This is a guest post by CloudTalk.
Every year, businesses dole out millions to traditional phone companies for the privilege of placing calls over landlines. It’s a deeply entrenched system, built upon a century of business practice.
What if we told you there’s an easier way—one that provides more features, better functionality, and greater customization, all at a fraction of the price? Meet VoIP, a modern telephony solution that grants companies greater flexibility in how they conduct business over the phone.
Today’s businesses rely on their phone systems for more than just internal communication. Indeed, many are looking for a phone system that can be their customer and sales support teams’ primary communication tool. With advanced features and easy integration with CRM tools, modern VoIP solutions are more than up to the task. Better yet, many VoIP service providers design their systems with flexibility in mind, so they can easily scale up alongside your business.
Before getting into some of the benefits of using VoIP, let’s break down the tech behind it.
What is VoIP?
Simply put, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) allows you to make and receive phone calls over the internet. It accomplishes this by converting analog phone signals into digital and then sending them over an IP network. This technology allows users—whether they're businesses or individuals—to jettison traditional phone companies (and their fees). As long as you have a stable internet connection, you can place and receive calls to your heart’s content.
VoIP service providers have already disrupted the telephony market, but their long-term goal is to eventually replace the traditional, analog phone systems that many companies still use. Useful features such as IVR, conference calls, and customizable voicemail messages are just some of the things that set VoIP solutions apart. The fact that any employee with an internet connection can use VoIP phone systems from anywhere in the world is a great benefit for remote teams as well.
Let's look at some more reasons to think about switching to a VoIP service provider below.
What are the advantages of using VoIP phone systems?
- Call queuing: This feature allows all incoming calls to be sorted into separate queues according to predefined criteria, such as the specific number a customer dialed to contact your company.
- Callbacks: With this feature, you can automatically reach out to customers if you missed their call. This could be a return phone call scheduled for business hours, an automated email apologizing for the lapse, and providing additional contact information or anything in between.
- Contact history: By tracking your full client contact history and making that information easily accessible at all times, VoIP phone systems ensure you always know who you’re speaking to. Gone are the days of agents scrambling to understand the pain points of repeat callers. Some VoIP solutions even allow you to review a caller’s full contact history in a pop-up window before picking up a call.
- Call recording: Have an agent who’s struggling to close deals? Call recording features automatically record every inbound and outbound that your agents make, so it’s easy for managers to listen to an underperforming agent’s past calls in order to identify areas for improvement.
- Personalized greetings and music: VoIP solutions give you the freedom to record fully customizable greetings for your clients. This can be especially helpful when agents aren’t able to answer the phone during off-hours.
- Extensions: You can build your own custom extensions, making it easy for customers to navigate through your IVR system and quickly find the right agent in the right department.
- Integrations: Streamline your workflows with easy-to-implement integrations with CRM tools, e-commerce solutions, or help desks. Storing data and staying organized with VoIP solutions is a breeze.
- Conference calls: Need to touch base with the whole team? Scheduling conference calls with your VoIP solution is as simple as picking a time for the meeting. All your participants need is a solid internet connection.
- Real-time dashboard: Managers will love this one: real-time dashboards allow VoIP solution supervisors to monitor their call center’s minute-by-minute activities. Notice a particular agent struggling to keep a prospect on the line? Intervene immediately with helpful coaching tips to make sure your agents are performing to the best of their ability.
The bottom line
By now you probably get the idea: modern phone solutions are utilizing VoIP technology to push the boundaries of what communications systems can achieve. They’re building platforms with helpful, user-friendly features designed to streamline workflows and help businesses run efficiently.
CloudTalk is leading the way among these trend-setters. With a comprehensive yet easy-to-navigate interface, CloudTalk puts more than 50 powerful telephony features at your fingertips and unleashes a world of possibilities for your business as a result. Even better: it seamlessly integrates with Zoho CRM so you can start calling leads directly from your CRM dashboard with click-to-call, track call activities, and match contacts. Try CloudTalk with Zoho CRM to instantly improve your phone communications.
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