Reimagining Bollywood Classics in a World of Cloud Telephony

Acefone Editor

Author

Cloud Telephony

February 5, 2021

8 mins read eye

Table of content

Bollywood movies manage to connect with their audience, irrespective of their native language and hometown. Since the first Bollywood movie in 1913, Raja Harishchandra, we have flocked to our nearest cinema theatres every weekend for a much-needed dose of spice and drama in our lives. Evergreen classic hits, starting from Mughal-e-Azam, Pyaasa, Sholay, Mr. India, Lagaan, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Dil Chahta Hai and many, many more have defined our lives in several ways.

Through this blog, we will reimagine some of these blockbusters with the lens of cloud telephony solutions, while also understanding the workings of the technology. So, get-set to start on this mesmerizing ride down the memory lane with some interesting twists.

Quick tip: Grab some popcorn!

Sholay

This is one of the most iconic Bollywood films till date, with almost all scenes receiving near cult status. But picture this: what if the residents of Ramgarh were in constant touch with the police? What if they could keep them updated about the notorious Gabbar’s whereabouts through toll free numbers? The dacoit would never have been able to kill Thakur’s family.

Hence, there would be no need to get Jai and Veeru to the rescue. Overall, one simple cloud telephony solution––toll free numbers––could have easily saved the lives of our beloved gaon-wallas, and Veeru and Basanti would have eventually found their way to each other.

(1) Toll-Free Numbers

These are free-to-call (1800) numbers. Customers can dial up a business or organization without incurring any charges. The call costs are instead borne by the business. It allows easy customer communication and helps organizations gather and disseminate crucial information.

Lagaan

“Dunga Lagaan Dena Parega”

We bet you read this dialogue with a British-Hindi accent, didn’t you?

Poor villagers of Champaner are worried about a possible drought and their inability to pay any taxes to the British administration. With no other hope, they approach their king––only to find themselves in an even bigger scramble. Either win a completely alien game of cricket or pay double the tax!

Now imagine, if the villagers of Champaner received automatic weather updates from their local king, Raja Puran Singh via bulk SMS campaign. Villagers would not have been worried about erratic rainfall. Bhuvan would not have needed to tussle with Captain Russell, hence, no “Dunga Lagaan” and everybody would’ve lived happily.

(2) Bulk SMS Services

Bulk SMSs are an effective marketing and broadcasting medium that help businesses reach out to the masses or a targeted audience. All one needs to do is draft a single message, select a contact database and that’s it. The bulk SMS service provider shall take care of the rest.

This cloud telephony solution has several applications. It can be used to send out information, updates, new launches and offers. Or it can also be used to gain customer feedback. Businesses can also personalize these messages with names or preferred languages, ultimately adding to the brand image.

Hera Pheri

Who can forget this epic laugh-riot? It introduced us to iconic characters like Babu Bhaiya, Shyam, Raju and their hilarious dialogues. The plot revolves around how the dismal lives of our characters change because of a cross-connection on Babu Bhaiya’s phone.

However, what if Babu Bhaiya had incorporated call forwarding and could transfer the calls to the correct destination––Star Fisheries? While our characters would have remained poor and battered throughout, it would have solved the entire plot instantly!

(3) Call Forwarding

Call forwarding is a cloud telephony feature that automatically redirects or transfers the call to another preset number. The process is so seamless that the caller never finds out that the call was forwarded.

This feature has several business applications. It allows organizations to address all incoming calls efficiently even during peak incoming traffic. Calls can automatically be transferred to active agents, thereby reducing the wait time for callers. Furthermore, calls can be forwarded to another branch if the call center has reached its peak or is down (or unavailable) due to technical issues.

Ghajini

Ghajini was the official Bollywood remake of a Tamil movie with the same name, which was inspired by a Hollywood movie, Momento. Through the movie, we see how the protagonist, Sanjay, develops anterograde amnesia. The term refers to the incapability of being able to remember anything for longer than 15 minutes.

This, of course, is a major inconvenience for him as he hopes to find Ghajini, the villain, and avenge the death of his romantic interest. To cope with the issue, then, he tattoos every clue about his identity and mission on his body.

However, with the help of cloud telephony, our lead wouldn’t have needed to go through the pain of tattooing every detail on his body. He could’ve deployed a virtual number and used the call recording feature to keep track of every detail.

These details would’ve been securely stored on the cloud, and he could’ve accessed them whenever and wherever he wanted. Formulating a revenge plan would’ve become much easier and quicker for him.

(4) Virtual Number and Call Recording

As the name suggests, virtual numbers are facilitated virtually via the Internet (cloud). They operate without telephony cables or SIM cards and are primarily used to forward calls to a preset number. Businesses use this service to streamline their service by offering a single contact number to customers. This number may then forward the calls to different teams or even locations.

Call recording is yet another cloud telephony feature that allows managers and marketers to improve customer service. Using this feature, every customer conversation can be recorded and reviewed in case of any miscommunication or for training purposes.

Gangs of Wasseypur

Gangs of Wasseypur is no doubt a modern classic. This Anurag Kashyap superhit exposed Bollywood viewers to authentic cinema filled with raw details and some fine acting. The two-part saga primarily revolves around the rivalry of Ramadhir Singh with Sardar Khan and his family. “Baap ka, dada ka, bhai ka; sabka badla lega re tera Faisal.” Remember?

Cloud telephony could have immensely helped our characters at various plot points throughout the film. For example, consider Sardar Khan using voice broadcasting and bulk SMS service to inform all Wasseypur-ites’ about the cruel and wrong deeds of Ramadhir Singh. Hence, there would’ve been no need for dancing man announcements!

(5) Voice Broadcasting

It is a powerful tool for businesses and nonprofit organizations alike. It is primarily used to broadcast or disseminate information to a large audience at once. Businesses also deploy the tool to promote new launches, update customers about new offers and discounts or disseminate critical information.

For example, voice broadcasting was extensively used during initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic and during the recent cyclones and floods that created havoc across the country. It is also an effective tool for political campaigns and conducting wide-scale surveys.

Padman

Inspired by the life of Tamilian social activist Arunachalam Muruganantham, the movie highlights the countless struggles faced by the man. In the movie, the hero, Laxmi, is devoted to his wife and wishes to provide her with safe-to-use sanitary pads. When he starts making these pads himself and tries to gather feedback from women, he is mocked by people and forced to leave his hometown.

Considering the noble pursuit of our hero, he should have been aided with cloud telephony solutions. Laxmi could use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and number masking to discreetly gather feedback about his product.

While number masking would have kept his and the customers’ identity private, IVR would have allowed him to gather opinions without having personally interact with anyone, saving a lot of people from awkwardness.

(6) Interactive Voice Response and Number Masking

IVR is one of the most powerful and popular cloud telephony tools. It automatically answers incoming calls, provides callers with an easily navigable menu and forwards the call to concerned teams or agents. It also helps you manage incoming call flow seamlessly and further reduces the chances of human error while enhancing your brand image.

On the other hand, number masking is a unique feature that provides an added level of security to every conversation. It masks the number of both the caller and the receiver by displaying short-lived virtual numbers. This ensures confidentiality. The tool is especially useful for end-to-end service providers like cab, food and other delivery aggregators.

Conclusion

Bollywood is often a reflection of our own lives. It is said that a good story is ingrained in reality. Cloud telephony could have come to the rescue of our lead characters through generations of plot points, and it can come to your aid too! The technology can streamline your processes, maximize your profits and enhance your brand reputation––all without any major costs or effort. Its diverse products and custom pricing make it ideal for all businesses.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

Give us a call on

1888-859-0450

Write an email to

[email protected]

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Acefone Editor

Author

Acefone provides a broad range of cloud communication services to businesses of all sizes, which includes Hosted Phone Systems, Free Phone Numbers, and Cloud Contact Center Solutions. Being the UK's leading provider of VoIP service provider, we always strive to provide excellent customer service and high-quality custom solutions to our customers.

10 Customer Experience Stats To Learn From For 2021

Diksha Gusain

Author

Infographics

6 mins read eye

Table of content

Here are two cliches for you: Customer is king, and the numbers don’t lie. In this blog, we’re attempting to combine the two.

Businesses worldwide have begun to realise the importance of customer service. Not only does it affect your reputation and position in the market, but your revenue and profits too.

No matter which business leader inspires you, you’ll find that they’ve stressed the importance of putting clients first—time and again.

Steve Jobs, CEO, and co-founder of Apple Inc., famously said, “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need, well before they realise it themselves.”

Or consider the words of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and one of the richest men in the world: “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

What they’ll tell you is further proved by these 10 top customer experience statistics. Read on:

Customer Experience Stats To Learn From 2021

These stats give us three types of findings mainly:

First, companies with better customer experience, outperform their competitors. This means they see higher profits and better growth. This is aided by the fact that better customer relationships reduce the cost of operations as well.

Secondly, employees are better engaged with your firm when they are made to focus on customer experience. This could be explained by the reasoning that instead of dealing with arbitrary numbers, they’re developing meaningful relationships. As representatives of the brand, they tend to feel more connected with it while engaging with customers.

Last, but not the least, we come to customer loyalty. If you offer exemplary services and support, customers will choose to buy from you over others. They’ll also come back to you for repeat purchases and refer their friends and family to your business. And what’s amazing is that customers are willing to even pay more for brands that have treated them well in the past.

Therefore, it’s quite clear that customer satisfaction is a necessity, and not just an ideal, in this business scape. In fact, leading brands target customer delight, which is when you not just meet, but also exceed consumer expectations.

But the question that arises is, how do you get there?

Here are some tips to follow for curating an effective customer experience strategy.

Evaluate your current strategy

There’s no way to plan for the future when you’re unaware of how things are working in the present. It’s important to assess your current plans and identify what strong points to keep, what bottlenecks to fix, and find out the lacunae to fill.

An effective way to do this is by asking yourself some questions.

What do you want to achieve with your customer service?
What do your customers expect from you?
What do your competitors offer that you lack?
What actions would have the most impact on your customers?
How realistic and sustainable are your goals?

Hence, you can identify what steps you need to take and the goals you must realise.

An important part of this assessment is sketching out buyer personas. You need to be cognizant of what demographic you’re targeting, their preferences, habits, needs, stages of their journey, and so on.

A good buyer persona makes the exercise of customer service a lot easier for your representatives.

Use the smarts of artificial intelligence

Automation is the leading player in this technological age. With handy cloud communication services, your agents can comfortably converse with clients while leaving the grunt work to AI.

So you can deploy an IVR service to automatically greet and route callers to the best-suited agent or department. In the meantime, the system also collects relevant customer information to aid faster and provide more efficient support.

Integrating CRM tools with your phone system also aids in customer service. You can access all client data right on the screen and therefore, provide more contextual and personalised services.

Another great use of automation is for self-service. Clients don’t always have time to wait on call or have detailed conversations with agents. Sometimes, they know what’s wrong and they just need a quick fix.

Self-service lets them do just that. They can input their query via a multi-level IVR and the system can retrieve the appropriate response from an FAQ repository. This leaves your agents free to deal with more complex issues and the client experiences quick resolution and hence, feel more empowered.

Act on perception and feedback

You can’t just bury your head in the sand and keep doing what worked well for you at one point of time. Times are dynamic, and your modern customers can be even more volatile.

It’s important to constantly assess how customers are perceiving you and work on things accordingly.

The only way to understand what customers want is by listening to them. Encourage your clientele to leave feedback and stay in touch with you even beyond the purchase.

You can send bulk SMSes or use IVR to collect this feedback and generate analytical reports based on them. Chatbots are also a good way to assess customer perceptions. Sentiment analysis uses keywords from the conversation to figure out client moods.

Establish omnipresence

In order to make customers think highly of you, they first need to keep thinking of you. That’s what omnipresence ensures.

Make sure you’re available wherever your clients want you to be. Allow communication via smartphones, laptops, tablets, or any other device of their choice. Apart from multi-device compatibility, your support solutions should accommodate different channels—call, email, chat, social media, chatbots, website content, and so on.

The trick is to be proactive and constantly make posts, encouraging clients to reach out to you as well. So be it Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or even Snapchat, make sure you have social media handles which regularly post relatable content.

Keep up with the trends

Like we mentioned earlier, your consumer base is completely dynamic. Staying trendy has become an acquired skill these days.

You need to be aware of how preferences, moods, and societal perceptions keep changing over time. For example, since people started using mobile phones over telephone lines, it became important to adapt to this change and provide appropriate options.

Similarly, with the advent of social media, a new kind of marketing came into being. The quicker you jump onto the bandwagon, the more exposure you can get with potential clients.

Conclusion

As communication becomes more open, customer connections become even more important. Furthermore, that becomes evident if you look at reports and statistics that have studied customer experience.

Therefore, it’s time to realise the importance of CX and work towards improving the avenues for client communication. It always helps to use advanced tools like cloud technologies to make your agents’ job easier and help them be more productive.

To learn more about how you can avail cloud services and the benefits you can derive from them, call us at 1888-859-0450 or drop at email at [email protected].

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

Give us a call on

1888-859-0450

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Diksha Gusain

Author

Diksha is a junior content writer at Acefone. As a tech-lover, she aims to bridge the gap between tech articles and non-savvy readers. She’s equally interested in pop culture and worldly affairs. And in her free time, you can find her with her nose buried in a book or discovering new music for her chaotically diverse playlist.

Does Your VoIP Telephony Service Provider Ensure Secure Communication? Here is All You Need To Know.

Acefone Editor

Author

Voice - VoIP

February 4, 2021

6 mins read eye

Table of content

Customer trust is of utmost importance for businesses hoping to stay ahead in the race. To build customer trust, you must ensure that your communications are private and secure, and no one can access precious information.

The best way to do this is to get a secure VoIP phone service. Not only does it foster trust in your brand, but it also prevents you from paying hefty fines for breaching data protection laws or GDPR rules.

After all, we’ve all heard the horror stories about phone hacking. And hackers are getting more and more sophisticated every day. So, it is especially important to have a robust VoIP telephony solution which is compliant with all relevant security regulations.

In this blog, we give you tips on how to keep your communications secure with VoIP telephony solutions so that you are not a victim of VoIP hacking.

So, how can you spot VoIP hacking?

VoIP hacking is an unfamiliar term for most.

Put simply, VoIP hacking is a cyber-attack wherein hackers try to infiltrate your VoIP telephony system. Once they have access, these hackers can run up costly bills, steal sensitive information and listen in on your private business calls.

This is a real concern for businesses, especially now that most people are working from home via unsecured networks. If your communication system lacks the right security credentials, it is highly vulnerable to such attacks.

Once you understand VoIP hacking, you will be much better placed to stop it from happening to you. Here are a few signs that will help you recognise whether or not you have fallen victim to unscrupulous hackers…

1. Sudden and unexpected bill increase

Hackers will often increase your bills and run up high call costs. Since most people have a similar bill each month, it isn’t hard to tell when their bill doesn’t reflect the number of calls they usually make in a month. So, this is one of the easier ways to spot a security breach.

2. Unknown calls to unfamiliar numbers

A hacker may use your phone system to make unsolicited calls to numbers all over the world. Therefore, if your call logs reflect several calls to unfamiliar numbers that haven’t been made by your staff, your system may have been hacked.

3. Increase in calls made during off-hours

Hackers may often make calls during off-hours when you and your staff are away. So, one way to identify a breach is to check call timings. If you spot calls that have been made outside of your office hours or any other signs of hacking, it is important that you contact your provider.

Ensure that your passwords are changed and that your provider has all the relevant security measures in place through your phone system so that hackers aren’t able to regain access.

What can hackers target in your hosted phone system?

VoIP phone system are becoming more and more common by the day, courtesy of COVID-19 and the remote working model. While several take advantage of the flexibility and benefits the technology offers, many remain unaware of the risks that unsecure networks pose to their business communications.

If hackers access your VoIP system, they can potentially listen in on your calls. They will be privy to confidential information and will be able to gain all the details about your customers and their business with you.

Hackers can also use the CRM system linked to your hosted phone system and retrieve details like customers’ addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and so much more. This means, not only is your business at risk but so are your customers.

This is, of course, unthinkable. Conversations between a customer and a business should be private and confidential. When this isn’t the case, your business will not only lose the trust of the customers but also its reputation, leading to a drop in revenue and sales, both. Not to forget, such a serious security lapse can lead to legal actions and heavy fines imposed on you.

Thus, it is imperative that businesses ensure that they meet all security compliances and regulations and strive for minimum vulnerabilities. For organisations that have remote working staff, this is even more important.

Ensure that your VoIP telephony is secure from day one

Prevention is better than cure. So, it is important to make sure that your VoIP system’s security is foolproof from day one. Take a good look at your provider and the security measures they take to prevent cyber attacks.

If you are in the process of choosing a suitable provider then this should be a major consideration in the buying process––even more so if you deal with financial or classified data on a regular basis.

Another consideration should be the availability of their support staff. You should be able to avail help for the most part of the day and even for a few hours during the night, if not 24×7. This helps you mitigate the potential damage as much as possible and restore your data backup almost immediately.

The key to protecting your data is to act quickly as the time spent waiting for customer support to return your call could be costly in a number of ways.

Acefone VoIP telephony systems are compliant with PIC, FCC, GDPR and CPNI. Your data is stored on multiple secure servers. This adds an extra layer of protection to your system, such that in the event of a crisis or cyber attack, your data is safely backed up and remains untouched. We also use end-to-end encryption to ensure your data is protected further.

With multiple layers of protection in place, you can rest assured that no matter what happens, your hosted phone system and data will be safe.

How to broach the subject of security with your provider?

As a customer, you are well within your rights to ask the provider for security measures that offer the best protection for your business. While all providers offer a basic level of security, some may have extra layers which would benefit your business and give you and your customers more peace of mind. You may have to pay a penny extra but it is worth the protection you receive.

At the outset, clearly communicate your expectations to the provider and outline their responsibilities. Discuss in-depth the level of security that you’re being offered and what it entails. This will enable you to make an informed decision.

Acefone’s customer service team are on hand 24/7 to address any and all customer concerns and are happy to explain the multiple layers of security available to you.

Does your current VoIP telephony provider ensure secure communication?

If the answer is no, the time has come to change your provider.

Acefone has robust and secure cloud-powered systems that are backed up on servers in multiple geographical locations to ensure that you never lose any of your precious data. This guarantees that you and your customers are protected at all times.

Our support team works tirelessly 24/7 to ensure that we keep everything running smoothly no matter where you are based.

If you’d like to know more about our security and hosted phone systems, speak to our team today on 1888-859-0450.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

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1888-859-0450

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7 Must-Have Features of a Hosted Contact Center

Yukti Verma

Author

Contact Center

February 3, 2021

7 mins read eye

Table of content

Phone lines ringing continuously. Your representatives are busy speaking to callers back-to-back. The caller queue is building and customers are waiting impatiently to connect with your agents.

This reads like a typical contact center scene.

But what if your agents are not able to handle the volume of calls? In this scenario, your customers might become agitated. They might warn your agents about giving poor reviews. Your agents may apologise but might have no actual solution to solve this crisis.

But who is at fault here? How can this be better managed?

You should note that your contact center is not just a place where customers clear their doubts but also a major touchpoint for you to showcase your brand as reliable.

Contact centers help you reach out to your customers, understand their problems and demands, and even allow you to fine-tune your products and services based on their requirements.

So how can a hosted contact center make a difference? Let us find out.

According to a study, the contact center market worth is estimated to be $72.3 billion by 2027.

What is a hosted contact center?

A hosted contact center, as the name refers to, is hosted or functions on the cloud. While traditional contact centers have their phone systems and databases maintained on-premise, a hosted contact center is maintained off-premise by a third-party service provider.

Hosted contact centers score over traditional contact centers as they provide centralised access to information along with being highly cost-effective.

Here, we have consolidated a few features your hosted contact center must have to earn a competitive edge.

1. Interactive voice response

Interactive Voice Responses (IVR) greet your callers with automatic greetings that are already programmed. They are the first system your customers may come in contact with and therefore these automated responses must be tailor-made to their requirements.

These cloud-based responses help your callers select their type of service by punching appropriate, designated numbers from the menu. The caller is automatically directed to the specific department they need to contact. This saves both the agents’ and the caller’s time.

Furthermore, hosted interactive voice responses are customised and developed by service providers in a way that they can handle calls with simple queries. For example, if a caller has issues with finding your website or product page, the IVR can guide them with the appropriate website link.

The customer will not need to wait to speak to an agent. This saves time and also helps your agents to focus on other complicated customer concerns that need their expertise. IVR is emerging as a self-help option that improves the degree of customer service offered to a great extent.

2. Automatic call distribution

This feature helps your contact center route calls efficiently. Automatic call distribution in a hosted contact center enables the automatic routing of calls based on demands and the number of customer calls. It helps in the systematic handling of calls.

A hosted contact center also allows you to modify the call distribution or routing of calls. A few ways you can route calls are based on performance, location, and idle time.

For example, a caller from France will prefer to converse in their native language than in English. This call can be directly routed to a French-speaking representative for better customer experience.

Say, if this call is attended by an English-speaking agent and then directed to a French-speaking agent, the time and effort invested by your agents are doubled. Cloud-based contact centers with automatic call distribution understand the location and comfort of the caller thereby eliminating this wastage of time.

3. Skill-based routing

Customer support representatives are categorised based on several criteria. A few are their skills, demographics, speaking capabilities, and expertise. When a caller connects to your hosted call center, IVR prompts the right type of questions to understand the caller’s requirements.

Your hosted contact center system then directs the call to the appropriate agent from the right department. For example, consider a caller contacting you for more information about your products and services. It will not be fair if he is connected to an agent resolving technical issues. Instead, he should be briefed about product updates and offered more information from your repository.

This approach helps improve the rates of the first-call resolution, boosts customer satisfaction, and eliminates chances of wasting the time of both the customers and your agents.

4. Call recording capabilities

A hosted contact center consists of several agents. These agents may differ widely based on their potential to attend calls and the approach they use to solve customer issues. However, your agents must use the quickest and best way to resolve customer issues.

To get a sneak peek into this, hosted contact centers come with call recording capabilities. All the calls are recorded in real-time and can be used to review the performances of your agents. This capability helps identify bottlenecks in the way your agents attend calls along with finding agents who need training and help to improve their performance.

Again, call recordings can be used to offer training to new agents. It helps them obtain a real-time experience of what to expect even before they hit the working floor.

5. Call tracking and monitoring

Tracking and monitoring the performance of your contact center is as important as setting up one. Issues may arise at any point time and it is needed that you stay on your heels. There may be instances when your agents leave calls unanswered or fail to satisfy customers repeatedly. Call tracking and monitoring capabilities help you identify these scenarios and find a workaround.

Moreover, this capability helps you recognise technical glitches at the right time. You may monitor calls for repeated issues. This will help you find the hiccup and rectify it promptly. Also, hosted contact centers with tracking and monitoring abilities enable you to gauge individual agent performances.

6. Ability to integrate with CRM

Access to relevant information is the key to the success of your contact center. Only if your agents are provided with the required information will they be able to resolve customer issues backed with the appropriate data.

Hosted contact centers allow the integration of your system with the CRM. This integration enables the agents to obtain all the necessary customer information on a single page.

For example, consider a situation where a customer has come with a technical issue. When referring to the CRM, your agent finds that this agent has been trying to resolve this issue for the last few months.

Your agent will be able to sense the mood of the customer, derive conversational history from the CRM, and start from where the customer left in the last call rather than asking for the same information again.

Integration with CRM helps your agents to offer contextual experiences, saves time, and equips your agents with the right information thereby boosting customer satisfaction.

7. Obtain analytical reports

Deriving reports from data is as important as generating them. When your hosted contact center comes with capabilities to offer interactive analytical reports, it helps you figure out the call volume at different periods, repeated callers or new callers, and the traffic from different locations.

This information can help you to make important staffing decisions, scheduling agents, and gauging the performance of your call center. For example, if you have a distributed contact center, a report at the end of the month can help you compare and understand the performances of your contact centers.

Again, you can also recognise issues that are location specific and work towards rectifying them. Furthermore, a hosted contact center can help you with reports that can be accessed centrally by stakeholders to improve accountability.

Parting Words

Hosted contact centers have become the norm. With the needs of customers increasing with time, you must scale the capabilities of your contact center based on shifting trends. Hosted contact centers enable you to be flexible and equip your contact center to deliver seamless customer experiences. Hopefully, the above-mentioned points offer a peek into a few of the features you should be including in your hosted contact center.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

Give us a call on

1888-859-0450

Write an email to

[email protected]

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Yukti Verma

Author

Yukti is a content marketing enthusiast with a soft spot for Saas. She loves weaving complicated concepts into simple stories. When not at work, she is found reading books or watching movies.

IVR Systems: Making Banking Easier

Acefone Editor

Author

Contact Center

February 2, 2021

5 mins read eye

Table of content

In today’s time, it is difficult to imagine services without Internet connectivity or automation. Same is the case with banking services. With the advent of technology, most services in this sector have gone online or are facilitated via phones. It is at

With newer technology in place, the banking sector has updated various customer service aspects, including a gradual shift to Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Switching to an IVR system offers a host of advantages, including smoother workflows amid employees. To begin with, the banking sector receives high call volume on a daily basis and agents spend a huge part of their day resolving customer queries. This not only limits their potential but also their skills as they have no time to spend on core tasks.

An IVR can easily resolve this problem by implementing FAQs or a step-by-step procedure that can help customers and free agents at the same time. Furthermore, you can do all this with the right IVR designing strategy and at a surprisingly economical rate.

But this is just one way an IVR can assist the banking sector. Given the industry’s demanding nature, it is advisable to switch to a more convenient, automated and reliable system.

Here are 5 use cases of IVR for the Banking Industry:

1) Fraud Detection

One of the most common issues faced by account holders globally is the likeliness of a fraud. There is nothing more a customer would like than having a system in place to keep such issues at bay.

Having an IVR can assist with the same. For instance, with an outbound IVR, banks can create awareness on possible frauds or suspicious transactions in accounts. Swift notifications, such as these, can not only prevent monetary fraud but also instill confidence in your clients. It ensures them that you are going the extra mile to keep their money and assets safe.

Additionally, unlike simple SMSs, IVR systems can immediately transfer the call to a live agent in case of any financial emergency.

2) Overdraft and Deposits

It is not a pleasant experience to tell your customers that they’ve overdrawn from their account. Neither your agent nor the customer looks forward to the conversation. An IVR can easily take this burden on and initiate automatic calls to customers to update them regarding their transactions.

An automated call eliminates the awkwardness and merely states the account’s details. A simple call with relevant updates can also help your customers avoid overhead charges that might usually get overlooked. In case of any discrepancies or query, the customer can immediately connect with a live agent.

Similarly, when your customers make a deposit, they need assurance that it is reflected in their account. Apart from an active SMS service, it is always a good idea to let them know their account status via an automated IVR call.

3) Loan Status and Approvals

When it comes to loan applications, customer queries are never-ending. Right from the application process to the approval time, EMI dates, interest rates and so much more. And one of the most pertinent queries? The loan approval status.

Instead of having your agents answer all these questions, employ an IVR solution. Your IVR can handle all manners of queries. Say, for instance, customers want more information on the new loan policy changes. In this case, combined with your IVR, a text-to-speech technology can give customer real-time updates.

4) Extended support during peak hours and extension of opening time

All banks face high call volume situations. Calls will pour in when a policy is revised, when new guidelines are put in place or if a feature on the website isn’t working. Such instances result in situations where the number of incoming calls is higher than the number of hands on the deck.

Having an automated response system in place can solve this problem. Firstly, if there are simple queries, they can always be answered or resolved by the IVR’s self-service feature. Secondly, for more complex queries, customers can easily be routed or transferred to the concerned expert who may answer all their queries in detail.

With an IVR system, the opening times of your bank and the availability of your services gets extended significantly. There are certain issues that need round the clock assistance, such as blocking cards after a customer has lost it. They can also be solved in easy steps. Your IVR menu can easily lead them to the correct option and allow them to block their card themselves. This way, seasonal breaks and holidays also won’t affect your business.

5) Service Information and Customer Feedback

In case you have a new product or service to offer to your customers, then there is no better way than an IVR to inform them about it.

Instead of your bank agents repeating the same features to various clients, an automated IVR call can contact your entire client base and give the same information. This will also eliminate the risk of your agent missing some noteworthy information.

Another important aspect of providing any service is customer feedback. Not only is it important to evaluate your employees’ performance but it is also a great way to improve your services.

That being said, it is not always easy to collect this data. Not all customers are willing to fill out elaborate forms or talk to an agent. Doing away with so many steps, an IVR feedback at the end of the call is a swift way to gather your customers’ response. All they have to do is press a button and there you have it, the easiest and quickest customer feedback registered.

To Sum It Up:

IVR systems with their plethora of advantages end up being one of those systems that you don’t know you need until you try it.

Having such an IVR system in place ensures smooth and swift functioning. Simplifying tasks, saving time, money and your agents’ energy. Not only saving on huge manpower and expenditure, but an IVR system also saves resources that can be deployed elsewhere for better use.

It also ensures customer satisfaction by employing skill-based routing, reduces wait times and presents multiple methods to resolve queries. Additionally, all customers’ can easily access all their bank-related data with a few simple clicks.

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Deliver Happiness on a Plate: Cloud-Empowering Food Delivery

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Customer Service

6 mins read eye

Table of content

The food industry is forever growing. Customers aren’t just looking for the right restaurant to enjoy their meal but also to have the best experience. The responsibility of a restaurant entails the delivery of high quality and delicious food at the right time.

Undeniably, the food business has undergone a revolution. With people unable to visit restaurants in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, food delivery has become a significant part of their business. Customers have begun to prefer the comfort of their home, order their food, and spend time with their family rather than go out for meals. They no longer need to get dressed up or spend lots of time and money on travel.

Food delivery paves the way for a whole new experience for the customer and your outlet alike. The worst thing you can do is consider the delivery as a mere add-on and ignore it. Other than the quality of your food, you should be focusing on the core of your food delivery operations.

A report by Beambox says that 80% of the customers blame the restaurant in case something goes wrong—not the delivery company.

So how do you ensure an ace food delivery experience? We have consolidated a few ways right here. Check them out:

1. Focus on your menu

Ensure that you optimise your menu for delivery. Consider the food’s shelf life and the nature of ingredients used to cook the dish. A soggy burger means a guaranteed negative customer experience.

It’s okay to remove a few dishes from your curated delivery menu. After all, not all dishes are suitable to be consumed after some time. They may become soggy, lose the original taste, or become cold.

Politely inform your customers that the delivery of a few dishes may not be possible. Furthermore, check your stock and availability of dishes before you fix the menu for the day. Cancelling an order due to non-availability after its been placed is highly unprofessional.

You may consider the following aspects before zeroing down your menu for delivery.

At what time does the food meltdown or become soggy?
Does the dish require special packing?
What is the travel time? Can food survive this duration?
What is the margin to cover the delivery commission?

2. Understand the significance of packaging

Did you know that 20% of customers are ready to spend more on off-premise orders when compared to dine-in orders.

It’s worth noting that food packaging is a lot more than mere wrapping of food to keep it edible. Though the purpose of food packaging is to keep the food safe, fresh, hot, and best to consume after some time, its purpose has changed in leaps and bounds.

Customers eat with their eyes. This is not limited to tasty and appetising looking food but also the way it has been presented. Everybody loves to unwrap gifts, and food delivered in this way can be a real treat to both the customer’s heart and stomach.

Arrange and present your food in cartons or boxes to lock its freshness. Make sure to include your branding aspects like your logo and appropriate branding colours. This way your food acts as a reflection of your brand. Include your taglines with catchy phrases to attract customers.

A personalised note wishing people a bon appétit also goes a long way!

In the current digital world, this kind of appealing physical presentation can go viral across social media platforms and earn you a lot of attention.

You can take your branding a notch higher, as well as display your core values by using eco-friendly packaging. This will show your customers how much you care for the environment. The need of the hour is not just delivering food but creating a memorable experience.

3. Prioritise time

Your highest priority should be to be able to deliver on time or even faster. Especially when it comes to food, patience tends to wear thin. Ensure that you have a proactive in-house logistics team who take care of speedy food delivery.

If you are falling short of delivery persons, hiring additional delivery partners is the best idea. This will help you to maintain extra help for sudden requirements. Keep in mind that speedy delivery attracts happy customers and therefore, mostly positive reviews.

4. Treat your customers for loyalty

Who doesn’t love gifts? There’s no better way to show appreciation and bond with regular customers than to reward them for their loyalty. Coupling your orders with personalised perks can make a huge impact on your brand.

Offer a discount with delivery orders above a certain price.
Provide vouchers for in-house dining to repeated customers. This will encourage them to visit your outlet and experience more of your service.
Give a special gift to customers who share a positive review on social media. This can earn lots of appreciation online.
Refer-to-friend discounts can help you promote your brand at a minimum cost. This can also help you reward and make your existing customer base happy.

Include handwritten thank you notes or season’s greetings or offer a gift for sharing group meal photos on social media. Try giving out samples of a new dish as a free perk with deliveries.

Every brand is different. What works for someone else may not for you—and vice versa. You should try and test each one to know which suits best for your brand.

5. Maintain a strategic delivery roll out

Planning is key for food delivery operations. For your orders as well as in-house catering gigs, you need to figure out peak delivery hours and strike the right balance between the two.

Start from one region. Identify your requirements and peak hours. Then plan your workforce and menu based on customer demands. Also, be prepared to tackle any unexpected changes in order traffic.

Consider seasonal changes like holidays and occasions. Some of your branches may brim with diners and delivery orders for lunch and others for dinner. Identify these phase insights and strategise your delivery operations accordingly.

6. Maintain a dedicated medium

The traditional medium to order food was through the telephone. However, this left us exposed to errors. The person on the other end may note your order incorrectly or mess up the menu availability due to lack of real-time updates.

Today, mobile apps and websites are at the top. Customers simply need to visit the restaurant website or download the app to place orders, track orders, post reviews, and know more about the food being offered.

These mediums also help you stay connected with the customers. You may post recent updates about special freebies on offer, discounts, or a new dish you may have introduced.

Posting colourful and attractive photos of various dishes is a great way to attract customers and spread the positive word about your brand. When they get to see the look of their dish on your website or mobile app, they are motivated to place the order.

What’s next?

The food business has revolutionised hugely over the years. Though doorstep delivery has always been a part of the food business, the expectations from this medium have increased.

It has been proved, time and again, that food delivery is not limited to providing food in an edible condition. It reflects the brand value and helps spread the positive word.

With the aid of cloud-based communication tools, you can make the food delivery experience significantly more pleasant—both for the consumers as well as your staff. It’s a win-win situation.

To know more about cloud tools and how to use them effectively for your business needs, get in touch with our experts at 1888-859-0450 or [email protected].

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How Will The Contact Center Work After Five Years?

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Contact Center

January 29, 2021

6 mins read eye

Table of content

Contact centers are essential for businesses because they bridge the gap between organizations and customers. And they have evolved tremendously—from stand-alone operational kiosks to multi-functional platforms through which customers can reach out to you.

However, the belief that cloud contact centers are best accessible through phone lines is still prevalent.

It’s notable though, that contact centers have emerged successfully from tough competition. Now, you can access support through several channels, including social media, email, and chat across various business dimensions.

With this kind of phenomenal growth already, how much more is the contact center expected to grow in the next five years? Read on to know more.

1. Simplified communication through social media contact centers

The power of social media is irreplaceable. The amount of exposure this channel provides extends beyond imagination. When your contact center uses social media handles, customers can easily locate you.

They don’t need to remember various email IDs or telephone numbers. Customers can simply reach out to your agents through their own social media accounts. What’s more? They no longer have to wait in call queues or for email replies.

Social media contact center are readily available across platforms. Potential clients can easily contact the business by posting their queries on the forum. Another huge advantage open forums offer is that others belonging to this community can also access your replies––thereby clearing common doubts at once.

Conversely, if there is a delayed response from your end, another customer who may have experienced similar issues may share their advice. This boosts your brand’s positive reputation, engagement, and client loyalty this way.

Moreover, these social media contact centers provide an opportunity for your agents to join relevant discussions and integrate them with your center. Therefore, you can deliver an omnichannel customer engagement process.

There will, of course, be negative reviews as well. Your agents need to be prepared to handle such situations—in the public eye.

2. Improved self-service options

Customers long to have complete control over their experience with a brand. Conversations should aim to address customer needs rather than simply offering what you have.

This process will require a deep understanding of customer needs. The first step is to understand and value the buyers’ time and eliminate the need for them to wait endlessly in call queues. Best IVR system empowers callers to resolve their issues without human intervention.

Traditionally, this involved a frustrating process of endlessly punching on the keypad. However, these services have now transformed for the better with the introduction of the following techniques:

3. IVR combined with advanced speech recognition

This option eliminates the need for callers to select numbers or menus. Advanced Automated speech recognition helps customers reach the solution simply by analyzing their natural or regional language. The tool understands the customer’s query and then routes the call to the appropriate department, facilitating quicker resolution.

This next-gen IVR system with advanced speech recognition quickens and simplifies the process by eliminating agent intervention. For example, if a caller needs more information about a product, they can simply talk to the system—have a hold on the interaction, and ask only for the information they need.

The system can interpret this accurately and direct the caller to website content, blogs, and additional information from the repository. This saves time and effort for both, the customer and the agent, and increases productivity and satisfaction.

4. NLP-based knowledge management

NLP stands for natural language processing. When you base your knowledge management on this process, it takes your IVR a step further.

Conventionally, IVR systems are restricted to mainstream languages. But this knowledge management technique enables clients to present their queries in their dialect across multiple channels—without limitations. So, they can go through the path they’re most comfortable with.

Integrating your contact center with neuro-linguistic programming will make your customer support quicker, simpler, and more accurate.

5. Focus on personalisation

Personalisation makes clients feel valued and engaged in any interaction. The recent adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made it possible to offer much-needed customisation and deliver enhanced support.

This trend will see a drastic spike in acceptance and also improve how it offers high-end personalisation. For example, AI chatbots have become the new norm. Incorporating these chatbots enables your brand to deliver contextual experiences.

In machine learning, the more technology interacts with customers, the more their competency improves. Essentially, these chatbots function on keywords.

When a customer presents their query in natural language, the chatbot searches for the concerned keyword in its knowledge repository and offers the best-suited resolution. If it is unable to find a suitable keyword, it automatically transfers the chat to a live agent.

This interaction is not limited to simply fetching the name of the customer but extends to providing recommendations based on their chat history, purchase behaviour, and browsing habits. When you can offer your customers something more than what they need, it makes you more valuable in their lives. This is where a chatbot turns out to be advantageous.

6. Benefitting from the capabilities of UCaaS

Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) helps improve the collaboration of internal workflows in an organisation. This not only helps your contact center, but also enhances inter-department coordination.

This report suggests that UCaaS was valued at USD 5492.02 million in 2019 and is expected to reach the value of USD 21572.39 million by 2025. This indicates a CAGR of 25.67% from 2020 to 2025.

Why is UCaaS so important?

Consider this: a customer calls your sales department for a technical issue. Your salesperson requests them to reach out to the contact center and provides the number. The already frustrated customer refuses to disconnect the call.

With UCaaS, your salesperson can simply direct the call to your contact center without asking the customer to call yet another number. This kind of inter-knit ecosystem helps in improved collaboration.

Furthermore, organisations strive to break down silos and work across departments. Integration with a CRM plays an important role in the smooth functioning of a contact center. With UCaaS, your agents will be able to see pop-ups about incoming calls with details like the caller’s profile and interaction history. This equips your agents to deal with customers in an informed manner.

Again, unified communication across your organisation will enable you to function as a complete unit, breakthrough barriers, and focus more on delivering the best of customer experiences.

Wrapping up

Customer expectations and demands keep changing with time. Organisations that stay at par with these shifting trends will earn a competitive edge in the industry. Contact centers are no exception to this.

You will have to update the capabilities of your contact centers with time and strive to emerge successfully. Hopefully, the aforementioned points will highlight a few contact center trends and growing areas contact centers will focus on by the year 2025.

For any further queries on how to make your cloud phone system, don’t hesitate to contact our team at 1888-859-0450 .

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The Complete Guide To 24/7 Support For Your Contact Center

Acefone Editor

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Contact Center

January 28, 2021

6 mins read eye

Table of content

The importance of contact centers goes far beyond answering customer calls. It is the focal point to attract consumers and build trust among your target audience. Even if your agents are unable to resolve issues spontaneously, the assurance that somebody is always available to help will result in happier customers.

Nurturing this satisfaction is possible only if your contact center is accessible 24/7 for customer convenience. Unconditional availability of services will have a positive impact on your brand. Furthermore, simple ways to reach out to your support staff and an understanding customer care agent team will add to the benefits.

So, what are the nuances of having a 24/7 contact center? Let’s check them out.

What is a 24/7 support contact center?

As the name suggests, in this system, clients can reach you 24 hours a day, every day—without any restrictions. The customers are free to contact these support kiosks at any time of the day or night, irrespective of the time zones, from across the globe.

Is 24/7 support important for your business?

Definitely. It plays an important role in showcasing your brand reliability and boosting customer satisfaction, while also reducing the average call waiting time. Round-the-clock availability enables people to contact you at their time of convenience, thereby evenly distributing the number of calls received.

This ensures that call waiting and queues are significantly minimised. The call waiting time is a key metric in determining customer satisfaction and your team’s performance. A 24/7 support center helps achieve highly on this metric.

Moreover, this is your chance to boost trust and earn loyal customers for the long run. The Customer Effort Score (CES) refers to the effort dedicated by your customers to contact you. When your services are not available, they try to contact you repeatedly, thereby increasing the CES. On the other hand, 24/7 availability reduces the effort required to reach your support agents, and therefore, reduces CES.

How can you ensure 24/7 availability of services?

There are several factors like technology, team size, and funds that need to be considered for your business to scale up to round-the-clock availability. Here are a few points to consider:

Provide options for self-service

Businesses have begun to understand the importance of 24/7 availability. Though your customers should be attended by agents, at times, self-service options can be the better choice. They can help manage your workforce while handling customers. However, there are a few aspects that need to be taken care of when enabling self-service.

Make sure that you maintain an updated knowledge base that is linked to these self-service options. Consider this: a customer requests a product page link and gets redirected to an old page. This will reflect the ignorance and incompetence on your part. Ensure that you have a dedicated team that keeps updating documents and information on this knowledge repository for seamless customer services.

Moreover, you should consider categorising solutions based on common content themes and FAQs. This will make it easier for agents and your system to find answers to customer issues based on keywords entirely.

Providing options to register customer feedback will leave a positive mark on users. Offer means to submit reviews and complaints about the self-service experience.

Chatbots are the leading trend in self-service. Though the knowledge base provides the required answer to the customers, chatbots help in initiating a two-way conversation. These bots learn from customer experiences and are trained to derive solutions from existing data. They can prompt contextual questions and provide human-like answers.

Furthermore, chatbots can engage customers and offer personalised answers to resolve all their queries.

In fact, 67% of service-related interactions can be effectively handled by customers in dedicated communities.

Setting up community forums is another great route to take. A community forum usually includes your customers who interact with each other about your products and services. The questions posed by new users are answered by older clients. Typically, unaddressed questions can be handled by your team. This platform will help build trust and reliability as answers from another customer reflects transparency and loyalty.

Expand your customer support team

If you have decided to provide round-the-clock services for your customers, expanding your team is an important requirement in addition to offering self-service options.

Adopt a shift-schedule and train your agents to handle customers from across the globe. You’ll require a team proficient in different languages and with an understanding of diverse cultures. When your agents begin to work in shifts, it helps distribute workload evenly, thereby helping provide quality service.

This further enables agents to get used to the work pattern and deal with a specific number of customers with high productivity. Proactive shift management helps keep track of the number of agents working in each shift, and better manage them.

Maintaining teams based on the sun model is another approach. Here, teams are established in different locations based on your geographical requirements. You should ensure a proper handoff of pending activities at the end of each day to avoid discrepancies in a distributed environment. This kind of set-up will help boost your global visibility and improve the average rate of resolution time.

How should you optimise your processes to deliver 24/7 support effectively?

Maintain an omnichannel helpdesk

Omnichannel presence is as important as offering 24/7 support. You cannot restrict the medium through which your customers prefer to contact you. You may receive a higher number of requests through your call center at some time or may get a few emails during some other.

You should maintain a consistent quality of service through all these channels alike. For example, having an up-to-date contact center while neglecting your social media channels will harm your brand image. It’s best to have a dedicated team for every support medium or, at least, maintain a proactive team that takes charge of all the support platforms diligently. Setting up SLAs that run round-the-clock will help ensure that all the support requests are taken care of.

Automate major process workflows

Assigning request tickets, and managing inter-team and inter-shift dependencies can become challenging in a distributed set-up. When you automate these workflows, important information is automatically passed on without any hiccups—ensuring uninterrupted workflows.

Tickets are assigned to the right agents based on their demography, expertise, and customer segments that results in the smooth functioning of processes and a higher rate of customer satisfaction.

Measure your team performance regularly

Tracking and monitoring play an important role in your contact center. You’re able to identify bottlenecks in processes and curb them promptly. You need to track the ticket volumes, your workforce capability to tackle them, and the level of proactiveness demonstrated by your team in resolving the issues.

Make sure that you offer consistent feedback to your team and also receive their views about the processes in place. They work on the frontline and are the first to sense any problem that may arise due to improper procedures. Be open to suggestions and improve your contact center system based on them.

Parting words

Round-the-clock availability of services has become a necessity rather than a luxury these days. Customers have begun to expect personalised and speedy delivery of services and support. Hopefully, the above-mentioned points will throw light on the importance of 24/7 support services and the different ways about its implementation for businesses.

You can take your contact center to the next level of performance by adopting the right cloud communication tools. Get in touch with us at 1888-859-0450 or [email protected] to get expert advice and get started.

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5 Movies That Teach You Lessons On Business And Leadership

Kritagya Pandey

Author

Business Communications

January 27, 2021

5 mins read eye

Table of content

Whether it is the transient ups and downs of Chris Gardner’s life, who makes efforts to protect his family from sliding into poverty and struggling between life and death or a compelling story of a young, impatient stockbroker with a desire to get rich and the harder lessons he learns.

Movies are entertaining, but when you take a closer look at them you will realise that they provide valuable life lessons too. A few of them can have a strong impact on your life and can leave you with important takeaways that can just change the way you see life.

Let’s go through some of the best movies of all time, which were a visual treat and a life-changing factor for people.

1. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

“You got a dream. You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves; they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it.”

Premise: Based on Chris Gardener’s story, The Pursuit of Happyness is a heartwarming tale of a hard-working father who rises above all the curveballs life throws at him. Not able to make enough money, Chris’ wife leaves him all alone with his son. The movie showcases Chris’s struggles and how he manages to become a stockbroker and make an honest living for his son.

The Lesson:

The movie is a lesson in how to deal with financial hurdles and cope with the adversities without giving up. We can look up to Chris’ sheer dedication and how he puts in the work to get the one paid job and a brokerage firm and care for his son. It begs attention that it doesn’t matter where or when you start, hard work and dedication always pays off.

2. The Social Network (2010)

“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”

Premise: The movie, based on Mark Zuckerburg’s life, shows us the process behind creating the world’s largest social media platform. Mark’s journey as a Harvard student; how he develops a social media network called Facebook and has to face struggles and lawsuits.

The lesson:

Packed with valuable business lessons, the movie goes on to teach us about angel investing, seed funding, and entrepreneurial lessons. You gain enough knowledge about venture capital financing when Mark and Severin bump heads and shake hands with noted PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel and others. Low funding and extreme challenges reveal the dark side of startup culture.

3. Wall Street (1987)

“Greed is good.”

Premise: Set in the backdrop of the largest and most famous stock market, Wall Street revolves around greed and trappings of an erratic system. Played by Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko is the ultimate unprincipled corporate raider. What follows is Gekko’s unmitigated greed and the lessons learned by Charlie Sheen’s character, Bud Fox.

The Lesson:

Wall Street touches upon the common dilemma; we all must have faced in our lives, i.e. greed for money and power. It shows how people who get excessively consumed by the desire of money end up ruining their lives. Wall Street warns us about the perils of insider trading, although Charlie Sheen’s and Michael Douglas’s skillful performance will ground you too.

However, it carefully stresses how waking up each day for the sole purpose of earning money is an act of self-sabotage.

4. The Godfather (1972)

“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Premise: Whether you’re the head of the Corleone crime family or an IT team lead, this iconic movie will surely teach you great business lessons. Though Don Vito Corleone had never used Excel and Microsoft Project, the film revolves around his skills of delivering projects and getting results.

Lesson:

Of course, drawing parallelism between entrepreneurs and mobsters is a bit wild but worth noting too. The Godfather teaches you the art of communication, the value of unbiased opinions, and the power of soft skills. Moreover, the biggest takeaway from The Godfather is to realise that everything is a two-way street. People will stand up for you and help you only when you do the same for them.

5. Moneyball (2011)

“Many are called, few are chosen”

Premise: A true story about defying the norms and doing things your own way, Moneyball is the perfect example of why we need to get away with archaic, traditional practices. Based on Michael Lewis’s book of the same name Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, the movie teaches you to work within a limited budget and shine through with it.

Lesson:

To quote Richard Branson, “Listen more than you talk. Nobody learned anything by hearing themselves speak.” Billy Beane listening to Peter Brand, who had just started his professional career, tells us how crucial it is to pay attention to what others have to say. The movie also showcases how important it is to understand and bridge the gap between perception and reality. http://loans-cash.net

The journey, from a downtrodden franchise to a winner, is an example of how constructive criticism can make you better.

Conclusion

Movies are fun, but if you dig deeper, you realise that they carry a sense of responsibility and understanding. They can teach, affirm your ideas and inspire you to ditch that comfort zone. The power of cinema and storytelling is definitely worth taking note of.

And when it comes to business or life lessons? Well, there are no shortages in the content either. Have we missed your favourite movie on leadership and business? Tell us in the comments below.

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Kritagya Pandey

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Kritagya Pandey is a creative and technical content writer, editor, and strategist. She has been writing on customer experience, customer service, artificial intelligence, cloud communication, and more. She invests her time researching the current business, market trends, and studying about social media strategies.

Virtual Numbers: The Perfect Virtual Assistants for your Business

Acefone Editor

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Uncategorized

January 25, 2021

6 mins read eye

Table of content

We’ve come a long way from being a society of phone operators, or even landlines—the so-called ‘dark ages’ when people were glued to their landlines and could not attend calls on the go. Virtual numbers, powered by the cloud, have been a game-changer for the business communication arena.

Perhaps the term seems ambiguous to you. Where and how can a number exist virtually? However, as complex as the term might seem, the working of a virtual number is rather simple and beneficial for all types of businesses.

A Brief Explanation

Virtual numbers are geographical numbers hosted on cloud servers with no physical presence. More commonly known as Direct Inward Dialling (DID) numbers, they redirect calls to a dedicated service number without being tied to a physical set-up.

In traditional telephony, the call recipient needs to be around their station to attend calls. If they’re away, there is no way to reach them in time.

However, virtual numbers do not require access to a cell tower or a specific device. Instead of relying on such infrastructures, these numbers make use of an Internet connection and cloud technology to intelligently route calls and voicemails. So, it is easier to reach people even if they’re on the move.

Not just that, with the help of IVR solutions, these numbers can easily be converted into virtual assistants to take care of all your communication needs.

So, How Does This Work?

A caller’s experience with a virtual number is identical to a usual phone call—albeit with background processes that go unnoticed. When a call lands on a virtual number, it automatically gets routed to a specific extension or multiple devices, depending on the configuration.

These numbers, then, can greet callers, inform them about the availability of agents, and even guide them during off-hours with FAQs. One can also schedule calls, add reminders and attend to multiple customers at the same time. Isn’t that everything a virtual assistant does?

Therefore, virtual numbers can act as virtual assistants and facilitate efficient remote working. The icing on the cake? These devices need not be in the same area, and one can even modify them.

So, you can receive calls on your office device in the morning, and the same call can be redirected to your personal number during off-hours.

The difference between working with traditional and virtual phone numbers also lies in the uniqueness offered by cloud technology. Instead of using local storage options, the cloud allows businesses to access, retrieve and control data from online servers—enabling better control over confidential information.

Businesses are also able to enjoy increased access to caller information with the help of online databases.

Who Needs to use Virtual Numbers?

Any business that relies on telephonic conversations will require a virtual number—namely, every business. And this solution is definitely a must-have if you require a social presence.

Accompanied by click-to-call technology, virtual numbers work best for paid ads. They let you closely track your paid campaign with features like scheduled reports, real-time monitoring, detailed call logs and recordings, and more.

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What are its Capabilities?

Whether you’re worried about expanding your operations to new locations or shifting to a remote work culture, virtual numbers have you covered. Here’s how.

For Businesses

Empower your business with virtual numbers, magnify your reach and improve credibility—all without burning a hole in your pocket. These numbers replace bulky and expensive hardware with minimal infrastructure. So, you don’t even need physical servers at your office; just use your cloud-compatible device.

Additionally, these numbers do not have a fixed geographical location, so you can establish a local presence for your business by using any area code.

According to Software Advice, customers are four times more likely to attend calls from a local virtual number than a number with unfamiliar digits. Thus, a virtual number can help you connect to a larger audience without much effort.

In addition to establishing a local presence for your business, the solution also helps customers get in touch with the right person quickly and saves time. How, you ask? The smart call routing feature directs calls to the best-suited agent or department according to time, type of query, agent preference, etc.

This way, virtual assistants never let you miss important calls and, hence, you do not lose business. With power-packed features such as an auto-attendant and holiday routing, you can even keep callers informed about your whereabouts and get back to them conveniently.

Overall, your customers can connect with appropriate agents instantly and effortlessly—saving you costs, offering higher accessibility and eliminating geographical restrictions.

For Marketing

Virtual numbers are capable of tracking marketing campaigns and ROIs for various channels. You can assign different numbers to various campaign and analyse the reports separately to design effective marketing strategies—from social media campaigns to online advertising.

When marketers use A/B testing to change their strategies in accordance with ongoing trends, they can use virtual numbers to track and monitor the performance. These numbers provide valuable insights about customer behaviour and preferences.

For Communication

Businesses that rely on call centres to manage their customer interactions can greatly benefit from this solution. These virtual assistants act as the first point of contact for, both, new and existing customers. And they provide callers with a human-like experience that makes support conversations an enhanced experience.

The technology streamlines call flows and organises high call traffic, automatically routing callers to the next best available agent during peak hours. This ensures timely issue resolution and higher customer satisfaction.

It also protects customer and agent identities by masking their contact numbers for the interaction. Moreover, businesses are able to exercise better control over their business processes and, thus, enjoy improved performance.

Although virtual numbers are offered primarily to businesses in India, they can be highly beneficial for individuals as well. Imagine having to give out your personal number on sites like Quikr and Olx, and dealing with all those spam calls. Scary, isn’t it?

Cloud telephony solutions combat this issue with ease.

Parting Words:

In the quest to stay ahead in a saturated market, business leaders often spend hefty sums of money and valuable time to find newer and easier ways to perform complex tasks. With the growing popularity and demand for the cloud, virtual numbers are also gaining popularity.

These solutions save time and money by eliminating the need for bulky hardware or additional agents, and allow you to always stay connected with your audience. Consequently, the credibility of your business is improved.

Virtual numbers also offer greater flexibility and easy scalability while increasing your revenue and streamlining your business processes.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

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