The business world is highly acclimated to the concept that most employees can work from anywhere, on a variety of devices. However, enabling employees to work remotely requires cloud solutions. This includes collaborative platforms like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Another key piece to the remote workforce puzzle is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone system. This is essentially a phone system where the signal travels across the internet rather than through landlines.
With this internet-based, employees can easily stay in contact with customers and potential customers from anywhere on their business phone. Callers can have the same consistency of experience no matter where employees may be working.
Those old landline systems are inefficient when you have people working from home. This has led to a large movement by businesses to internet-based phone systems, both for necessity and cost-savings. Since the onset of COVID, implementation of internet-based systems has risen by 212%.
According to Microsoft, 82% of organizations have reported saving money after implementing VoIP.
Until something better comes along, this technology is the way to go for the future, but that doesn’t mean it’s foolproof. Companies that fail to set up their system efficiently will undoubtedly experience issues like dropped calls, low bandwidth, and handy features that are left unused.
If you are just now considering transitioning to an internet-based phone system, or if you’ve been struggling to make your cloud phone system more efficient, look through the tips below. They provide setup best practices. Use these to positively impact your bottom line.
- Evaluate Network Capabilities
Once you enable a Voice over Internet Protocol system everything will be fine, right? That may prove to be an errant presumption if your network is unable to handle the extra bandwidth needed without adjustments.
Things to look at include jitter and packet loss. Review your router settings to make sure it can handle peak traffic times. Choppy audio or dropped calls reveal a need to address issues. These may include adjusting network hardware and/or increasing your ISP bandwidth.
- Use QoS Rules to Prioritize Your Phone’s Software
QoS (Quality of Service) is a router settings area that allows you to prioritize traffic, giving preference to more versus less important. If QoS is not in place, it could lead to resource issues. A large cloud backup could kick in and interrupt important calls. QoS sets up the equivalent of ‘traffic lanes’ that prevent less critical processes from hogging up the bandwidth.
Using QoS will help keep your calls smoother and improve the reliability of the phone system overall. It’s also a good idea to use these rules for other important cloud activities.
- Provide Quality Headsets for Your Team
Don’t ‘cheap out’ on your employees’ ability to communicate effectively. An inferior headset can ruin the call experience for a potential customer. If someone calls in and can’t hear anything or gets a choppy reception, they’ll quickly get frustrated. They will most likely figure that if your company drops the ball on mere phone call quality, you are probably not that great at anything else.
The company should typically provide the headsets. It’s not a good plan to let employees pick them out and then reimburse them for the purchase, because they may not know what type to buy. Head off potential problems by issuing quality headsets for your team to use.
- Set Up Departments & Ring Groups
One of the beneficial features of internet-based phone systems is the ability to establish ring groups. Set up your department groups (shipping, accounting, marketing, etc.) and include the employee extensions.
Once this is properly set up, you can steer incoming calls directly to the appropriate department as a whole, rather than to one person, so the entire group gets the ring, and the first available person can pick up.
Creating ring groups reduces the wait time and improves the caller experience. It can also mitigate the need for the caller to leave a voicemail (because nobody likes having to do that) and get stuck waiting on a callback.
- Create a Company Directory
All decent VoIP systems have auto assistants, and they are extremely helpful. You can set up your company directory and then record messages to prompt the caller.
For example, you can set up a message that prompts them to input the last name of the person they are trying to reach. If they aren’t calling a specific person, they can be routed to a department.
Setting up a company directory takes a little upfront effort, but it will save a lot of time and frustration for you and your callers. You will no longer need to have someone routing every call to the right person or department. This improves the customer experience and boosts office productivity.
- Have Employees Set Up Their Voicemail & VM to Email
When you get out of a long meeting, going through a bunch of voicemails can take time. Instead of having to listen to each one to see which calls are a priority, you could simply read through them.
The voicemail to email feature in VoIP phone systems will automatically transcribe voicemails. They are then emailed to the recipient. This improves efficiency. It also eliminates wasted time having to listen to entire messages to know who called. One note: Sometimes you may have to listen to the voice mail if the person who left it doesn’t speak clearly or if their company has an unusual, unique name.
Require that your employees set up this feature with their extension and email address. Some VoIP systems also offer an option to have transcribed voicemails sent via SMS, which is extremely handy.
- Train Your Team on the Call Handling Process
Train employees on the features and the company calling process. It beats having them fumble around trying to figure out what the new phone system does. This ensures that your team gets up to speed quickly, so they can enjoy all those time-saving features.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is VoIP?
Voice over Internet Protocol phone systems are used to make phone calls over the internet rather than traditional land lines. These provide excellent, low-cost small business phone services. Finances Online provides statistics showing a wide range of savings by switching over, with the bulk of customers savings between 40% to 75% over land-based phone systems like AT&T or Pac Bell.
A prospective client can go straight to specialized phone system providers or through the company they use for their IT services.
What is a VoIp Phone?
They look no different from any office phone but are packed with a full array of great communications features. It will have whatever your analog phone has plus much, much more. The phones available from different providers vary from vendor to vendor, but many of the basic features are consistent among the offerings.
What is a non-fixed VoIP phone number?
Non-fixed simply means that the phone number is not attached to any physical address or business. Also known as a virtual phone number, it is usually not connected to a larger work network, and widely used for residential as well as business needs.
How does a VoIP platform work?
As the name implies, Voice over Internet Protocol translates your analog voice signal into a digital signal which is then sent as data over a broadband line using internet protocol, then instantaneously re-converted into a voice signal at the other end of the call. There is no lag – you will have as natural a conversation as if you were face-to-face.
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