Beginner’s Complete Guide to Missed Call Service

Acefone Editor

Author

Contact Center

May 7, 2020

6 mins read eye

Table of content

As customers, we all have seen this form of marketing on various platforms. Especially after being popularized by our government. Businesses today from various sectors use missed call solution for a plethora of advantages, ranging from customer verification to collecting votes for a political campaign and everything in between. However, have you ever wondered what this is and how it works?

This guide to missed call service will take you through all that is there to know about this service. We will trace what, why and how of the service and finally understand how to implement the same for your business.

What is missed call service?

Missed call service is a cloud telephony solution used by businesses to promote products or services, conduct polls or surveys, verify customers and much more. A phone number is marketed among customers on various platforms, like social media, websites, offline advertisements, etc. Customers can then give a missed call on the said number to register for the product/ service, volunteer, give feedback, show support or for whatever the pre-decided business or organizational need.

How does missed call service work?

Once the customers give a call to your business on the dedicated missed call number, it is automatically disconnected after 2-3 rings. As a result, no call costs are charged from the customers. The basic caller information is then registered on your account, which can be exported to a spreadsheet for easier use. The same information can be used as per the business requirements.

The missed call solution is a booming service for a multitude of companies because of the convenience it provides both to customers and the businesses. Owning to the busy and fast lifestyles of the current day and age, many customers do not have time to engage with businesses and look for easier and convenient methods for the same. In addition, some customers do not have access to fast and steady internet connection or do not want to spend money for calling a company. This is a specific concern in developing countries like India. Missed call service is a great tool for this scenario, offering both a free of cost and an extremely convenient method of communication.

Let us see some of the ways in which companies are using missed call marketing:

Verify Authenticity

Many businesses like food-ordering or e-commerce platforms among others ask their customers to give a missed call on the registered number to check the authenticity of the order and that of the customer.
Expand Reach

Using this free of cost mode of communication; it is easier for businesses to penetrate even remote markets, while getting correct customer information. Thus, providing companies a great source for quality lead generation.
Feedback Forms

It is difficult for marketers to get feedback from customers about their products or services. The feedback they do receive is limited from a select few. Missed call service has the potential to increase the sample size, making the entire process extremely user friendly. Customers need to not fill a long and cumbersome form. Merely giving a missed call on the registered number is enough!

Apart from the above-mentioned uses, organizations and businesses are using missed call services in a variety of ways like giving score updates for a sports match, candidates’ marks from an exam, mobile or bank balance, registering a vote or simply showing support for a cause. The uses of missed call marketing are boundless.

Why should one opt for Missed Call Solution?

Given the simplicity of this service, it is a preferred means of engagement for businesses. It saves both time and cost for companies and offers ready-to-use customer information. Integrating this service with automated SMS marketing, the entire process can be customized without the need of any agents! Thus, saving expenditure and time on employee hiring and training. Furthermore, missed call service can enhance the brand image among your customers while providing genuine user data to analyze and create more engaging marketing campaigns.

Let us see some of the benefits of missed call solution in this guide to understand why this service is a boon:

Zero-Cost Solution

This is self-explanatory. Using this mode of communication, customers do not need to spend anything to get in touch with a company. With a simple missed call, their data is saved with the business. The business can use the same to call the customer or provide product/service as per the pre-decided engagement.
Greater Penetration

Customers without access to smartphones or steady internet connection can also be reached with missed call marketing. Thus, taking a company’s marketing campaign even to the most remote areas while providing accessibility to customers with even a landline
Saves Time

Missed call solutions save time for both the business and its customers. One need not spend a lot of time filling out survey forms. The cumbersome process can be easily replaced with this service. Further, since it provides authentic customer information, agents need to not spend exuberant time on cold calling individuals to generate leads.
Enhance Brand Image

Using such a zero-cost and convenient mode of communication, dramatically improves your brand image. It can potentially transform your company’s perception to one that cares for its customers and is ready to assist them at any instant.

Understanding the benefits of missed call service from the perspective of both the customers and the business should leave no doubt on its credibility and utility. This leads us to the last section of the article.

Step by Step Missed Call Service Setup Guide

There are 3 major points:

Select a phone number

Businesses first need to buy a phone number from their service provider. They can opt for different numbers for different marketing and promotional campaigns. Different numbers make it easy for monitoring and tracking various campaigns.
Opt for a Service Plan

Service providers offer different packages and plans customized with various value-added features to meet one’s business demands. The plans differ from one another in terms of cost and campaign management services among others. Opt for the one, which best suits your requirements.
Customize, Monitor and Track your Campaign

With an easy-to-use dashboard, businesses can readily customize their campaigns while generating an analysis report in real time, enabling one to evaluate the performance of the campaigns. One can also integrate missed call service with IVR and SMS marketing to create full-proof marketing campaigns. In addition, the dashboard provides the option for automated notifications on SMS or email, so that you may not miss out on any customers.

Conclusion

Overall, missed call service is a great boon for companies and organizations from across the fields be it healthcare, e-commerce, food delivery, politics and many more. It is one of the most convenient modes of communication for customers and business and is a proven hit! It has the potential to influence new markets be it in the urban or rural sphere, while requiring minimal infrastructure. Be a not-for-profit entity or a huge multinational corporation, opt for missed call service today by calling us and revolutionize your business!

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

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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.

How to Run Effective Meetings While Remote Working

Acefone Editor

Author

Operations

May 6, 2020

5 mins read eye

Table of content

Meetings are an important part of everyday working life, encouraging you to get to know your colleagues and making communications and project briefs clear and easy to understand.

But what happens when we can no longer meet our colleagues face to face?

A hosted phone system provides a solution for you to run effective meetings while you and your staff are working remotely, with in-built solutions to help make communicating easier no matter where you are.

Here’s how to run an effective meeting while remote working…

Ensure Everyone Is Connected

Firstly, you must ensure that your staff have a device and internet connection so that they can use your hosted phone system to connect with their colleagues and customers.

They should have a good connection to the internet and access to a compatible device to take your call – this can be a laptop, mobile phone, or tablet as long as it can connect to the internet it will work seamlessly.

Once everyone has the basics, you can use the conference calling feature to connect your staff to your meeting and the sharing of information can begin.

The conference calling feature comes as standard with your hosted phone system and is a quick and easy tool to connect staff from anywhere in the world in one meeting.

If managed correctly these meetings can be extremely productive and can even rival face to face meetings providing a succinct method of communicating with fewer distractions.

Make A Clear Agenda

This seems simple, but it can be difficult to get your point across in an effective way when conducting meetings over the phone.

The meeting can get sidetracked so it is important when working remotely to ensure you have a set agenda to go over during a conference call to keep things at their most effective.

To find out what you need to talk to your team about, you can use Acefone’s easy to use online portal to study analytics from each agent’s call data and use this to find discussion points with staff.

Not only can you find the analytics you need, but you can also listen to call recordings, so if there are any specific points you would like to raise with your staff you can find all the information you need via the portal.

Ask Participants To Contribute

This is a great way to ensure that participants remain engaged with the meeting and is also a way to effectively gain necessary information which needs to be shared with the team.

Hosted phone systems encourage as much collaboration as possible between staff even when working remotely, so it will be simple for staff to contribute their insights through call conferencing.

Staff can discuss the changes to their working environment if they are not used to working remotely and can access support from other staff, sharing best practices for customer service and more.

Additionally, they can share expertise freely and can discuss any customer notes they have shared on Acefone’s online portal or on their CRM system to get up to speed with anything they need to know.

Ensure Meetings Work For Conflicting Time Zones

With your hosted phone system opening up your business to workers based anywhere in the world, you are likely to have workers based in different time zones which can hinder the effectiveness of a meeting if key staff cannot be present.

So, as a manager, you must consider a time which works for staff in each and every time zone which can be a difficult task.

There are tools to help you, like the World Clock Meeting Planner where you can input each team member’s time zone and it will suggest a suitable meeting time for everyone.

Working with remote workers across the world is easy with a hosted phone system as they only need an internet connection and device to connect to your phone system.

Moreover, these workers add a lot of value to your company so it is important to ensure that they are included on your conference calls, no matter what time zone they are based in.

Foster A Collaborative Workplace

Finally, an effective meeting can only take place if staff are relatively familiar and comfortable with one another.

As a manager, you need to foster collaboration between staff and encourage them to get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses so they can learn from each other and work better for your customers and your business.

You can help effective meetings take place by setting up more casual meetings so staff can get to know each other before they start talking about business.

If staff are comfortable with one another they are more likely to contribute creative ideas to help customer service and to share their expertise with each other.

This type of collaboration can only help your meetings run more effectively and should definitely be considered by any manager looking to get more out of remote meetings.

Remote meetings can be uncomfortable for staff at first, particularly if they are new to remote working and may take some getting used to.

With the help of your hosted phone system, you can ensure that meetings are still as productive as ever with crystal clear communications between staff through conference calls.

You can hold meetings with staff all over the world with a few clicks and can make sure everyone is up to speed with changes in the business.

Also when these meetings are at their most effective you can start to draw on the experience of your staff and encourage them to work together to help customers and solve complex problems within your business – all from a simple meeting keeping everyone connected and together while they work remotely.

To find out more about how a hosted phone system can help you run effective meetings with your team, call on 1888-859-0450 to arrange a discussion with our expert team.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

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4 Must Have Applications While Your Team Is Working Remotely

Acefone Editor

Author

Contact Center

5 mins read eye

Table of content

At Acefone, we understand that working from home can be difficult when your staff are used to the office environment.

There are lots of different issues to navigate with your staff, but luckily there are plenty of applications on the market to help you and your staff make the most of your time working from home.

We’ve put together 4 apps which can help your team adjust to remote working as quickly as possible, helping you maintain efficiency and communications in your team.

Project Management Software

The easiest way to keep everyone up to date on your latest projects is to give your staff access to project management software.

One example is Asana, where staff can assign tasks to other staff members and can provide updates on how they are progressing.

Managers can see all tasks and can follow relevant tasks, add comments, update progress and more right through to completion.

This type of application gives you useful information and timely updates so you as a manager can keep track of who is responsible for which task and insights into the productivity of your staff members.

It also helps work stay visible and staff stay accountable, rather than work disappearing into lengthy email threads.

Briefs can be left with detailed notes to ensure that staff have everything they need to continue progressing through their projects while working at home.

Asana is just one example of this type of project management software, with plenty of options on the market we would recommend trialling a few to see which works best for your team.

Project management apps work best when staff are using a great CRM system to store all the information they need about your customers too.

CRM Systems

A good CRM system is key to ensuring your staff have everything they need to work remotely.

It should be accessible, easy to use and save all the key information your staff need to know about your customers.

At Acefone, our hosted phone systems integrate seamlessly with many CRM systems, including the popular Salesforce CRM system.

Salesforce is a robust platform which stores all the information you need to successfully deal with any customer enquiries.

It also encompasses marketing automation tools, so even though your marketing team may be busy working from home and dealing with how to restructure your marketing strategies, customers will still be receiving targeted communications.

This could free up your marketing team to focus on other things, at this extremely busy time.

As staff can access Salesforce from their own devices with ease, they can easily pull up all the information they need to deliver the same excellent service as when they were in the office.

By using a CRM in this way, there will be no dip in service standards and customers will be impressed by receiving the same excellent and personalised service they did before the crisis.

This will not go unnoticed when the restrictions are over, potentially increasing customer loyalty and the likelihood of them recommending you to someone else.

When your CRM system is combined with your hosted phone system, it is made even more powerful as a tool for delivering amazing customer service.

Hosted Phone System

Of course, a hosted phone system is a must-have for any business who is serious about maintaining customer service standards while staff work remotely.

Hosted phone systems are designed to make remote working an easy reality, giving you the ability to hire temporary staff from anywhere in the world.

This will help you deal with customer queries, manage customer expectations with an IVR system, forward voicemails to your email address and much more!

Working from home is a breeze with a hosted phone system, and your phone system can connect seamlessly to your CRM system so data is available at your fingertips when you need it.

You can also make detailed notes to communicate customer needs with other agents, without being in the room together.

Managers can also keep track of agents work through Acefone’s online portal, which gives easy access to analytics such as call times, call recordings, waiting times and more; so managers can continue to coach their teams and keep an eye on productivity at all times.

Further to this, hosted phone systems support internal communication between colleagues too with call conferencing and instant messaging.

Acefone’s easy to use online portal helping to increase communication between colleagues and ease any sense of loneliness or being disconnected which can come with agents suddenly being required to work from home.

Video Calling

With all the above communication and productivity apps in place, it may also help staff morale to have face to face contact through video calling.

Zoom is becoming more and more popular for those working from home to connect with their colleagues either for a structured meeting or just to catch up on what they have been working on at home.

This video calling can provide a much more natural way for teams to talk through their concerns and support each other, and also connects them to their employer again while they are working from home during this pandemic.

This connection is essential to maintain while teams are working remotely, and can also help any new staff members hired to feel like they are a part of the team although they may not have had any contact with their colleagues before.

If you are looking to maintain the social element of your teams, then Zoom could help you keep building on your team’s feeling of togetherness.

Remote working is hard when you have not done this before, but teams can adjust and the apps detailed above can help them through this adjustment period and find a new way of working together.

If you would like more information on how Acefone can help your staff work remotely with a hosted phone system to support your communications, get in touch with our expert VoIP team on 1888-859-0450.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

Give us a call on

1888-859-0450

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7 Time Management Tips For Call Center Managers

Ratnam Sinha

Author

Contact Center

May 5, 2020

6 mins read eye

Table of content

In a call center, there are a lot of tasks going on at the same time. This makes it easy for the employees and managers to get distracted and lose track of time completely.

This is why it is important to manage time, especially for a call center manager.

Time management skill is highly desired in the call center industry, and for managers, they must be able to effectively use their time in productive activities.

The working hours are limited for every employee, but a successful call center manager can utilize his time in a way that gets them the most productive tasks done.

We have put together a few tips for time management that will help the managers work more effectively with the time in their hands.

1. Setting Priorities

The best way to ensure right utilisation of your time is to prioritise your tasks and then completing the most important tasks first.

At the beginning of the day, we are fresh and we have a lot of energy, thus it’s a good habit to handle the priority tasks at that time as they require more mental and physical effort.

During the late hours of the day, we have less energy, we can take care of the less important things.

You can even design a Time Management Matrix for determining which tasks you should finish first and which are to be done last.

Take a look at the matrix below –

URGENT

NOT URGENT

IMPORTANT

Quadrant 1

Urgent and Important

Do This First

Quadrant 2

Not Urgent But Important

Plan This And Do This Next

NOT IMPORTANT

Quadrant 3

Urgent But Not Important

Keep This On Low Priority

Quadrant 4

Neither Urgent Nor Important

Don’t Do It

2. Plan Ahead

Planning your schedule ahead of time will always be beneficial.

Make a to-do list before you start your day, preferably, the night before. A daily planner app can be beneficial for making to-do lists and planning your schedule more effectively, allowing you to easily manage your tasks and keep track of your progress.

Using the matrix above, schedule your tasks accordingly and keep checking them off your list once they are done. Moreover, they also help to boost your confidence.

As you see yourself completing tasks one by one, you will feel more motivated and energetic to do the next task just so you can strike it off the list.

And this is scientifically proven too, as you complete tasks, your brain releases dopamine or the “feel good” chemical which will induce the feeling of satisfaction and make you want to do more tasks.

3. Learn to Say NO

Your colleagues might come to you for help at the time, and that is when you need to so NO.

It can be hard to say no to a friend if he asks for help, but in order to keep everything going according to your schedule, you need to avoid adding extra tasks to your list.

Also, if you keep doing extra tasks, you will get more stressed and you will be pressured to complete your task with a deficit in your time.

4. Do Not Multi-task

Trying to do several tasks at once will often lead to none of the tasks being complete with precision.

A lot of people believe that they can easily manage time by multi-tasking a few things together to save time for other things to be done.

This is not true. When you multi-task, you cannot keep all your concentration at one particular task which results in mistakes regularly.

Also, it is more tiring as you have to keep your focus on multiple things leaving you tired to do the remaining things.

It is preferable to do one task at a time with efficiency. Your quality of work is also an essential factor that makes you a successful call center manager that others can look up to.

5. Don’t Hesitate To Ask

If you are having a hard time dealing with something, it is a good practice to ask a colleague or a senior for help.

However, if you hesitate, or don’t want to ask for help from others, it is possible that you will be stuck on the same thing for a longer period than it should take resulting in you losing a lot of valuable time.

Communicating with people for advice will be much quicker and efficient. They might know ways to complete the tasks quicker.

Also, they will develop more respect for you, as you didn’t hesitate to ask for advice when it was needed.

Teamwork is always the desired quality by organisations. If you reach out to your colleagues, they will also reach out to you in the future when they are stuck at something.

This will not only reduce the work stress but also promote collaboration in your call center team.

6. Take Short, But Regular Breaks

Taking breaks is crucial for you to be productive in the best possible way. Working too long can have an adverse effect on you.

No one is capable to stay focused and concentrated continuously for 8hours or more that they spend in our office. Generally, a person is productive for about 3 hours out of those 8 hours only.

If you work non-stop for hours and hours, your brain will get stressed out and it might affect your decision making capabilities.

If you think by not taking breaks you can improve your productivity, it’s actually the opposite. By not taking breaks, you decrease your productivity as you don’t provide your brain enough time to rest.

Moreover, if you work in front of a computer screen, even your eyes need rest. As your eyes and brain get tired with continuous work, a short break can help reset that and you can resume working again.

Breaks also help you retain more information in your memory and help generate more creative ideas. It also improves your decision making ability and lets you improve your concentration.

7. Make Use Of Productive Tools

Call Center Solutions are made to ease the work of managers and agents while also providing the customers with an optimum experience.

Using such a solution in your call center will not make your tasks easy but will also save you a lot of valuable time.

With a call center software, you can keep track of all your agents and the calls from one place. It is also capable of completing a few tasks on its own, which might take a lot of your time.

These tasks, such as filling out forms with customer information, or backing up data, etc. are might not be as urgent compared to what other things you have on your list.

In case any disputes occur, you do not have to ask your agents for the whole interaction and then ask the customer about theirs.

You can simply listen to the call recording and make a decision. For managers, tools like these are of great help and should be incorporated at a workplace.

Conclusion

Honestly speaking, time management for a call center manager is not an easy task at all.

One can easily miss prioritising tasks, or planning beforehand, or any of the above-mentioned things and time will slowly slip away.

Some people think that they don’t even need to manage time as long as their work is complete. While it might be true for a few people, it is surely not only for a call center manager.

And as one progresses further in their career, there will be more and more work coming to them.

To handle and efficiently complete all the hectic work, while maintaining the quality of work, it is essential to be skilled in managing time.

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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Ratnam Sinha

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Ratnam is an SEO enthusiast and content writer working as a Digital Marketer with Acefone. He is fond of traveling and new experiences. He is a huge Marvel fan and is always open to learning.

How You Can Still Benefit From an 0800/0808 Number While Working From Home

Acefone Editor

Author

Contact Center

5 mins read eye

Table of content

Even when working from home, you can still benefit from an 0800 or an 0808 number.

With the technical capabilities of a cloud phone system, customers can call your 0800 number and be directed immediately to one of your agents – no matter where they are based.

You can work seamlessly from home through the COVID-19 outbreak for as long as you need to without any difficulties while upholding your company’s professional image.

Remain Professional At All Times

A toll free number is a great way for businesses to portray a professional image to potential customers as it makes businesses appear bigger and more established.

Even small businesses can benefit from an 0800 number as they can use this to appear larger and even appeal to customers across the country as the 0800 number is non-geographical.

When working from home you may feel that your professionalism might be compromised and that potential customers might not feel comfortable calling a mobile phone number to get in touch with you while you are not in the office.

However, with a hosted phone system, customers can call your professional 0800 or 0808 number and calls can be forwarded to whichever device you are working from with the same crystal clear communication as if you were working from the office.

This means that customers will still have the same trust in your business as your listings remain very professional and you are much more likely to get calls from new and existing customers as you are showing them you are operating business as usual.

Break Down Barriers For Potential Customers

Not only does a free phone number make your business look more professional, but it also breaks down barriers to potential and existing customers calling your business.

During these difficult times, many people have had to furlough staff or make redundancies which provides a very worrying time across the world.

By creating a free phone number, you are breaking down any cost barriers to calling your business and opening up lines of communication to any customer who might need your services – and it will not cost them anything to speak to your business so there is no risk for them in finding out more.

This open communication means that you will have more chances to engage with customers and your agents will be more likely to bring in more business to you as they are able to communicate freely with potential customers.

Removing the cost barrier also shows that you are invested in and really care about your customers, ensuring that they can get in touch with you no matter what their financial situation.

Open Up To More Business Opportunities

As a hosted phone system allows agents to work freely from anywhere they need to, you can use this time where staff cannot work from your office to open up to new business opportunities.

An 0800 or an 0808 number does not tie you to a physical geographic location, so your business can work wherever the customers are.

If you have a pool of potential customers, you can take advantage of your hosted phone system’s features to hire agents working from their homes in these locations.

This means there will always be someone local to those customers to support them whenever they need to, particularly if this location is in a different time zone.

You can use an 0800 number to attract a different customer to your business, opening up your target market nationwide or even worldwide!

So, even while working from home – a simple change in a phone number can potentially open up your business to a whole new market and give you plenty of opportunities to keep business moving forward even through these difficult times.

Use As A Powerful Marketing Tool

Marketing can become very difficult when your Marketing team is potentially working from home too.

Most companies are stripping back their marketing efforts and focus on more simple messaging while all of their staff are isolating so you too could use this messaging and focus marketing around your free phone number.

Communication between people is becoming all the more important in the current climate with COVID-19.

So this provides businesses with free phone numbers a unique opportunity to showcase how their business is helping communications run more freely.

Using your free phone number as the main focus of your marketing will show customers that you care about their needs and that you are still there for them in this time of uncertainty.

Even if the business is slow now, customers will remember how each company reacted to the Coronavirus crisis and will make purchase decisions accordingly once it is over.

So it is important to listen to customer needs now and ensure you are accessible to them – something which should be reflected in your marketing campaigns.

Move Business Online

A free phone number can also help you if you are selling products or services and are facing difficulties.

If you are having to take your products online, it is useful to have a free phone number to ensure you are not alienating customers who may not be in your locality.

The internet opens up your business to a whole new customer base, but they may be reluctant to deal with a business which, by their local number, is based miles away from them.

With a free phone number, you take away this geographical element so you will be able to deal with customers anywhere in the country.

In this way, a free phone number gives you the ability to continue with business as close to normal as possible with an online shop – while your staff can work seamlessly from home by connecting to your phone system remotely.

A free phone number can work for your staff while they deal with the unusual situation we are all faced with.

Coupled with the many amazing features of your hosted phone system, working from home does not have to mean a decrease in productivity, but could actually open up your business to a world of new opportunities.

To find out more about freephone numbers and how a hosted phone system can help home workers, call on 1888-859-0450 .

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

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Music On Hold: All You Need To Know

Ratnam Sinha

Author

Contact Center

5 mins read eye

Table of content

Have you ever contacted a business and waited in the queue before being connected to an agent? It gets quite boring when you just sit there waiting, isn’t it?

But when there is some music, the hold doesn’t feel as much of a wait as it would be without one.

As we listen to that music, we relate it to something we have heard before, and that makes passing the time a bit easier.

This is the whole psychological concept behind the Music On Hold Feature! To engage the customers in something before they get connected to an agent.

How Does Music on Hold Work?

With a traditional phone system, providing music on hold to the customers was a tiring process.

The telephony system needed to be connected with a playback device, like a CD player, that played recorded music or message which needed to be activated manually when the customer was put on the queue.

But that is not the case today, and music on hold isn’t as rare either. With the introduction of Hosted PBX, it is very easy to provide music on hold by taking advantage of cloud technology.

You get this feature with most cloud-hosted phone systems today.
Let’s get into more detail why Music on Hold can be an essential feature for your business.

1. Customer Retention

The main reason why music on hold is implemented is to avoid losing a customer. Every call is valuable to an organisation, whether it’s a small business or a large enterprise, as every lead counts.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a new customer or an old one, if they feel that the agent is taking too long to answer, and are being careless about the people in the queue, they will probably switch to other service providers.

While with music on hold, a drastic increase in customer’s waiting time is observed.

There can even be a recorded message to relay information to the customer while they are waiting, to provide them with more value when the customer is being connected to an agent.

2. Different Message For Different Department

The customisation of music on hold feature doesn’t stop at just playing a snippet of particular music or message.

But in fact, you can select multiple music tracks or voice messages to be played for the waiting queue of different departments.

You can even customise the message or music for new and frequent customers, or for some VIP customers to make them feel special.

This provides your customers with greater satisfaction, enhancing their overall experience with your business.

3. Provide Valuable Information

With Music on hold, you can provide your customers with a lot of information saving both, the customer and your business time. And you can keep on changing messages as per your current situation without any hassle from your end.

You can provide basic information like the location or directions to your office, or answer some frequently asked questions about your business or product.

You can even endorse a new product while the customer is waiting to be connected to an agent, which might intrigue him to enquire about the new product or service, or even buy it.

4. Enhance Your Professional Image

Let’s be truthful here, whenever we hear a snippet of music or an informative message while waiting in the queue, we instantly associate it with a large organisation.

This is extremely useful for new businesses that are just starting out and building a name for their company. Even for larger organisations, it is essential to maintain its brand image for their customers.

This also helps in building a trust factor with the customers. customers tend to trust an established brand which has a name for itself in the market.

With music on hold implemented, you can easily enhance your brand image and build stronger bonds with your customers.

What You Should Know Before Implementing Music On Hold

The very first thing you should keep in mind while implementing music on hold feature for your business communication channel is not to use any copyrighted music.

Using music owned by any other company can cause serious trouble for your business.

It can not only cost you a huge amount of money, but might even take you to the legal processes, and that is not what any business owner would like.

Above all, it can shatter your business’ reputation completely and affect the reliability among your customers.

Thus, it is important to purchase a license of the music you are going for play to your customers.

Simply buying it on Amazon or iTunes won’t work either, as playing it as a hold music will be considered rebroadcasting, which is illegal. Purchase the music from the creators or the people who hold the license to that particular music.

You can even create your own music by hiring professional people online. Another way is to play royalty free music which is also available.

In A Nutshell

Music on Hold is an amazing feature for businesses to improve their interactions with customers. If used in the right, and legal manner, it brings a lot of benefits to the organisation.

For any business, retaining their customers is crucial, and with music on hold, they can significantly enhance their customer experience resulting in the customers staying connected for a longer duration of time.

Moreover, it also increases your reputation among your customers, and they are more likely to recommend you to others, giving your marketing strategy a free-of-cost boost.

Other than playing music on hold, you can record an informative voice message and play it so that the customers get to know about your business, from new services and products, to how to reach your office.

Acefone provides music on hold feature without any additional cost with a Hosted Phone System. You can connect to an expert today to get your business the boost it needs at 1888-859-0450.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

Give us a call on

1888-859-0450

Write an email to

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Ratnam Sinha

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Ratnam is an SEO enthusiast and content writer working as a Digital Marketer with Acefone. He is fond of traveling and new experiences. He is a huge Marvel fan and is always open to learning.

Role Of Hosted Phone Systems In The Finance Industry

Acefone Editor

Author

Phone System

April 29, 2020

5 mins read eye

Table of content

In the Finance industry, it is important to remain connected and contactable at all times.

Clients need to be able to get in touch with you quickly and sometimes in an emergency, so a robust and reliable phone system is a must for any business in the financial industry.

Financial businesses are often dealing with highly sensitive data from customers, so to build this trust you must ensure that your phone system is as secure as possible and that attackers cannot reach your customer’s precious data.

We’ve outlined the role hosted phone systems play in the finance industry and how you can make your phone system work for you as a financial professional.

Always Be Available To Talk To Clients

The beauty of a hosted phone system is that your staff can work from anywhere in the world, and can connect remotely to your phone system using an internet connection and their compatible device.

They can access all your customer data and work seamlessly with your team to answer client queries.

We understand that financial businesses often have customers globally, so it is important that each of these customers can contact your business should they need any assistance.

A hosted phone system lets you hire remote workers anywhere in the world, so someone will always be available to take customer calls as they will be working in different time zones.

This is great for customers to get 24/7 service as finance is not a nine to five occupation and clients will often need you at all times of the day.

Hosted phone systems help to ensure customer needs are met and show clients that you are heavily invested in ensuring optimum customer satisfaction.

Never Miss A Lead

A hosted phone system has many features designed to ensure you never miss a lead.

Firstly, you can answer calls from any device, anywhere as long as it is connected to the internet meaning that even if you are travelling for business or working from home you will not miss a lead and can carry on with business as usual.

Hosted phone systems also give you the opportunity to add a virtual assistant to your phone system.

The virtual assistant can take messages from customers and forward voicemails straight to your email inbox, so you can pick up on any messages and follow up when you are free.

This is particularly useful when you are a sole trader and may not be able to answer calls at all times.

Clients will be impressed with the level of professionalism and the value you place on their messages; as they will be able to leave a message they are less likely to move on to a competitor as their message has been taken professionally by a virtual assistant.

So, you can go wherever your business needs you to without worrying about missing any calls or lucrative leads.

Secure And Compliant

A hosted phone system has multi-level security measures helping you ensure that incoming and outgoing calls are completely secure.

We know it is important for Financial businesses to adhere to compliance regulations and ensure that they are completely secure and compliant and so a hosted phone system lessens the burden of regulations and makes your phone system fully compliant.

Your business can store sensitive information with confidence as Acefone’s hosted phone systems store customer data in the cloud, fully adhering to PIC, FCC, GDPR and CPNI regulations.

Data is also stored and backed up in different geographical locations.

Adding an extra layer of protection for your business in the event of a crisis or should something happen to your business’ physical premises, we can get you set back up right away with the minimum of downtime.

Acefone also provides security from threats so your client data is safe from any attacks, increasing the level of trust between you and your clients.

We take care of any updates and ensure your phone system is safe and secure so you can focus on working with your clients.

Manage Your Teams Remotely

If you have teams based all over the world, you may think it would be difficult to keep track of their work.

With a hosted phone system, this is not a worry for managers as they can use an easy to use online portal to ensure that staff are productive and costs are within budget.

Contact center managers can see every call coming into your company and can also monitor staff productivity all through your hosted phone system.

With Acefone’s online portal, you can access all the analytics and information you need to ensure your team is working effectively and productively.

As a manager you can access any call recording you need in the event of a complaint or query and can use these secure call recordings to help train new recruits.

Analytics can be accessed in real-time, so you can log in at any time and see how your contact center is running and redeploy staff if you need to.

With all the information you need at your fingertips you can manage a hosted contact center with workers all over the world easily with a compatible device and an internet connection.

Keep Your Business Moving And Growing

With 99.9% uptime, a hosted phone system will allow you to keep your business running no matter what happens.

As your phone system works over an internet connection, we can have you back up and running in minutes from any compatible device so your staff can continue with business should anything happen.

As hosted phone systems are portable, your staff can keep moving wherever they need to go and are not restrained to their desks.

Hosted phone systems are fully scalable and will grow with your business, so you do not need to worry about extra costs should you need to hire more staff.

You can add lines with just a few clicks on the online portal and can add as many as you need to cope with demand on your business.

Hosted phone systems can play a vital role in the Finance industry and can help ease some of the worries which face Financial professionals in terms of security and compliance while freeing up staff to go where they are needed and work from wherever they need to.

If you would like to find out more about how a hosted phone system can help your business, call our team on 1888-859-0450 .

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

Give us a call on

1888-859-0450

Write an email to

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4 Tips For Call Centre Managers During Work From Home

Acefone Editor

Author

Contact Center

April 28, 2020

5 mins read eye

Table of content

With a hosted phone system, managing a call center from home is easier than ever before.

Working remotely may be completely new for some call center managers and may take some time to transition and ensure staff are working as efficiently as possible.

But we have some tips and tricks to help ease that transition by utilising everything your hosted phone system has to offer.

Read on to find out more about how we can help you manage an effective workforce from the safety and comfort of your own home…

Monitor And Manage Through Acefone’s Online Portal

As a manager, it can be daunting to adjust your team to home working.

You may be worried that staff will not be able to take as many calls as they could in the office, or that they might struggle to adapt to working from home with extra distractions.

This is not a worry for call center managers using a hosted phone system, as they are able to access everything they need from Acefone’s online portal.

The online portal gives you the opportunity to view call time, agent waiting time, access call recordings and much more all in just a few clicks.

Using this information you can identify agents who are working well and find those who might need a bit of extra assistance and work with them to get them up to speed with their home working.

The portal allows you to add and remove lines as you need them with a few clicks too, so you can still hire temporary agents if you need to or can remove lines you are not using if you have had to furlough any staff members.

Hire The Best Staff, Not Just The Closest

Hosted phone systems give call center managers a unique opportunity to hire staff anywhere in the world to help them while staff are working from home.

Customers will expect to wait a little longer to get in contact with you, but if this starts to affect your customer experience and lose your business it might be time to hire extra staff.

While it can be more difficult to train these staff (although not impossible with access to call recordings and conference calling between staff), you can choose to hire experienced temporary staff to help your employees pick up the slack and ensure customer calls are being answered in an acceptable time.

As you can manage staff from your home, you will be able to coach them and ensure they are doing everything you need them to use the online portal.

The staff member only needs an internet connection and compatible device (laptop, computer, mobile phone or tablet) to connect and they can answer calls with the same quality as if they were sitting in the room with you.

Although having to work from home may seem hard if you are not used to doing this, this difficult time can offer a great opportunity to add talented temporary staff to your business.

These new employees can help with the development of your existing staff too.

Use IVR Systems To Direct Customers And Decrease Waiting Times

You can easily add an IVR system to your hosted phone system, which allows you to communicate en masse to any customers getting in touch with your business.

You can have an automated message advising your customers of any waiting times and managing their expectations early on in the contact; you can use this to direct customers to online resources and only have calls which are urgent coming through.

The IVR system also lets customers self-select which department they want to speak to, so with more customers going directly to the right person in your company.

This surely will decrease waiting times as customers will not need to be passed from employee to employee in search of a resolution.

The customers will be able to get their enquiry solved at the first point of contact saving your business time and money and ensuring you can speak to as many customers as possible.

The IVR system, used correctly, can be a fantastic tool for call center managers working from home as this can easily be edited with just a few clicks.

This gives you a unique opportunity to communicate with all of your customers and ensure that customer satisfaction remains high.

Keep Team Morale Up With Conference Calls

If your team is used to working closely with each other, working from home may cause them to feel isolated or disconnected from your business.

This can have a negative effect on their mental and physical health and may cause them to need to take time off or look for a new role.

As a manager, it is your duty to ensure the wellbeing of your staff and your hosted phone system allows you to hold conference calls with all of your staff to stay in touch.

Conference calling is included as standard on your hosted phone system and is a great way to keep staff engaged with team meetings.

Staff anywhere in the world can dial in and keep up to date with everything going on.

This connection increases the cohesion in your team and also ensures that important information is shared across your business – so nothing is missed and your staff can serve your customers to the best of their ability.

Working from home does not have to be a difficult task for call center managers and agents if you make the most of your hosted phone system and all the handy features you have access to and use the information you have on hand from the online portal.

You can ensure you are running an effective contact center and continuing to deliver excellent customer service in the face of adversity.

To find out more about hosted contact center solutions, call our expert team on 1888-859-0450.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

Give us a call on

1888-859-0450

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Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Communication

Ratnam Sinha

Author

Contact Center

5 mins read eye

Table of content

When we hear Artificial Intelligence or AI, the first thing that comes in our mind is a machine that can act and think like a human being.

But that reality is still far away in the future.

Artificial Intelligence really is the ability of a machine to do a particular work on its own and to learn from its personal experience on how to solve a problem or complete a task in the least amount of time.

Introduction to AI technologies like natural language processing, businesses can enhance customer service, streamline communication, and offer 24/7 support—all while reducing the need for human intervention in routine queries.

On the other hand, Cloud Communication is an emerging and fast-growing technology which enables interaction between people, whether the internal office communication or agent-to-customer communication, via the internet.

This enables businesses to get the benefit of loads of VoIP features and helps in avoiding the hassle of the physical on-premises hardware with a cloud phone system.

So what happens when we bring Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Communication together? Let’s find out.

IVR Solutions

IVR, which stands for Interactive Voice Response, or often called a Virtual Assistant, is an AI-based cloud telephony technology which enables self-help to the customers calling a business.

IVR or Virtual Assistant helps to Route calls to different departments without the need for any manual work.

A Virtual Assistant can also solve the minor queries of the customer on its own when the FAQs are pre-recorded into the system.

It also greets the customers with a welcome message that can be customised anytime.

AI Chatbots

AI chatbots are growing in popularity among businesses for interacting with their customers. AI Chatbots is programmed to reply to specific questions automatically.

It also collects data about the customers that are given to the agent before they interact with the customer to make it a better experience for the customer.

AI chatbots make it easier for both the customer and the business to have an efficient and easy interaction.

It also saves time of the customers as the general information is provided by the AI in the chat. Many customers prefer chatting over call, so AI chatbots are an asset to any organisation.

Robotic Process Automation

Telecommunication companies have to handle a large volume of data on a daily basis which makes the possibility of human errors more likely to happen.

RPA or Robotic Process Automation is a business process automation technology based on Artificial Intelligence that makes processing data simpler and fast for businesses.

It not only ensures error-free processing but also makes more agents available for important tasks like handling customers and solving their issues rather than spending a very large amount of time processing error-free business.

Fraud Detection

The cloud telecommunication industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world and just like any other industry it is also prone to frauds.

Authorisation, illegal access, cloning, theft, etc. are some of the common fraudulent activities.

Artificial Intelligence is able to detect and stop these unauthorised activities and securing business data.

It is able to detect the abnormalities in traffic and block them for getting hold of any essential or sensitive information.

Machine Learning

Machine learning refers to the ability of any software to learn more and more from the activities it does. Basically, it learns from its own experiences and improves itself.

It uses prediction of data to process the tasks faster. Machine learning functionality of Artificial Intelligence allows the software to act faster every time it is used.

This saves a lot of time for the agents and the organisations and also eliminates the possibilities of errors.

Predictive Risk Management

Artificial Intelligence is capable of carrying out predictive analysis for telecommunication companies which helps them with better service.

With the help of machine learning, AI is able to use the historic data of the organisation to predict any possible risks or issues that might occur in the future.

This helps the businesses to prepare for such issues and be able to avoid them completely. With AI, the business process is uninterrupted and streamlined.

This also helps businesses make future proof strategies to improve their performance.

Optimised Networks

According to Forbes, 83% of organisations believe AI to be a strategic priority for their business today.

This is because artificial intelligence lets you optimise your network as well as infrastructure. AI can analyse, optimise, correct technological errors in real-time.

It makes uninterrupted service available. This creates a self-organising system, which is basically a network that can self optimise and self configure.

Also, AI predicts if a similar issue can occur in the future and take measures to prevent and resolve it beforehand. Thus, this improves the performance by many folds.

Creating a Physical Database

Artificial Intelligence has a lot of useful features in the telecommunication industry.

For organisations using multichannel communication to connect with their agents better and provide them with greater satisfaction, it can get a little difficult to collect all the data of different communication media in one place.

However, With Artificial Intelligence, they can create physical databases of customer interactions to store them securely in case any natural calamity.

The voice-to-text feature of AI allows the organisation to create transcripts of the conversations that happened over calls and keep it with the data of the text messages, or email conversations that were exchanged with the customers.

This ensures that the data of a single customer is kept together in a single format.

Bottom Line

Artificial Intelligence has made it possible for telecommunication companies to process enormous data quickly, detect issues beforehand, extract essential insights from the customer interaction data, resolve customer issues faster using the in-hand data as soon as possible, and offer the customers with an optimum experience.

With artificial intelligence in cloud communication, the process has become much for simpler and fast.

It is just a matter of minutes for AI to process data that might take a normal human about a week. This has made it possible for the telecom industry to provide uninterrupted services to its customers and grow at a rapid rate.

If you want Seamless cloud communication service for your business, contact one of our experts at 1888-859-0450 or drop an email for your business requirements at [email protected], and we will make sure you get what you need.

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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Ratnam Sinha

Author

Ratnam is an SEO enthusiast and content writer working as a Digital Marketer with Acefone. He is fond of traveling and new experiences. He is a huge Marvel fan and is always open to learning.

Why Every Business Needs VoIP Solutions

Acefone Editor

Author

Voice - VoIP

6 mins read eye

Table of content

VoIP phone solutions are an ideal addition to any business owner who is serious about improving their communications and bringing their company into the 21st century.

With innovative solutions providing a range of amazing features and giving staff the freedom to work from wherever they want to, every business no matter if they are large or small needs VoIP solutions to truly unlock their business’ communication potential and elevate their customer services.

In this article, we will explore exactly what a VoIP solution can do for a business and why your business needs to invest in this innovative technology.

Amazing Features From Your VoIP Phone System

VoIP solutions bring with them a whole host of benefits, from customisable telephone numbers to call conferencing and easy remote working.

The features which you can add to your hosted phone system are incomparable to a traditional phone system. With VoIP phone system from Acefone, you are in control of your hosted phone system and are free to pick and choose which features will work for your business and work within your budget.

So you can create the best, most feature-rich phone system which exactly matches your needs. Here are just a few of the exciting features available to you with a hosted phone system…

1. Custom Phone Numbers

Businesses large and small can customize their phone number; creating a freephone number, local number or memorable number.

Whatever your marketing goals, your phone number can help you achieve this.

If your business is wanting to look more established and larger, a freephone number is great for making this impression on customers.

Should your business want to increase local community ties and trust, a local number is perfect for this goal.

You can create a phone number that works for you with complete ease; and whatever number you choose, your calls will come through to your employees (wherever they may be) who will enjoy crystal clear communications with your customers.

2. Easy To Manage Remote Working

All staff need to connect to your phone system is an internet connection and a compatible device (laptop, mobile phone or tablet) to work from and they are ready to take calls!

With Acefone’s online portal, it is easy to manage remote workers even if they are in a different country to you; as you will have access to all the analytics you need to manage their performance and check everything is running smoothly.

With the online portal, you can listen to call recordings, see call statistics, agent waiting times, number of incoming and outgoing calls and much more.

You can also monitor the cost of your calls here too, ensuring you are on the right package for your business’ usage.

With a VoIP solution, your business will have all the tools necessary to open and run a hosted contact center, with low costs and easily accessible management tools.

This gives businesses of any size the opportunity to broaden their recruitment drives worldwide, so you can hire the best talent and not just people who are local to you.

3. Direct Calls With An IVR System

If your business has multiple departments or locations and you want to save your agents time and therefore yourself money, a business telephony service can help.

With a VoIP solution, this is completely personalisable and you can record your own message and add options which are relevant to your business’ departments.

An IVR system lets a customer choose who they want to speak to based on their query, stopping your agents from having to keep transferring customers from person to person to find the right answer for them.

These systems also help improve customer satisfaction, as customers spend less time on the phone to your business and are much more likely to have their query answered on the first call; which is great for both business and customer!

4. Plug-in And Play

At Acefone, we understand that your business needs to keep running and taking calls from customers.

You have a level of customer service to uphold and our VoIP solutions ensure that nothing will stand in the way of this. If you had a traditional phone system installed, you could expect lengthy downtime and a period of time where customers cannot contact you – which could lose you valuable business.

With a hosted phone system you can simply plug in your phones and start using them in minutes rather than hours; the simple set up means that you can start enjoying all the features of your hosted phone system right away, and customers will still be able to contact you and benefit from the crystal clear communications from day one.

If you are concerned about any downtime, then your business needs a VoIP solution to ensure that you are reachable at all times to your valued customers.

5. Secure And Compliant Phone Systems

Your customer’s data is important and should be protected as much as you possibly can.

Particularly in today’s climate data attacks are more frequent and customers are much more choosy about who they give their data to.

If you are to attract more customers to your business you need to have a secure and robust system which can handle their data appropriately, and a hosted phone system provides this for you.

Our VoIP solutions are fully compliant, adhering to PIC, FCC, GDPR and CPNI and data is stored in different geographical locations – adding an extra layer of protection for your business in the event of a crisis or attack.

6. Protect Your Business From Disasters

Should the worst happen, you as a business owner want all the protection you can get for your business.

With a VoIP phone Service, your phone system provides 99.9% uptime and you are protected from disasters, should anything happen to your physical premises you can pick up where you left off on another device and work from anywhere in the world while your office premises are repaired.

You also will not lose any of your precious data as it is securely backed up at a different location, so you can restore your system quickly and get back to business as usual in no time.

Why Does My Business Need A VoIP Solution?

If you want to update your communications and provide an improved experience for customers and a more effective system for your employees, through a phone system which connects seamlessly with your CRM system; a VoIP solution is for you.

If you want to keep your customer and business data safe and secure while ensuring your business can carry on through whatever life throws at you, a VoIP system can make this happen easily.

Finally, VoIP solutions do not only feature-rich and secure – they are also cost-effective.

With call costs much lower than traditional phones, even with international calls as they are made through your internet connection.

So, if you want a telephony solution to save your business money while improving your customer relations speak to one of our expert advisors today on 1888-859-0450 and see what VoIP can do for your business.

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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