The VoIP telephone helps you all stay connected, no matter where you are!
Business has always been about people
Before Covid-19, it might have been the norm for many of us to communicate briefly with one another outside the office. However, it’s important to check up on each other as often as possible. We need to make sure we are all managing the current changes, as well as the new technological advancements. The VoIP telephone helps you all stay connected regardless of whether you’re in the office or working from home.
We’ve all faced many challenges over the past year. Yet technology has given us the tools to securely work from any location. Whether it be the office or the kitchen table.
There’s already additional pressure for so many of us who have been shielding for months. (Whether that’s down to our own, personal health or that of our children, siblings, or parents). On top of this, many of us have had to become teachers. We've done this by home-schooling our children or carers by looking after vulnerable members of our family. A role that billions of people hadn’t prepared for.
From a personal experience, having to finish a team’s meeting, to then drawing an elephant and creating a PowerPoint presentation on zoo animal habitats, was not on my to-do list. However, we’ve all just about managed to get through home-schooling.
Going forward, we can all review how the work environment has changed. Many of us now realise that working from home is achievable. A combination of home working and office working looks more than likely for many SME businesses in the future.
With that realisation, it’s useful to know of any technology that can make working at home a lot easier. The VoIP telephone system can make managing all your tasks more straightforward. As well as helping you to communicate with all your team, no matter where they are.
Here are 8 reasons why the VoIP phone system can help everyone stay connected!
1. It’s easier to assign workload across your team:
Before Covid-19, assigning workload per staff member (for an average 9-hour shift) was easy to determine. Now, with staff having more going on in their personal life, it can be hard to delegate work without worrying that it might be putting too much on them.
With the VoIP telephone system, you all share the same number. This means that while one of your staff members is preparing lunch for their children, or taking their 30-minute lunch, another member of the team can pick up the calls without having to let customers wait too long, or risk the call being dropped.
Working as a team during these times is vital. The VoIP telephone system means you’ll all be sharing the same number of customers who call up. So, everyone can work together to take away any extra workload that others might struggle to complete.
2. Using personal mobile numbers might become a compliance issue:
You and your staff might not feel comfortable using personal numbers, and who can blame you? It can affect confidentiality, or cause customers to continue contacting you outside of work hours.
Compliance could become an issue if staff aren't trained on security threats. Hackers and fraudsters have skyrocketed in the past year and using your own devices can increase the risk of you or your staff falling victim to security breaches, as well as scam emails, calls, and text messages.
With the VoIP telephone system, you keep the company’s contact number, and therefore, there’s no way customers can get hold of any personal details from you or your staff. On top of this, you can connect to the company network even if you’re working from home, making it safer and more secure for remote working.
As the VoIP telephone also connects to the works server, it means none of you will get any surprise call charges if you dial out to other businesses.
All this can help boost morale as your staff will see you are doing all you can to protect their privacy, as well as company and customer data.
3. Setting up new technology can be daunting:
Not everyone is tech-savvy. This could be more overwhelming for staff who are visual learners but are unable to be in the office, or for yourself as your try your best to help them set it all up, whilst working in a completely different building.
At CapNet, we always assist our customers with how to set up the VoIP telephone system. We can do this over the phone so your staff can continue to work remotely.
However, even without our assistance, we know the VoIP telephone system is easy to set up. Just download the Horizon app on your mobile or laptop.
This will take added pressure off you and your employees, as you all can quickly get back to work rather than wasting hours teaching or learning something new.
4. Businesses have seen a huge fluctuation in customers calling up:
As more people order their essentials online and are having their queries dealt with over the phone, staff could become overwhelmed by the number of calls they are receiving. Especially if they didn't deal with this before lockdown.
This puts a lot of pressure on everyone, as they quickly deal with the customer that they are currently on the phone to, whilst several other customers wait in the call queue.
Customers could also get frustrated if their call gets dropped after waiting in a call queue for a few minutes. This often happens with a lot of outdated telephone systems and mobiles. The VoIP system reduces the dropout rate so staff can take the next call as soon as they are available.
5. High call dropout rates could increase irate customers:
As discussed before, a high dropout rate can cause a lot of issues, and not just for you or your staff…
Technology is great. But when it’s not doing or performing as we want, it can be stressful. For example, if we are doing all we can to help our customers, but the line keeps dropping on them.
One of the biggest complaints in the comments section on social media is customers stating that they can’t get through to talk to someone and are therefore losing faith in the brand.
It’s already increasingly frustrating for a customer to have to wait to speak to a human being, without having to call back several times.
Reduce customer calls being dropped and becoming frustrated at your hardworking staff by investing in the VoIP system. Unlike many of the older phone systems, VoIP reduces the dropout rate so your customer can wait whilst your staff deal with each enquiry within a reasonable time.
6. Customers still want professionalism:
Despite everything, customers still want the best service they can get. The VoIP comes with a wide range of features, such as the smooth transitioning from different departments, and music on hold service, and it also announces to customers what their approximate time of waiting is. These features will have them believe they are calling directly to your office.
Call quality can also be a huge issue, especially if customers or staff struggle to hear each other through a poor phone line. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, invest in a VoIP telephone system which can handle HD Quality calls.
7. You can save and prioritise money to the things that matter:
The VoIP telephone system is cost-efficient. This means you can prioritise the money towards something else in your business.
Your business will save money because:
When traditional telephone systems go down, it usually costs your company thousands from downtime. Whereas the VoIP system can connect to your mobile or laptop so you can continue to work.
It connects to the internet, so you avoid paying high prices for general calls, long-distance calls, and international calls.
You don’t have to be tethered to your desk waiting on important calls. VoIP connects to your mobile and laptop so you can leave the office and get on with more work.
8. It comes with a load of amazing features:
You need to ask yourself:
Are you missing calls?
How are calls being routed if agents are busy?
How are you managing missed calls?
The VoIP system comes with loads of useful features such as management and reporting. But most importantly, everyone can connect to the office and collaborate with team members no matter where they are located, whether it be in the office or at home.
Even if staff don’t have a physical phone, they can connect on their laptop or mobile using the built-in speaker and microphone, or a Bluetooth headset for better clarity and noise reduction.
We understand that working from home has become increasingly challenging for everyone. This has also been the case for our engineers as they continue to support home workers. For example, a typical day in the office meant they would be supporting 30 users on one site with multiple servers in a controlled and managed environment. However, they now have to deal with 30 home workers, on 30 different home networks, from wired, wireless, home firewalls, and home equipment instead of business equipment.
They are doing this whilst also managing the frustrations of users, who through no fault of their own, are not technically minded and have been asked to set themselves up working from home. At CapNet, we are always here for our customers and will always help in any way we can.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing more exciting and helpful news about our VoIP telephone systems.