtual receptionist provides a customized greeting along with scripted questions and answers. This feature gathers information based on your call handling instructions. Virtual receptionist systems offer options for different departments, schedule customer appointments, or accept payment over the phone.
If a caller needs to speak to a specific employee immediately, the virtual receptionist transfers the call immediately. Let’s say a client calls into her doctor’s office to speak with her nurse. The auto-attendant greets her with three options:
- To Make a New Appointment, press 1
- To Pay a Bill, press 2
- Refill a Prescription, press 3
However, none of the selections apply to this customer’s specific need. This isn’t a problem because the auto-attendant also gives the option to leave a message on each employee’s voicemail or speak to the front desk:
- To Dial by Name, press 4
- To Speak with the Front Desk, press 5
The customer can now leave her important message.
Customizing this feature is very easy and can enhance your businesses profile. You can create a custom greeting to announce your company’s hours or department extensions. Advanced rules based on caller ID are also available. Want to make sure a specific vendor or partner always gets connected with one of your employees? Virtual receptionist can route special calls to the right team member.
This feature also improves the customer experience by properly managing call flow; features like dial-by-name or department extension are available to cut down on customer wait time. If you have a caller requesting to speak to billing, he or she will be sent to the billing extension. If the billing department is not available, the call goes to billing’s voicemail. Virtual receptionist provides 24/7 coverage for your phones.
Multi-location Unification
Unifying your phone system at multiple locations saves businesses time and lowers phone bills. Instead of managing multiple landline accounts for multiple locations, your business has one easy monthly or annual bill for all your locations.
Let’s say you own an e-commerce store with customers across the U.S. Your customer support employees are all based at your Cincinnati office. With Multi-location Unification, your customer calls from Florida, Minnesota, Texas, or anywhere in the U.S will go directly to your Cincinnati support office seamlessly. If a customer service call turns into a sales opportunity, the customer rep can transfer the call to your sales office in Houston. All without the customer knowing sales is in another part of the country.
VoIP can connect between different locations because it works over the Internet. With Multi-location Unification, offices in different cities, states, or countries work as one. Multi-location Unification (also a UCaaS benefit) also comes with a unified directory and extension list. VoIP allows for extension dialing, call transfer, and call parking across all locations as if you were in the same building.
Find Me/ Follow Me
In a typical busy workplace, employees often find themselves:
- Meeting with clients or customers
- On the road for business trips
- Working from home or off-site
Find me /Follow me is a feature designed to ring multiple phones connected to an extension or phone number. One of the most popular configurations for Find Me/Follow Me is to set your desk phone to ring first, then cell phone, and finally your home phone. If you can’t pick up, the call will go to your voicemail.
Find Me/Follow Me is not limited to one DID (Direct Inward Dialing). For instance, if a caller can’t connect with you because you’re in a meeting, you can design the call flow to send the caller to your department’s main line. Or send the call to an employee at a different location who can handle the call. Find Me/Follow Me also pairs well with other VoIP features such as Voicemail to Email which automatically transcribes incoming voicemails into text sent to email.
Conference Calling
Traditional phone providers have offered conference calling for years. However, it was expensive, clunky, and unreliable. VoIP Conference Calling is less expensive, easy to use, with great call quality.
VoIP Conference Calling allows you to connect with anyone over the internet. As part of your larger UC (Unified Communications) package, you can add video to the call. This eliminates the need to meet in person and saves travel time and money. Use screen-sharing with virtual whiteboards so everyone on the call can collaborate and see ideas in real-time.
As your organization grows, it is important to have meetings with clients, partners, and team members. However, with different schedules and time zones, meeting in person is almost impossible. This is where Conference Calling saves the day. VoIP allows you to call people from all over the world using the internet. When email or texts won’t do, Conference Calling makes meetings as convenient as walking down the hall.
VoIP Simplifies Business for You
More businesses are making the switch to VoIP because of the long list helpful features and customizable options. Business VoIP helps companies communicate more effectively and build better relationships all with affordable pricing.
