Cloud telephony has become quite popular over the past few years and has become a necessity for many businesses. In fact, Microsoft just listed it as one of four technological trends that have the potential to reshape the world of business.
It’s no wonder, then, that businesses of all shapes and sizes worldwide are actively adopting cloud computing for various reasons, but there is another trend riding the same wave - cloud telephony.
Cloud telephony is gaining significant traction in the business world and is creating new trends in well-established businesses and start-ups. It is merging service solutions and scale solutions into one. Cloud telephony can be a vital asset for every business, regardless of industry.
Below, we will describe a few ways that your business can benefit from cloud telephony and why.
#1. Support Remote Workers
Cloud telephony can seamlessly support a flexible work environment and culture and allow team members to conduct business operations from anywhere in the world, on any device. Many businesses operate from multiple locations, and cloud telephony makes it easier than ever for team members to connect and work from anywhere. Customer support workers have long been tied to a desk and telephone, but that is no longer the case. Now your team can be comfortable, work from anywhere, and there is no compromise on the quality of their work or the quality of service offered to your customers.
#2. Seamless Customer Support
As mentioned above, there is no need to worry about a deficit in customer service quality. Cloud telephony makes fielding customer calls easier than ever before. Your customer service team can work from any location, solve various customer problems, never miss calls, and minimize any potential lost revenue. Call management can be smooth and allows your team to receive multiple calls in parallel, record calls for training purposes, track time, and direct calls to the proper department.
#3. Detailed Call Analytics
Cloud telephony can provide up-to-date, accurate information for every single call and SMS message sent or received. Companies can use these analytics to detect and analyze patterns, assess any issues to call volumes, time management, missed calls, etc.. These analytics can help your business streamline response times, customer satisfaction, improve response quality, and train future and current team members better and more efficiently.
#4. Guaranteed Call Security
For years, a business's phone number has been one of the most critical identifiers. However, there has been an uptake in the number of misuse cases of these phone numbers. Cloud telephony enables "number masking," which means that your team member and customer can talk to each other without revealing phone numbers. While this may seem odd, it is suitable for your remote team members working from their mobile devices or your customer who may be using an office phone. No matter the scenario, call privacy and number security is good!
#5. Intuitive Call Flows
Cloud telephony allows businesses to customize their call flows, personalize customer greetings (for a change in the seasons, holiday, time of day, etc.), and more. Everything is managed by one cloud-based software, so it is simple to set up and alter with a button click. Change elements around to deliver the best customer experience.
#6. Helps Focus Expansion Plans
Every company will want to expand in one way or another, whether it be a new office, new contact center, gaining new employees or customers, or more. However, no upward scaling can occur without having happy customers. Switching to a cloud telephony system can make it easier and faster to care for your customers and increase satisfaction. With so many beneficial features available for a fraction of the cost of conventional communication systems, expanding and scaling is a less arduous task. One of the most significant benefits of adopting a cloud telephony solution is that scaling does not have a higher cost for adding infrastructure or manually adding on systems. Cloud telephony enables the seamless addition/deletion of/modification of users through a couple of clicks. It allows the user's freedom to make additional calls and reach more customers, thus increasing customer engagement and satisfaction. Additionally, the cost is only a reflection of the usage of the system.
#7. Refocus on the Core Principles of Your Business
Cloud telephony reduces the burden of hiring, training, and managing a giant IT team on a support based yet vital function. Unlike traditional business models with customer service and support as the core function or principle, the IT support team can support other groups and support the core principles of your business, like product development and marketing. Enabling cloud telephony is a critical function for businesses nowadays due to the versatility of its functionality, support capabilities, cost efficiency, and opportunities to focus on other core areas of your business that may have been neglected recently. This modern communication system is there to help streamline processes and make things easier!
#8. Attract Customers Who Are Less Tech-Savvy
Cloud technology is a growing trend and an upcoming game-changer in social innovation and marketing purposes. It can reach consumers across industries, platforms, devices, and technological-literacy levels. Social start-ups have begun using cloud telephony to reach out to consumers in rather rural or remote locations by providing them with a virtual telephone number to connect with. Nation-wide campaigns have already shown improvement in engagement with the public through campaigns such as this.
#9. Reach the Busy, Tech-Savvy Consumers with Text Messaging Options
Contrary to the less tech-savvy customers mentioned in #8, many modern customers don't want to contact customer support or talk on the phone for long periods; that's why offering text and messaging options is a great way to increase customer engagement. The Washington Post reported in 2018 that 70% of customers prefer to message businesses over calling them. When companies offer text-based interactions, their customer satisfaction ratings are 25% higher than businesses that did not provide this service.
Texting is much more convenient for many customers and can be conducted seamlessly if a customer is at work, taking care of their family, and can be done while juggling other things. There is no need to talk on the phone for an extended period of time to address any issues. It is easier, quieter, and just as effective.
There will always be customers who prefer to talk to a representative rather than text, which is totally fine and necessary in some situations. However, cloud telephony systems allow your business to offer both methods of communication and even switch between the two. It further adds to the flexibility component that is so attractive to modern customers and business team members.
#10. App Integrations
With conventional business telephony systems, the physical phone is somewhat of a "disconnected element" of the communication chain. It's not super digital, and it's more challenging to work phone calls into communication paper trails. This changes with VoIP, cloud-based systems, and softphones.
These systems can seamlessly integrate with apps used to increase productivity that your business is already utilizing. Modern phone solutions can easily collaborate with other applications like Teams, Salesforce, Hubspot, etc.. You can click to call directly from Teams or other business communication ports and log and analyze all call activities from various channels.
Integrating other applications can make communications information easier to find, navigate, and interact with their customers. Customers want their overall communication experience to be consistent across multiple channels and want assistance throughout each other. While seemingly a daunting task, it can be done, and cloud technology can make it happen!
It's time to rethink your conventional business phone systems and upgrade to cloud technologies. Manual note taking, disconnected conversations, and lack of connectivity are in the past, and cloud telephony is here to stay and help you!
Contact us at Simplicity and get started with your cloud telephony journey today!
