Virtual numbers have various uses across multiple industries. There’s a long list of benefits associated with the service, including enhancing marketing strategies and helping your business bounce back from the impact of the pandemic.

Now, more than ever, businesses need to stand out from the crowd to ensure they capture customer attention. The COVID-19 crisis has encouraged customers to shop locally and they’re starting to build stronger connections with businesses that have links in their community. 

This is where a virtual number comes in––it can help your business increase local connections. Since you can employ any area code, you can establish a local presence in any community and show consumers your willingness to work with them—regardless of your location.

And with many elements of daily life now becoming virtual, there are lots of opportunities to use cloud calling to connect with customers far and wide. This article will look at how a virtual phone number can aid four different industries.

The construction industry

Unfortunately, construction was one of the most adversely affected industries during the pandemic. As the work-from-home transition started, hands-on construction work remained at a halt. 

Now, the industry is back up and running, but businesses are sure to be feeling the impact. A vanity number could help them put themselves back on the map and access more customers than ever before. 

What’s better is that construction businesses can easily add a virtual number to their hosted phone system and allow clients from anywhere (nationally or even globally) to call and enquire about their services. Virtual numbers can also be used to share information about new offerings and updates to a wide audience via voice broadcasts. 

They can employ local area codes to capture the local clientele or people who are apprehensive about multinational businesses.

These numbers are a fantastic way to broaden your customer base and help your business appear in important local Google searches in whichever area you want.

In contrast, clients who want the credibility of an established organisation will be happier with a global free phone number. This helps the business look as professional and well-established as possible, thereby increasing customer trust. Furthermore, it eliminates any barriers that customers may encounter while contacting the business.

The charity sector

Charities are seeing many more applications for their services following the pandemic. With people suffering from poor mental health or financial difficulties, many are relying on the services of non-profit organisations to support them through these difficult times. 

Given this surge, charities could greatly benefit from connecting a free phone number to their hosted phone system. This allows those who are in need to easily get in touch. In fact, a free phone number will allow anyone, regardless of their location, to speak to the Charity at no personal cost. 

Another option for charities would be a custom virtual number. Custom numbers are created specifically for marketing campaigns. This means that you can see exactly how many people have come through from each campaign to ensure everything is working as per plan. These numbers will help you identify areas that work so you can invest your marketing budget only in these areas and save any meaningless expenses.

Custom numbers can also be made memorable for customers. By creating a vanity number relevant to the charity, it is more likely that service users will remember the number for when they require it. Having an impactful number means that you receive more calls, even without investing more in marketing. 

Import or export businesses

If you are in the business of imports and exports, a virtual number can help you connect with global customers at low cost. Quarantine measures and understaffed airports and seaports, owing to the pandemic, adversely affected goods transportation, so cost is a big factor for many at present. 

The nature of the sector requires you to connect with consumers across the world daily—often leading to high call costs and lower profit margins.  An international virtual number can work out to be highly cost-effective for, both, your business and your clients.

In fact, you can choose to have an international number in each country you deal with. Not only does this give you more of a presence everywhere, but it also makes it cheaper for the clients in said countries to connect with you. 

No matter where you’re based, the client will call the international virtual number and straightaway get connected to you. With no delay at all, they’ll experience seamless service without even thinking about your location.

Since imports and exports require high-quality conversations throughout the process, you need a reliable service. This is why virtual numbers are a great solution—they’re easy on the pockets, sure, but they also have very high uptimes and good connections. 

Toll Free numbers also remove any geographical limitations, so international clients might feel more comfortable with a business that appears to be operating across the world. 

The retail and e-commerce sector

Retail and e-commerce have been impacted by the pandemic on quite a large scale. With the closure of many physical stores, companies relied on their websites to sell their products. This also means that their support service has had to adapt to meet the needs of customers and keep business moving during the pandemic.

Customers, too, have been placing more trust in businesses delivering their products online or via other channels. To increase their confidence, it is a good idea for your business to have a telephone line that directly connects clients with your team.

Virtual numbers can be a great way to connect with retail customers all over the world. Whether you are selling B2C or B2B, a virtual number that’s easy for customers to remember will always help your business give better service. 

They are also more profitable to the business as virtual numbers are cost-effective and customers are more likely to call on them.

New customers may also be more inclined to shop with local businesses that can offer a sense of familiarity and trust. Having this local connection will help you reach customers looking to spend their money in their local area to support their local economy.

Another option for retailers to use virtual phone numbers is by employing a free phone number onto their hosted phone system. This gives retailers the ability to open up their products and services to businesses nationally—or globally. 

This is due to the fact that free phone numbers have no charge for calls, as the name itself suggests. These numbers also remove your business’ geographical constraints, so customers from all areas will be more inclined to get in touch. And as a brand that does not charge its clients for support calls, you will appear to be more established and caring to your customers.

In addition, such a number adds a level of professionalism, too, so no matter how small your retail or e-commerce business is, you’ll be able to put your best foot forward!

Conclusion

Overall, virtual numbers can have a significant impact on businesses recovering from the pandemic. They can give your customers more reasons to contact you, tear down barriers for new and existing customers, and make your business more professional in its appearance. 

Many customers are choosing to shop local post-pandemic, and virtual phone numbers will help you connect with these customers by giving you a presence in their local area.

If you’d like to find out more about virtual numbers and how they can benefit your business, call our team of experts today at 1888-859-0450 or send an email to [email protected]. 

Contact centers have run largely the same way for years. However, the COVID-19 crisis forced them to change the way they operate almost overnight. Managers had to implement new ways of working and communicating with customers online, and this, in turn, has led to more companies considering alternative methods of communication to continue after the pandemic subsides.
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This shift towards digitally focussed call centers has brought in the video as a powerful tool for communicating with customers. This article will explore how video as a customer engagement channel is revamping call centers as we know them.

Keep communication flowing through social distancing

Social distancing will be around for some time now. Face-to-face meetings are often inconvenient and difficult to organize with people based in diverse environments. Social distancing makes it difficult to cultivate personal relationships with clients, especially if you only have voice transmission tools at your disposal. 

Video customer engagement helps keep communication flowing even through times when social distancing is key. Video calling potential customers give you the chance to forge personal relationships by seeing the customer’s face. While showing the customer that you care about getting to know them, you are also showing that you take their safety as a priority by conducting your meeting virtually.

For many, it is much easier to communicate over video call where you can see visual cues. It can also help build their trust if they can put a face to your name, and shows them that they have a point of contact for any issues or questions they may have in the future.

Video shows customers you are adaptable

Call centers that have embraced the digitalisation trend and have implemented video customer engagement channels into their communication strategies have shown customers that they can adapt even in times of great uncertainty. 

Adopting the latest technology shows that your call center is cutting-edge and that your business isn’t stuck in its ways. Showing that you can embrace change and have already made efforts for the benefit of customers makes you much more trustworthy. It also gives clients faith that your business will be there for them throughout troubling times. 

No one knows what the future holds for call centers, but a business that is adaptable and uses technology to its advantage is more likely to be a success going forward to a post-COVID-19 world.

Video can make your call center more effective

If you’re dealing with onboarding customers, you’ll face lengthy email threads, ID checks, credit applications, and much more. This is time-consuming and often spans over several channels, leading to errors along the way or messages being lost in translation.

Using video customer engagement, your call center staff can perform ID checks, complete applications, and explain onboarding processes to your customers in a single stage. As communication is much easier when you’re facing one another, you get more value out of the conversations. You may even find that customers will volunteer more information, which can be noted on Acefone’s online portal for future reference and used to provide highly personalised service. 

Keep queues to a minimum

If you have physical offices, customers can no longer just walk in and speak to the staff. This means that your call center could be flooded with calls that ordinarily would have been dealt with in your branch office. 

In that case, your call center staff could become overwhelmed and customer service will be sure to slip. Video customer engagement can help combat this by taking some of the strain away from your phone lines. 

Employees can dedicate their time to booking video consultations with customers who may need a little more help or those who would ordinarily have come into your office. This reduces the number of people waiting on your phone lines and your staff is free to deal with enquiries that can be resolved through the phone.

With video consultations, your call center can run much more smoothly and every customer will continue to receive great service.

Video can help boost sales

When issues arise, customers prefer to interact with a real person rather than a bot or faceless voice. If they find you while researching your product, you can actively engage them in conversation, offering a video demonstration or consultation to explain the benefits of your offerings. 

Actively engaging with customers and having a real conversation, rather than passively messaging them or relaying information over the phone, can keep customers more engaged and lets them ask more questions. 

Video engagement also gives you the chance to show off your products in a unique and highly expressive way. Your agents can essentially become your brand ambassadors and boost sales by engaging clients while showing your USPs. 

By engaging via video early in the sales process, your call center team is building a relationship with the potential customer from day one. Customers will feel valued as someone is taking the time to video call them, and will have more trust and confidence in your company when you give them a contact who they have met virtually

Video makes problem-solving easier

There is nothing more frustrating than miscommunication when a customer faces an issue. The staff could misinterpret the problem or give answers that are too technical for the client’s understanding. Either way, these miscommunications lead to dissatisfaction on both sides.

Using video customer engagement, your call center staff could see the problem for themselves and talk the customer through fixing their own issues. It is much easier to follow what someone is telling you when you can see their face and other visual cues. That’s why video is the perfect way to deliver complex troubleshooting in an accessible way.

Your agents will also have the opportunity to gauge a customer’s technical ability by conversing with them and will be able to adjust their language and explanations accordingly. Over the phone, this can be quite difficult. However, personal interaction via a video call makes it easier to foster an understanding. 

Conclusion

Video customer engagement is a great way to start creating more personal connections with customers by contacting your call center. There are plenty of exciting ways in which your staff can embrace technology and connect with customers, and COVID-19 has brought the use of the technology to the forefront. 

Customers are starting to expect these solutions in businesses they deal with, and not adopting new ways of working could cost you the customers in the long run. It’s time to get with the times and give your consumers the best service that they deserve.

To find out more about video customer engagement and Acefone’s hosted phone systems, call us today on 1888-859-0450. Our experts will guide you through everything you need to know.

“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.” –Roy H. Williams, Author and founder of the Wizard Academy Institute.

As per a Walker study, customer experience will overtake product and price as the key differentiator at the end of 2020.

Businesses, even after understanding the value of customer expectations, often fail to build on them. Making that extra effort to know your audience better can make all the difference to sales, revenues, profitability, and more importantly, consumer loyalty.

However, this is easier said than done, as one has to build buyers’ personas, follow them closely, gather feedback, and stay connected. Even if you stay ahead on all these fronts, ensuring that these insights reach all your customer handling agents is a challenge.

Thankfully, modern call centre solutions solve this problem. With the right kind of features, agents are to be able to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

One such tool is calling whispering. It is a powerful cloud telephony feature that aids agents in delivering satisfactory support, improves team performance and enhances business reputation.

But before you start looking for a solution that offers this feature, it is important to dive deep and understand the value it can add to your business.

So, let’s take a closer look.

What is Call Whispering?

Essentially, call whispering is a feature that lets your managers monitor call center agents as they converse with callers. With this tool, managers are able to do two things––firstly, track the performance of experienced agents; and secondly, they can coach and assist new recruits.

The best part? Only the agents hear the whisper and the callers never come to know anything about it.

Apart from supporting agents while handling customers, the whisper feature can also be used to brief agents before they get into support calls. This will equip them with important customer information and help them stay a step ahead.

For callers, this means quick query resolution and higher satisfaction without the hassles of repetitive questions and the friction of the process.

How does Call Whispering Work along with other Call Centre Features?

According to a study by Harvard Business Review, employee performance greatly depends on their satisfaction levels. Satisfied people showed 16% better performance as compared to those who are dissatisfied. Further, they also demonstrated an impressive 32% increase in commitment levels and were 125% less likely to experience burnout.

When it comes to increasing agent satisfaction, everything boils down to excellent training. Call whispering serves as a reliable tool that increases their confidence and job satisfaction levels, and the results reflect in their performance. Here are some ways you can use this feature as an element of customer support best practices, hence boosting customer experience and overall satisfaction.

• Call Monitoring: You can use it along with call whispering. Listen in on calls and understand how individual agents are handling customer queries. Jump in and whisper advice if the agent appears in need of assistance or if the call does not seem to be going right.
• Call Barging: It helps managers or experienced executives to take over during a support conversation if the query is too complex or the caller is too upset. This feature helps businesses enhance their first call resolution and elevates customer satisfaction levels.
• Call Recording: Managers can access call recordings where they used call whisper to show agents how to best leverage the feature. And this knowledge can be imparted to, both, new and experienced agents. Real-life examples serve as excellent tools to help people understand how they can handle challenging situations.

How does Call Whispering Benefit Businesses?

Maintaining a successful team of call center agents is a massive challenge, especially in a competitive landscape. Even one below-average support call can lead to the loss of a customer forever.

You will have to think beyond just giving your agents a script or telling them how to handle the impatient callers. The need of the hour is high-quality training that makes them adept at customer service or sales techniques.

Call whispering offers extensive benefits in this context, some of which are mentioned below:

• Helps train new recruits who are still learning about the brand’s tone of voice, customer expectations, and common or complex queries
• Enables coaching of the existing team members who may be struggling to deliver as per the company’s standards
• Empowers managers with an effective tool that enhances the team’s overall communication skills
• Gives managers the opportunity to barge in and help agents handle challenging clients or solve complex problems without wasting time
• Supports the initiative of creating a valuable team that has the potential to convert new leads and retain existing clients

Which Businesses can Benefit from the Call Whispering Feature?

Call whispering is an advanced feature that can serve immense benefits to any organisation which has a customer-facing call center to handle sales or support functions. Also, it makes for a wise investment for businesses that run multiple campaigns simultaneously.

E-commerce marketplaces, educational establishments, healthcare organisations, and helpdesk and support centers are also good candidates for a call center solution empowered with this feature.

Why should a Business Embrace Call Whispering right now?

Sales and customer support calls can be far more challenging than you think as customers are conscious now more than ever. Every call is different, and the way your agents handle them has a far-reaching impact on the reputation of your business.

Customer satisfaction depends on the words, tone, and interactions of call center agents. So, it makes sense to go the extra mile with their training and preparation for customer handling.

Call whispering is a win-win-win feature for everyone—businesses, agents, and callers. For businesses, it cuts down the sales cycles, increases close rates, and drives conversions and retention.

Moreover, agents become more confident with better training and assurance that they will indeed get help when they need it. Their performance improves, and they tend to be more loyal and committed to their role. re perhaps the biggest winners, though, because they get an incredible experience with every call.

A Final Word 

Now that you understand how valuable call whispering can be, the next step would be to find a call center solution that offers this feature.

Acefone is a reliable cloud call center service provider you can trust to take your business to new heights. Our holistic solutions will empower your business with features like call whispering and much more.

Looking to empower your business, agents, and customers with call whispering? 

Technology is ever-evolving, and every few days, there’s the next big thing that’s making waves. Contact center technology, too, has discovered its game-changer––Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). 

With advancements in time and innovations such as machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence, ASR has become the edge that businesses need. Most hosted phone system can have the ability to integrate ASR. It enables agents to understand words with their intent and allows them to study the emotions and understand the nuances of what the customer is saying.

Embedded with the Interactive Voice Response functionality, ASR empowers agents to put their best foot forward and improves the support experience for customers.  

This article will explore what automatic speech recognition is and how it can be the next step in contact center solutions.

What is automatic speech recognition?

Speech recognition gives your cloud phone system the ability to recognize spoken words. 

More often than not, speech recognition software is deployed in contact centers owned by large businesses. It creates a wave file of the words spoken by the customer which it then breaks down to phonemes––basic building blocks of language. The software then analyses phonemes to make sense of what is being said.

Automated speech recognition software give businesses access to detailed speech analytics so you can get insights into what customers are calling about, their general sentiments and learn more about the language they use. You can use these insights to train your agents and improve your customer service operations.

The software has developed substantially in recent years. There was a time when it was a source of frustration for customers, as older systems didn’t do a very good job of recognising language. Now, it saves time for both customers and staff alike.

The technology can also help automate your workflows. Working across all your systems, voice recognition often replaces the need for typing with the usage of speech. Thus, tasks like adding notes to a customer’s account using natural language will take lesser time

Furthermore, you will be able to manage different elements of your workflow via speech, saving substantial time. This will help you provide quicker and better service to your clients.

How can automatic speech recognition develop your contact center?

There are a number of ways in which ASR can take your hosted contact center to the next level and help you improve customer experience at the same time.

1. Enhance your analytics

By using automatic speech recognition, you can enhance your analytics and detect trends in customer enquiries. For example, if you look at customers queries coming through the hosted phone system, you can identify patterns in the questions that your callers ask or the issues that they face with your products. 

These insights are invaluable and can be used to make changes based on real customer insight without any extra costs or added efforts.

If you find that a certain question is often asked, you can add it to your frequently asked questions list and make it available to customers through the IVR so they don’t need to wait for the answer. These queries can also serve as feedback, allowing you to act accordingly and show customers that you really care about their experience.

The technology also helps contact centers to analyse and understand the sentiments and tones of customers, thus ensuring better response.

2. Call routing

Automatic speech recognition provides call routing service that let callers route to the correct department quickly. Often, when given the choice, callers will select the wrong department for their enquiry. But, automatic speech recognition takes that decision out of their hands and you decide where they are routed based on what they have said.

When programmed correctly, customers can tell the automatic speech recognition system exactly what their query is and can be directed to the most suitable agent. There is nothing more frustrating for customers than being passed from agent to agent and having to repeat their enquiry multiple times to get an answer. 

By using the technology of speech recognition, you are able to solve more customer issues right away without customers being passed around and clogging up your phone lines unnecessarily.

3. Lower agent’s workloads 

With automatic speech recognition, customers will be able to have more human-like conversations with the automated system. This means that often their queries will be answered and they’ll get access to important information even before they speak to an adviser.

This frees up agents to focus on bigger issues which may arise and allows them to provide exemplary customer service. For customers who are dissatisfied with your services, giving them extra support can only benefit your business.

Moreover, staff that handles sales-based enquiries will be able to focus more on nurturing leads and closing deals, leading to higher profits for your business. Ultimately, you’ll achieve great results for, both, customer retention and customer acquisition. 

4. Automate more of your processes

Appointment bookings, identification verification, and many other crucial processes can be automated with the help of ASR. While these processes are integral to your business and ensure that you stay compliant with regulatory requirements, they can often be tedious and time-consuming.

Automating most of your operations with ASR will help you save on time and resources. 

For instance, you can fully automate your appointment scheduling system with the help of ASR. So, when a client calls you to book an appointment, all they need to do is speak the name of the doctor, choose a time slot, and confirm. And all this can be done without any human intervention.

With advancements in the technology surrounding automatic speech recognition, there are so many opportunities for businesses to take advantage of. Automation helps both customers and businesses save time and money, and will certainly help your customer service team with their workload too.

5. Greater efficiency for your contact center

Sometimes, agents may end up wasting valuable time searching for documents or completing tasks which could really be automated. Automatic Speech Recognition can be used to help divert calls to the correct place using your voice, or perform essential tasks. 

Using speech in this manner will free up agents to focus on more important tasks, ultimately increasing their efficiency and productivity, and saving the firm’s money on hiring extra agents. 

Not only do you become more efficient as a contact center, but you also deliver better customer service as a result.

Whatever you use them for, automatic speech recognition systems make the communication of important information much easier for businesses.

Automatic speech recognition is already an integral part of contact centers operations all over the world. The time it saves your agents and customers, and the insights it can bring can be invaluable to contact center managers. It can also help customers be more satisfied with their service and can present opportunities for further sales and increased profits!