VoIP offers an easy, reliable and, more importantly, cost-effective business communication technology that’s steadily winning over company owners and users around the globe. However, the buzz isn’t related only to driving the cost down. VoIP confidently surpasses traditional telephony by offering a wide range of features that are quickly becoming essential to large enterprises, as well as smaller startups.
Since it’s clear that VoIP technologies are here to stay, many businesses are now concerned with making the most out of this transition. Below are the top 6 most useful VoIP features to get you started on revolutionizing your business communication today.
Feature #1 – Digital Receptionist
Improving call handling is key to boosting customer satisfaction and driving sales through the roof. No wonder more and more companies make use of the digital receptionist feature for VoIP to engage with callers from the get go.
Your digital assistant can welcome the customer and notify about the waiting time, before forwarding the call to the right agent. More sophisticated solutions can also retrieve preliminary information to help the agent attend to the client’s needs better or even rearrange the queue to prioritize more urgent requests.
Feature #2 – Call Recording
While it’s a legal requirement for specific industries in some regions, every company can make the most of keeping track of their communication. Consider this feature in order to:
- Identify problematic areas
- Improve sales training
- Boost quality assurance
- Manage disputes with ease
Plus, on the day-to-day level, call recording fosters accountability between callers and agents, while giving the management a more authentic and hands-on experience of staff performance and client concerns.
Feature #3 – CRM Integration
You can now impress your caller with a truly personalized and tailored customer service without missing a beat. By integrating with CRM or helpdesk software, businesses can truly reap the benefits of centralized customer communication.
Aside from the typical call screening information such as caller ID, you will also have immediate access to a full client record at your fingertips. You can track down past interactions, preferred mode of communication (audio or video), as well as specific details about previous issues. More importantly, on the customer side it means they don’t need to repeat themselves twice.
This useful feature also helps you stay on track even in the most chaotic and demanding work environments. You no longer need to manually fill out details and double check accuracy of the records; instead your time can be spent on more important client-related tasks.
Feature #4 – Video Conferencing
You must consider video conferencing as an essential add-on to your VoIP telephony. A video call is the quickest and most convenient way of bringing face-to-face communication to remote teams and coworkers who are unable to meet in person.
While previously it was used to defy the need for frequent international travel, since the start of Covid-19 pandemic it is a common practice between the coworkers who are stuck working from home. Thanks to video conferencing, you can easily carry on with staff training, presentations, team meetings or just have an option to connect to your coworker in a more ‘natural’ way.
Feature #5 – Live Chat
Live chat feature can help your business take it up a notch. This useful VoIP feature removes the typical barriers experienced in trying to reach a company via phone – there is no need for numbers, or exhausting call queues.
Instead, using a live chat window, clients can instantly get in touch with the businesses at their convenience. And to boost their conversion rates further, businesses can also use live chat to provide timely 24/7 assistance.
Feature #6 – Monitoring and Reports
Monitoring and reports help businesses to focus on things that matter. By marrying VoIP and call reporting, you are empowering your business with a birds-eye view of agent productivity and customer satisfaction. You can instantly find all the necessary data on:
- User activity
- Extension statistics
- Ring group Statistics
- Call distribution
- Agents in queue
- Agent login history
By assessing agents’ performance, providing constructive feedback and looking into technical aspects (i.e. waiting time, bandwidth, etc.) businesses can tailor their strategy to boost efficiency and minimize unnecessary errors.
To Sum Up
Choosing VoIP seems like a no-brainer! With so many exciting features available, every business can now build a tailored communications system and target specific individual needs instead of sticking to the one-size-fits-all model of traditional telephony.
VoIP radically challenges the boundaries set in the past and brings in limitless opportunities for businesses communication and customers while keeping the costs low. While only six features were deemed most useful in this article, don’t be fooled there are plenty more to explore.
Leading solutions, such as 3CX, offer a wide selection of additional tools for your business phone system and help target your specific needs. For more information about solution providers and everything VoIP, please visit www.voip-info.org.
April 7, 2023
Phone System 