VoIP: the most efficient way of communication

All companies, regardless of their size, need to communicate, and increasingly, this communication is more globalized.

The use of technology has modified business models, as it has facilitated relationships between companies, and also between companies and their clients, providing the opportunity to connect international markets in a simple way, and, avoiding the huge costs involved in the past.

In the telecommunications industry, the implementation of VoIP systems has been a “before” and “after” in these relationships.

Its acronym, which stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, encompasses a solution where voice and image are transformed into data packets to be sent over the Internet. This allows us to use additional services, that with traditional technology wouldn’t be possible to develop.

The competitive advantages of VoIP telephony over the traditional ones are extensive, but the following should be highlighted:

• Significant cost savings allows communications for which additional fees were previously paid, at no extra cost, such as international calls or data transfer.
• Free calls: the calls between the different offices of the company and between its employees have no additional charges, so the phone bill can be reduced by up to 40%.
• Scalable system: functions or applications can be added as the business needs increase, without the company having to modify the infrastructure and with a minimum investment.
• Infrastructure reduction: it’s also possible to discard certain communication equipment of the company and offers great versatility since it can include personalized functions, adapted to the circumstances of each moment.
• Extensive flexibility, thanks to the possibility of access, from anywhere, to an environment as secure as the office, and since it is possible to make more than one call from the same line.

What is IP Telephony and how does it work?

This powerful tool allows voice and data communications to be integrated into a single network. Its use has become widespread in businesses in recent years, due to the massive momentum of the Internet and the standardization of voice quality control systems.

IP Telephony systems are formed by a set of integrated elements, the most basic are IP switchboard, IP gateway and IP Telephony terminals. All of them offer important benefits that allow organizations to save costs and significantly increase their productivity and efficiency in all communication processes.

The main advantages of IP telephony are the simplification of the communications infrastructure within the organization and the integration of the different offices and remote workers in a unified telephony system.

In addition, IP Telephony offers basic benefits for daily tasks, among which the following stand out: savings of up to 60% on the phone bill, greater scalability with a minimum investment in infrastructure and a series of free advanced telecom services.

The functions of IP Telephony are very varied, but the basic ones that should never be missing are centralized management, free internal calls, immediate access to advanced functionalities and increased mobility.

Virtual switchboard: full control of communications

A large number of companies are migrating their telecommunication services to different VoIP operators, such as +IP. These enterprises take care of the maintenance of their virtual switchboards and they have advanced phone systems, which are easy to use and accessible from anywhere.

This type of platform receives the adjective “virtual” because although they still work with IP phones, softphones or WebRTC like IP telephony, the features they grant are hosted in cloud environments.

In fact, virtual switchboards allow companies to professionalize and customize to a great extent the customer phone service offered, thanks to the possibility of setting them with welcome messages, schedules, calls on hold or options menus.

The reasons for hiring a virtual switchboard are many, and all of them are a major value to companies, as their main aim is to automate all processes, save time and increase the effectiveness of every process.

Its sole purpose is not to miss a single call, and in this, the virtual switchboard plays a key role. And not only for this reason, but for the wide range of tailor-made options that can be integrated.

These are the most important:

• IVR (Interactive Voice): also known as “digital receptionist”, this acronym stands for Interactive Voice. These are the systems implemented in the virtual switchboards to reduce attention times. Thanks to this, it’s easier to redirect incoming calls to one department or another.
• ACD (Automatic Call Distribution): is the option that handles the distribution of calls between the different customer service queues. The switchboard administrator can monitor the status of all agents and direct them to one or another depending on the volume of calls of each one, thus reducing waiting time to the maximum.
• Call recording: the system records each call and leaves them stored in the cloud. In this way, they can be consulted at any time to analyze their quality and make successful business decisions.
• CRM integration: Virtual switchboards offer the possibility of integrating the CRM with the phone system. Customer Relationship Management is a software that manages the relationship with clients in real-time, so when a call comes in, it’s possible to access in real-time all the information related to the user.

Software for Call Center: most effective management

The continuous evolution of VoIP telephony has allowed the development on a series of software and has been the root cause of the appearance of a broad range of tools that were totally unthinkable with traditional telephony.

VoIP providers now offer Call Center software with a collection of apps that allow organizations to support competitive and high-quality customer service.

These are some of the most important features that a VoIP provider must offer through software:

• Reports and analytics: when it came to know if a campaign is managed correctly and its processes are optimized, it’s extremely important that the Call Center software provides real-time feedback of the reactions from call recipients, and the impact on them of specific campaigns and promotions.

With these analytics, we will have access to reports that should contain all the relevant information about the actions carried out and their results.

• Call recording: another indispensable application in a Call Center, since it allows us to collect data from both those broadcasted and those received by agents.

Call Center software applications usually have a lot of basic options, such as a fixed recording system, on-demand or per service, as well as several different types of filtering to search for recordings.

• Scripting: This tool offers the possibility for businesses to create scripts that allow agents to have to answer to anticipate customer questions or objections. This is a very useful application, since thanks to it, agents can anticipate the requirements of users, with the aim of being able to tailor a solution to their needs.