10 Ways To Choose A Hosted Phone System Provider For Your Business

Swastika Dhakal

Author

Contact Center

November 6, 2019

6 mins read eye

Table of content

Cloud technology has undergone continuous advancements over the years, which explains why organisations have recently been switching to cloud-based communication systems. The hosted phone system encompasses all the innovations and benefits of cloud technology.

Hosted phone offers a lot of benefits to businesses of any size. It is cost-efficient, highly scalable, reliable, and also flexible. It is not only limited to these benefits only, but it also comes with excellent voice quality and includes additional features like call transfer, call recording, voicemail to email, and auto attendant.

However, the security of your cloud PBX depends on your service provider. Hence, it is essential to select the right service provider. The maintenance and technology upgrades are also taken care of by the provider. Service providers have a significant role to play, and if their service is not satisfactory, then it will affect your business as well.

Before you choose a hosted phone system provider for your business, make sure that you have checked this blog.

1. Research Well

Choosing a service provider is entirely in your hands. Make a list of all your business needs and do your research accordingly. Compare the service providers in terms of their respective offerings, and choose the one who meets most of your business requirements.

Go for a service provider that you feel is trustworthy. A service provider with a stable clientele and a good number of years of experience earns a higher credential. Read their terms and conditions before taking the contract.

Read about their cancellation policy; it is better to know it before if you do not wish to face any consequences later.

2. Quality of Service

It is quite obvious that high-quality calls are required for seamless business communication. Nothing is worse than poor call quality while your agent is speaking to the customer.

Due to the poor call quality, you lose probable customers. Cloud-based communication ensures HD voice quality. However, it all depends on the codec that the service providers use that gives a better voice quality even if the users are on a lower bandwidth.

Question your service provider about the same while consulting with them about your business requirements.

3. Customer Review

Observe customer review carefully because reviews are powerful influencers in decision making. According to a research, nearly 95% of shoppers read reviews before purchase.

However, the authenticity of an online review depends on several factors like the number of reviews, source of the reviews to get genuine feedback, and the nature of the review content.

4. Pricing

Cost is a major differentiator for many businesses as companies set a budget for different expenditure plans. However, you just cannot compromise with quality for cost.

Compare all the providers and go for one that allows you to have flexible plans and then pay accordingly. Service providers who work on the pay-as-you-go model make sure that the user just need to pay for what features and services they choose.

5. Integrations

Service providers that have integrated your hosted phone with the right third-party applications make customer’s life easier. The integration of your hosted phone with the right business application multiplies the utility of your phone.

Providers who give integrations with applications like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software is beneficial for businesses to connect better with the customers.

Consider the providers that offer this function as it will help you save time in transferring your business data. The hosted phone service provider that you choose must be flexible in the kind of services they provide to address your business requirements.

6. Disaster Recovery

Ask the provider if they have a disaster recovery plan? And how do they back up all the data? Choose a provider that has a business continuity plan.

A plan like this will ensure that your business communication does not get affected during a natural disaster. In any adverse situation, the service provider has ways to speedy recovery of the data.

7. Advanced features

Identify the features that your business requires. Every business is different from the other; thus, the features should be customisable.

After you list down your must-have features, make sure that the provider is capable of offering the features you need. In this way, you can customise all the features that you need. It is usual that the needs of businesses change from time to time because of the changes in customer’s behaviour, interests, and inclinations.

8. Customer Service

Customer support is necessary to consider than you think it is. You can face technical difficulties anytime. At that time, the instant solution to the problem will be help from customer service.

Thus, it is essential to ensure that your service provider offers steady customer support. Customer support that runs 24/7 can help you overcome minor technical faults that you can resolve under their assistance.

9. Latest Technology

Does the provider offer the latest technology upgrades? Because using new technologies has an impact on your business. You must use the latest technology and should always be willing to keep yourself updated with technology.

It will help you stand out from your competitors. Pick a service provider that has all the latest technologies to support the users with the most advanced hosted phone service.

10. Easy to Use

The phone system should be easy to use, and the dashboard should be user-friendly. Having said that it should ensure that the user doesn’t need any training to use and customize the portal anytime.

Additionally, it should also be checked with the service provider if the users can remotely access the portal from anywhere. Remote access addresses various business needs.

Summary

To sum it up, ask yourself the questions below:

Have you done your research well?
Does the provider offer excellent voice quality service?
What do their customer think about them?
Are you aware of all the charges included in maintenance and adding advanced features?
Do they offer integrations with applications of your interest?
What is the solution offered during a disaster? Do they have a business continuity plan?
Does the service provider offer the features that you require?
Is there 24/7 customer service available?
Are they keeping pace with technology?
Do they offer remote access?

The above tips will help you to select the right hosted PBX phone service provider for your business. Make sure that the provider you choose meets your requirements. You would not want to question your choice in between the contract.

Even if you’re going to discontinue the plan, the service provider should have a cancellation policy in your interest.

You will not have to face the consequences if you make the right decision. Do your research well, list your must-have requirements, compare the providers, and read customer reviews. Know your service provider well before choosing one.

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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Swastika Dhakal

Author

Swastika Dhakal is working with the Digital Marketing team at Acefone. She is interested in technology and likes to write on it. She loves to explore historical places, as well.

6 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Free Phone Number

Swastika Dhakal

Author

Contact Center

November 5, 2019

5 mins read eye

Table of content

Well, who wouldn’t enjoy free calls to get their problem solved? Free phone number is an excellent service of cloud telephony.

But what exactly a free phone number is?

It is a service offered by businesses, in which free helpline numbers are provided to the customers. So, that they can reach out to the company for any help or assistance that too at free of cost.

The company pays for all the incoming calls, and obviously, the customers are not charged. Also, it is a non-geographic number meaning that it is not location restricted. It is another term for a toll-free number.

Why Free Phone Number?

Despite other communication mediums, voice calls are the most preferred by the customers. Well, nothing is more frustrating than not getting connected with the right agent. The utilities of free phone numbers increase many folds when they are integrated with an IVR.

IVRs also work as self-help tools for providing customer service, customers prefer interacting with humans. With a toll free number, customers do not hesitate to reach out to the customer service for assistance or any doubt while using or decision-making of a product or service.

Does your business offer a free phone number? If not, then why?

Providing a toll-free number to your customers and business prospects benefits your business in many ways. Customers don’t like to put effort to reach out to you. You should make your business more reachable by offering a free of cost channel for business communication.

It is the best way to reduce their efforts in contacting your business. Further, it will improve their experience or customer journey.

Let’s discuss the benefits of free phone numbers:

1. Improves Customer Satisfaction Rate

Free phone numbers make your business more visible and approachable to your customers. It also supports in brand building and adds to the credentials of the company.

Any company that opens a free of cost channel of communication with the customers increases the trust between the two. Customers feel valued when a business provides a platform for its customers to connect with them, effortlessly.

Free phone numbers can also have multiple extensions attached to the same number. It helps in handling the call volume and routing the calls to the available agents without any delay.

Multiple extensions ensure that there is always an open line for the callers. It also reduces the call waiting time and increases the customer satisfaction level.

2. Increases Revenue

Customers are more likely to call when they do not have to pay for the call. With a free phone number, you are more approachable, and hence potential customers would not think much before calling you. So, agents get more opportunities to speak with the customers, and that eventually helps in sales acceleration.

It also shows that you are ready to help them anytime. Call volume will increase, and thus, there is always a chance of sales. More the number of calls from potential customers, the higher the sales.

With improved sales, your ROI will increase. Inbound calls are more likely to turn into sales as the potential customer is already interested in your business.

3. Easy To Remember

From the customers’ perspective, the number they wish to dial should be easy to remember and, that is what a free phone number provides you. A regular phone number is difficult to memorize.

A free phone number is thus divided into three parts, making it easy to remember. It is much easier to learn, especially when it is a vanity number.

For example – a free phone number looks like this: 0800-101-8010
On the other hand, a vanity number looks like this: 0800- Hosted Phone

A vanity number is much easier to remember than a numeric free phone number. Vanity number gives your brand recognition and tells more about the brand than just a free phone number.

You can use any term or any word as your business contact number. It helps you establish a brand image that people won’t forget any soon.

4. Portability

If you have any plan to relocate your business, you can do so without worrying about your free phone number being changed. Your customers won’t even get to know that you have changed the location of your business.

Your location does not matter at all as you can forward calls to your mobile or any other device. In this way, you won’t lose your existing customers as you have the same number throughout the world.

Free phone numbers are easy to port. Thus, you can use the number with any device by registering the device with your service provider. You can even use the same number also if you switch to some other service provider.

5. Brand Recognition

Customers get impressed with a company that offers them a free phone number for contact. It shows that the company is available and is willing to solve their issues.

A company like this is effortlessly approachable, and customers without having a second thought would like to connect with them. Having a free phone number help business establish a brand image. This way, you can stand out from your competitors also.

6. Professionalism

Having a dedicated business number is more professional than to use your personal phone. Customers prefer a business contact number as it gives a positive and professional touch to the company. Also, with a free phone number, you do not have to share your personal number with your customers.

Using a dedicated number for your business not only shows professionalism but also gives you privacy. You also get detailed reports of the calls received on your free phone number.

Summing It Up

With a free phone number, customers do not have to think twice before contacting your business. It helps in increasing the number of inbound calls. Every incoming call is a chance for your agent to convert it into a lead. More the number of incoming calls, higher is the sales. It also enhances your company’s brand image.

A free phone number does help in improving customer experience. It is beneficial for businesses of any size. Customers can reach out to you anytime and from anywhere.

If you are not using a business phone number yet, then switch to it immediately because you might be missing valuable opportunities to connect with your customers and business prospects.

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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Swastika Dhakal

Author

Swastika Dhakal is working with the Digital Marketing team at Acefone. She is interested in technology and likes to write on it. She loves to explore historical places, as well.

9 Benefits of Integrating CRM With Hosted Phone System

Ratnam Sinha

Author

Contact Center

November 4, 2019

5 mins read eye

Table of content

CRM or Customer Relation Management offers so much to gain for a business. The biggest benefit of CRM is building a stronger relationship with your new, as well as existing customers.

Customer Relation Management (CRM) software can be defined as a tool for businesses to manage the interactions and relationships with the customers by saving every important information while also improving the profitability of the company.

CRM is a term commonly used to refer to a CRM system which is basically a tool for sales management, contact management, workflow processes, productivity tracking, etc.

According to IBM “The cloud also makes it possible to power mobile CRM systems. According to the findings of a Nucleus Research report, 65% of companies that are using a mobile CRM solution are meeting or exceeding their current sales quotas. As compared to companies that are not using these solutions, just 22% of them are meeting or exceeding their sales quotas.”

To stay ahead in the race, it is necessary to understand your customers, and for that, just listening to their feedback isn’t enough these days. You need to have detailed information about your customer: from their communication history with the brand, to their latest purchases and service request.

If you have an inbound call center for your business, there are many benefits of integrating CRM with your cloud phone system.

1. Better Client Experience

With integrated CRM system, the agents can access all the relevant information about the client on their screen. This will not only help the agent build a better relationship with the client, but they will also spend more time solving the queries rather than acquiring information.

With precise information, the agents can add a personalized touch to the customer service which enhances the customer experience many folds.

2. Enhanced Agent Satisfaction

With greater knowledge about the client, agents will have ease in serving to them. They can be more engaged with the client, and it will also allow them to better understand the problem and provide then with better solutions. This will in-turn make a better experience for the agents too.

3. Increased Profitability

When the agents solve the issues faster, the clients end up being more satisfied with the results. It increases the revenue as the customer queries are being solved quicker, and customer satisfaction is increased. Integrating CRM with your hosted phone permits you to make both your clients and agents happy while increasing your profits.

4. Cost Saving

CRM system can help you plan your tasks and activities, record and save all your data, and also give better customer satisfaction to your clients. This not only improves your productivity but help you save a lot too.

It cuts the cost on acquiring new customers as your old satisfied clients can act as your brand ambassador. It also records all purchase history of each client, thus tracking the bestselling and least selling items allowing you to understand how to improve the sales.

5. Automate Routine Tasks

CRM software is able to automatically fill out order forms, send reminder emails, etc. Thus, saving a lot of time for the agents which permits them to concentrate more on the clients rather than on manual tasks like this. Such tasks consume a lot of time and effort of the agents which can influence their productivity.

While it might not seem a lot, but automating these little tasks saves a lot of extra work for the agent.

6. Managing Call Recordings

CRM will store the data of every incoming and outgoing call into its system. It will help you analyse every customer separately, not only the customer, but you can also analyse and monitor the performance of your agents.

You can easily keep track of all the calls. Thus, CRM makes managing your call records very easy. Using this, you can make new strategies for different products and agents.

7. Scalability

CRM system is highly scalable. If you plan to expand in the future, or make any changes, it is very easy. You can add new agents, departments, options, anytime in the system, and it will be ready to work within minutes.

Even if you plan to Relocate your business, you do not have to worry about moving any hardware. Both CRM and Hosted Phone System are on the cloud, so it takes a few minutes to restart and continue working at the new location.

8. Better Conversion Rates

When the agents are provided with detailed and relevant information about a client, the customer interaction improves, substantially. With better interaction, conversion rates are also increased as the clients get more comfortable.

The agents do not have to waste time on getting information from the client, they already have it on their screen. This also helps to increase the trust factor of the customer in the agent and the company.

9. Enhanced Agent Productivity

As mentioned in the previous points, employees are more satisfied and do not have to do side works that eat up their time, their productivity increases. Agents spend more time on calls while dealing with the customers.

As the main focus of the employees is customer interaction, their results for the same is better. Moreover, the more time they spend on call, the more clients they deal with.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways in which your business can benefit by integration CRM with Hosted Phone System. Many organisations are now switching to CRM systems and are very happy with it.

The industry is in a very competitive state right now, and the future will only belong to those who can maintain strong customer relationships. With CRM, you can not only have satisfied customers but can also improve your productivity while saving time and money.

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

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.

Top 10 Ways to Deliver Excellent Customer Service

Acefone Editor

Author

Customer Service

November 1, 2019

5 mins read eye

Table of content

The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers. However, customer acquisition requires businesses to invest more resources than customer retentions. No business can implement a customer retention strategy successfully without focusing on the biggest reason as to why consumers switch brands and end business relationships – poor customer service.

According to CustomerThermometer.com, “47% of consumers have made the choice to switch to a different brand due to bad customer service within the last year. After a bad experience, 39% of customers will avoid a company for two years. 91% of customers who are unhappy with a brand will just leave without complaining.”

No business can prevent customers from abandoning transactions, switching brands, and ending business relationships without delivering superior customer service consistently. In the age of omnichannel customer communication, a business needs to deliver excellent service through both conventional and digital communication channels. The decision-makers also need to implement a strategy that covers various ways to deliver excellent customer service.

1. Facilitate Multi-Channel Service

The contemporary customers these days communicate with a business through multiple communication channels. Few might prefer calling a business and talking to a real human, while others opt for digital communication channels like emails, websites and social media. A business can easily boost customer experience by delivering service through multiple communication channels. Customers must be given the flexibility of accessing the services using their preferred communication channels.

2. Equip Your Customers

A business can easily boost customer service experience by allowing consumers to collect information, perform routine tasks, and resolve product/service issues. The cloud-hosted IVR solutions help businesses to enable customer self-service without increasing infrastructural cost. IVR system allows callers to accomplish a specific task in two distinct ways – using self-service options and talk to an agent/employee.

3. Increase First Contact Resolution

Each customer wants to resolve issues or accomplish tasks quickly. Hence, a business cannot improve customer loyalty without accelerating customer service delivery. Also, it needs to ensure that a customer’s needs, questions or problems are resolved on the first contact. The IVR systems help businesses to increase first contact resolution by supporting skill-based call transfers. The managers can use the feature to transfer every incoming call to the most appropriate department, agent or extension.

4. Build a User-Friendly Portal

According to a report released by Microsoft, 90% of consumers expect a business or brand to provide an online portal for self-service. Also, 79% of millenials have a more favorable view of brands that provide mobile-responsive customer service portal. Hence, a business can easily promote brand loyalty by allowing customers to access relevant information and resolve various issues on their own by accessing a customer service portal. The portal will help businesses to meet customer expectations along with boosting website traffic and reducing cost.

5. Boost Social Media Responsiveness

The aforementioned report suggests that over 50% of consumers have a favorable view of the brands or businesses that respond to questions and complaints on social media. The millenials further consider social media as an effective channel for customer service. Most businesses these days use popular social networks as customer service channels. However, the business must remember that the customers expect brands or businesses to respond within 24 hours. The new-age strategies must focus on optimizing social media response time to 24 hours.

6. Send Customer Service Notifications Proactively

Most customers these days expect businesses and brands to send customer service notifications proactively. A business can send these notifications to customers in various forms – emails, text messages and voice messages. The bulk SMS services help businesses to send customer service notifications proactively and automatically. A business can also use the right voice broadcasting solution to send these notifications in the form of personalized voice messages automatically.

7. Never Argue with Customers

A business must prepare the customer-facing employees to deal with argumentative customers efficiently. It needs to make the employees realize then arguments will impact the customer relationship and lead to revenue loss. Instead of defending or arguing, the employees must focus on meeting customer needs and resolving customer service issues. A business can even prepare employees to deal with angry, frustrated, and argumentative customers by providing relevant training.

8. Emphasize on Employee Training

No business can deliver excellent customer service without improving performance and efficiency of the agents and customer-facing employees. In addition to reskilling and upskilling the employees, a business must focus on their interaction with customers and their approach of assisting customers in the most helping way. A business also needs to organize training programs regularly to make the employees understand customer service and help them think on their feet.

9. Assess Customer Service Quality

A business must remember that customer service quality improvement is an ongoing process. It cannot deliver excellent service without measuring its quality. A business must assess the quality of the service using widely used metrics like customer satisfaction score (CSAT), customer effort score (CES), customer churn rate, first response time, first call resolution rate and average ticket handling time. These metrics will help decision makers to monitor and improve customer service quality consistently.

10. Collect and Leverage Customer Feedback

In addition to using the relevant customer service metrics, the businesses must collect and use customer feedback regularly. The sophisticated IVR solutions help businesses to collect transactional customer feedback by conducting post-call surveys. A business can organize post-call IVR surveys to collect customer feedback automatically by asking a variety of questions. However, it is also important for the business to review and analyze the customer feedback to decide how to boost customer service quality.

No business can prevent customers from switching brands and ending business relationship without delivering excellent customer service although the businesses must remember that trends in customer service and customer are dynamic. The decision makers must keep the service strategy flexible enough to meet customer expectations by adopting emerging trends and new best practices without any hassle and delay.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

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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.

Hosted vs. On-premise Phone System: What To Choose?

Swastika Dhakal

Author

Contact Center

October 22, 2019

5 mins read eye

Table of content

The introduction of VoIP has changed the way businesses communicate. Statistics suggest small businesses that have switched to VoIP save 40% on local calls and 90% on international calls.

Choosing the right business phone can be a confusing task when there is a variety of business phones with various features available. We are going to discuss here two options hosted and on-premise phone systems.

Traditionally both were based on hard-wired PBX, but with the advancement in technology, they are now based on the internet, commonly known as IP PBX.

To avoid confusion, we are only focusing on the latest technology, which is the IP PBX. Both come with some pros and cons. In this blog, we will discuss their differences based on various factors. You can decide yourself which one suits your business needs.

What is a hosted phone system?

A hosted phone system or a hosted PBX is a cloud-based solution that uses the internet for communication. It is hosted by the service provider, somewhere else other than your office. It does not require space for hardware setup, it only needs an internet connection, computer, and headset.

The service provider remains responsible for its maintenance and software upgrades. They charge a monthly fee, which includes minutes and features chosen by you. The more features you add, the more you pay. It follows the pay-as-you-go model in which you pay only for the services that you use.

What is an on-premise phone?

As the name suggests, it is located at the office’s premises. You need a dedicated room for placing the required hardware. The hardware includes a physical box, which is used to switch the phone lines; all the handsets are connected to this box. You have all the control, and you are responsible for its maintenance and upgrades.

Hosted Vs. On-Premise

1. Cost

Hosted Phone

The initial setup cost is lower than on-premise as it does not require any additional equipment.

It includes maintenance and upgrades cost in its monthly fees. Therefore, you can predict or estimate your monthly charges. The monthly fee is charged on the number of phone lines and features added.

On-Premise

It is like a one-time investment of hardware and services; thus, the initial cost of set up is very high.

However, you need to replace hardware once it begins to wear out or when there is an upgrade in technology. It also requires the hiring of IT specialists for its maintenance, which adds up to the initial cost of setup.

2. Scalability

Hosted Phone

The addition and removal of the phone system are much simpler than on-premise. It is so easy that you can add or remove users by following the instructions.

It is best suitable for a fluctuating or a seasonal business because it is very easy to scale up or down when required. The hosted phone follows the pay-as-you-go model, which ensures that you are paying only for the services that you are using.

On-Premise

Scalability in an on-premise phone solution is difficult to achieve as it

Includes additional hardware and complex cabling. It also requires you to hire a technician for the addition or removal of lines. This solution is best suitable for a business with a fixed number of users. Considering the growth of your business, you may need to purchase extra hardware in advance. Otherwise, you need to purchase an entirely new service again.

3. Mobility

Hosted Phone

With hosted phones, employees can be mobile. They can take calls from anywhere irrespective of their geographic location. All you need to do is transfer your calls from a hosted phone to your device. Mobility boosts the productivity of your employees by allowing them to work remotely.

On-Premise

Since on-Premise phones are located in the office, it does not offer remote access.

Although you can customise it to support remote access, for that, you require advanced equipment that charges more.

4. Security

Hosted Phone

Security is offered by your service provider. Hence, it is crucial to choose the right provider. Look for the provider that uses advanced security methods like encryption and two-step authentication to provide the best security possible.

On-Premise

You are responsible for the security of your data and phone system. It may offer better security as it is under your control. Thus, you can monitor and take desired security measures.

5. Reliability

Hosted Phone

Since data is stored in the cloud, it is safe during any natural disaster as it has a backup. Data

can be accessed anytime and from anywhere.

On-Premise

Data, if stored only in the office and with no backup, gets easily affected during any disaster. In such a case, any loss of data can’t be retrieved again.

6. Automatic Upgrade

Hosted Phone

Hosted phones are automatically updated by your service provider. You do not have to worry about its upgrade. The charges are already included in your monthly plan.

On-Premise

On-premise phone solution requires hardware upgrades from time to time. With improved technology, your hardware needs to be replaced, as it might not be useful then.

Conclusion

Hosted as well as on-premise phone systems are feature-rich. Features included are call transfer, call hold, voicemail to email, auto attendant, conference calls, and many more. The only main difference between the two is that in a hosted phone, you get rid of the hardware maintenance and upgrades.

It is fully managed by your service provider. You can save your time and invest in other high priority tasks. While in an on-premise solution, you will have to maintain plenty of hardware and physical lines.

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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Swastika Dhakal

Author

Swastika Dhakal is working with the Digital Marketing team at Acefone. She is interested in technology and likes to write on it. She loves to explore historical places, as well.

10 Ways To Improve Team Productivity At Your Call Centre [Infographic]

Swastika Dhakal

Author

Infographics

October 18, 2019

5 mins read eye

Table of content

The performance of your call center directly depends on the performance of your team. A productive team works effectively to reach the company’s goal. We already know the importance of having a productive team, but how do we achieve it? How to transform a group of individuals into a team?

This infographic lists ten ways to turn your call center team into a productive one.

Improve Your team Productivity At Call Centre

Let’s explore in detail.

1. Define Concrete Goals

As a leader, you should keep your team aware of clear goals or targets that they have to achieve. Hold team meetings and ask for updates, but do not stretch it for too long.

According to a study, meetings usually waste more time if they don’t happen with particular agendas. Conduct daily meetings with the team to discuss progress. Also, do not set unachievable goals.

Set plausible goals and define them to your team very clearly. Agents will get a clear idea of their individual roles. The stronger and clear your objective is, the more expected results you get.

2. Work From Home

Allowing agents to work from home is indeed a good idea. Research has proved that working from home improves productivity. Working from home provides the agents with a certain level of flexibility that helps improve the overall productivity. Not only that, but it also improves employee retention rates as well.

3. Gameathon

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Playing games together encourages interaction in the team. Conduct team bonding games that will help your team to connect as a team. Games are a great way to reduce stress.

Social events or gatherings like team dinner, celebrating achievements, and festivals help to maintain the work environment positive and healthy. It also improves the bonding among employees.

4. Keep Pace With Technology

Are you providing all the right tools and technologies required in your call center? If not, then you should. Outdated and old technology is cumbersome to productivity. Investing in the right technology such as contact center will save the time and efforts of your team. The saved time can be used for other important tasks, thus improving ROI.

5. Review And Ask For Feedback

Give regular feedback to your team. It should be fair with wisely chosen words. Negative feedback should not sound harsh or rude. It should rather be constructive criticism.

Regular feedback will motivate your team to put efforts so that they meet your expectations. Also, do ask for feedback from your team, as well. You never know when some ideas could benefit your business.

6. Distribute Work Efficiently

Equal work distribution in a team ensures that all agents in the team get equal work. It makes sure that every agent is working, which ultimately improves the productivity of the team. This way, each agent contributes to the team.

Also, while assigning a task, consider the agent’s skill, strengths, and weaknesses so that they get the work that matches their skill set as a result of which the overall productivity increases.

According to GALLUP, employees who use their strengths outperform those who don’t.

7. Reward Them

Giving a reward is a way of appreciating your team’s hard work. Provide incentives to your agents based on their performance. Incentives for the highest number of leads, highest first call resolution, and the lowest number of abandoned calls will motivate them to perform better.

8. Lead By Example

A good leader leads by example. If you want others to follow the rule, then you, as a leader, should follow them first. This attitude of yours will make your team respect you even more than before. Leaders who practice what they preach win the trust of their team.

“Leadership is not just about people; it is about engaging them and being invested in their future.” – Sarah Stealey Reed (Sr. Call Center Manager at Deloitte)

9. Acknowledge Your Team’s Work

Give your team members credit for their work. Acknowledge their little effort; this will make them feel motivated. You can also incentivise to show them that you appreciate their work. Praise your team or agents; it costs nothing.

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” -Mother Teresa

10. Focus on Agent’s Development

A team is a group of individuals who work together to achieve a common goal. In a call center, agents are those individuals; thus, it is essential to hire the best candidates. Conduct training for them so that they can understand your company and its services better.

Collaborate with various programs to focus on their personal development as well. Google has a policy called 20%- time policy, according to which it allows employees to spend 20% of their time on their personal growth. It builds trust between the two and improves the working environment.

Conclusion

Call center productivity can be only improved when team members are purposefully engaged and dedicated to their work. You cannot directly expect productivity from them. It takes little effort from the team leader to see better results. With the above given tips, you can improve productivity in your team.

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

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Swastika Dhakal

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Swastika Dhakal is working with the Digital Marketing team at Acefone. She is interested in technology and likes to write on it. She loves to explore historical places, as well.

25 Important VoIP Statistics You Need to Know

Ratnam Sinha

Author

Voice - VoIP

October 15, 2019

3 mins read eye

Table of content

Voice Over Internet Protocol or VoIP is a communication service that allows the user to make calls using the internet rather than the traditional phone lines. VoIP is significantly cheaper than the traditional PSTN or ISDN lines.

VoIP has made international and local calls very feasible, and this is one reason that businesses are opting for it, gradually. Even for small businesses and start-ups are opting for the VoIP because it is cost-effective and comes with flexible features.

It provides a better calling experience to the users with additional features like call recording, call conferencing, call queue, call forwarding, and others.

Who doesn’t want a cost-efficient, reliable, flexible, professional and mobile solution for their organization? That is exactly what VoIP is and why it’s becoming so popular.

As a business, there is a lot a company has to consider before it can take any major decision. So, here are some important statistics that you should look into before switching to the business telephony solution.

Key VoIP Statistics You Should Know

Small businesses that switched to VoIP save 40% on local calls and 90% on international calls. (TechCo)
By integrating VoIP, businesses save 30% on teleconferencing. (TechCo)
Companies have seen 20% rise in productivity with VoIP. (Harbor Networks)
There is a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.8% between 2016-2024 in hosted business IP PBX service. (Persistence Market Research)
Business with 30 VoIP phone users saves up to $1200 per month. (PCWorld)
$194.5 billion is the projected global VoIP revenue by 2024. (Persistence Market Research)
50% of IT leaders ceased purchasing on-premise communications in 2018. (Gartner)
About 90% of IT leaders will stop purchasing on-premise communications by 2021. (Gartner)
47% of businesses have already implemented SMS using VoIP service. (Internet)
74% of employees use mobile app for business calls with VoIP service. (Internet)
VoIP can help save 32 call minutes per day. (Cisco)
There will be 204.8 billion corporate consumers of VoIP by 2020. (Ironpaper)
There were 1 Billion mobile users of VoIP in 2017. (WisdomPlexus)
It is projected that there will be 3 billion mobile users of VoIP by 2021. (WisdomPlexus)
1519 businesses in the US in 2019 were using VoIP services. (IBISWorld)
By 2020 VoIP will hold 28% CAGR of Global Mobile Market. (Technavio)
VoIP has 34 Million users in the USA, 31 Million users in Japan, and 22 Million users in France. (Statista)
22% business over the world already have a Toll-Free Number. (Internet)
400 minutes is the average employee call consumption of VoIP every month. (Internet)
On average, there are 3 VoIP phone menu options. (Internet)
15 seconds is the average length of menu greetings on VoIP phone service. (Internet)
On average, the caller holds for about 36 seconds before getting connected. (Internet)
On average, the caller holds for about 90 seconds before disconnecting. (Internet)
89% of VoIP phone menus offer the caller to enter an extension. (Internet)
By 2025, it is likely that AI Chatbots will do 95% of customer interactions over the phone. (Forbes)

Conclusion

VoIP is a fast-growing technology that is making a mark on the world. Not only does it improve the productivity of the business, but it also provides a better customer experience. VoIP technology is not meant for big organizations only, but small businesses and start-ups are also benefiting a lot from it.

It is clear from the statistics above that VoIP is going to be a major requirement for the companies in the future and has already made a place for itself in almost all the industries today to deliver a better communication experience.

Still, have questions about VoIP? Contact our Solutions Consultant at 1888-859-0450, or visit www.acefone.com/

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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.

5 Industries That Benefit The Most From Inbound Contact Centres

Swastika Dhakal

Author

Contact Center

October 10, 2019

4 mins read eye

Table of content

Inbound contact centers are an essential part of customer service operations for many businesses, allowing them to handle customer inquiries, complaints, and issues effectively and efficiently. They can significantly improve customer satisfaction by providing a prompt and effective response to customer inquiries and complaints.

By having a dedicated team to handle customer calls, businesses can ensure that customer needs are addressed in a timely and efficient manner, leading to higher levels of satisfaction.

Why does your business require an inbound call center?

You require an inbound contact center so that your customers can get solutions to their problems, immediately. Customers should be provided support throughout their journey, from the moment of decision-making of a product or service to the after-sales.

Hence, you need to provide customers with a platform where they can contact you at any time of the day. In this context, providing a toll free number helps customers to reach you out without any hesitation.

Hence, industries that have not invested in an inbound contact center yet should think about it because of its various benefits. If you want your business growth, then you must prioritise your customers.

Let’s look at the industries that will be benefiting from the inbound contact center.

1. Healthcare

Healthcare industry is one of the busiest industries. It has to provide 24/7 support to the callers even on public holidays. Having an inbound contact center benefits hospital to a large extent.

With the help of an inbound contact center, patients can inquire about bills, application form status, information about the insurance claim, and can also book an appointment with the doctor.

A patient needs medical support even after visiting the doctor. He feels secure and well-treated when he gets an immediate response from them. Hospitals are too busy to answer all the calls because of heavy call volume.

The inbound contact center makes sure that you do not miss any urgent call. Hence, investing in a contact center saves the hospital staff’s time, and patients get consultations without any delay.

2. Banking and Finance

The banking industry can save time and reduce workload by investing in an inbound contact center. They can focus on their core functions along with listening and solving customer’s problems. Inbound contact centers allow customers to stay connected with these organizations at any possible time.

It saves the customer’s time as they don’t have to visit the bank to get their questions answered, instead they can discuss them over the phone.

3. Retail Industry

The retail industry sells consumer goods to customers through multiple channels like physical stores, websites, and other online portals.

Every retail business, small and big benefits can from inbound contact centers. That can help fill in the communication gap between the customers and retailers and streamline the buyer’s journey with the business.

Inbound Contact centers help the retail industry in many ways like registering customer complaints, addressing inquiries, taking feedback, order processing, and placing orders over the phone.

4. Transportation Industry

Public transport is a day-to-day need. The transport industry benefits from cloud contact center in numerous ways by adopting automation, AI, and outsourcing.

Customers can easily make reservations, book tickets both domestically and international,ly and more. A reliable communication platform will help perform these activities smoothly and more efficiently.

One great advantage of having an inbound contact center in the seasonal industry is that you can customize the size of the contact center according to your immediate business requirements.

5. Restaurants and Food Services

Restaurants, hotels and food services can win their customer’s trust by providing them with good customer experience. Customers can easily order food over the phone and track the delivery time further.

Inbound contact center will keep records of your customer’s review and will help you to make changes in your business accordingly. With an inbound call center, customers can share their feedback and suggestions.

The shared feedback can help the restaurant to take a corrective decision.

Conclusion

Thus, offering good customer service is very much required in today’s world to stand out from your competitors. Investing in inbound contact centers is the best decision that you can make for your business. While it will be handling your customers, you can focus on your core functions.

If you want to check out our verbal communication skills, connect with us at 1888-859-0450 or write an email to [email protected].

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Swastika Dhakal is working with the Digital Marketing team at Acefone. She is interested in technology and likes to write on it. She loves to explore historical places, as well.

Voice Broadcasting: Definition and Benefits

Acefone Editor

Author

Voice Broadcasting

October 7, 2019

4 mins read eye

Table of content

While running a marketing campaign, businesses need to reach out to a large number of customers in a short span. At present, voice broadcasting is one of the widely used mass communication techniques that is connecting companies with its target audience.

Wikipedia defines voice broadcasting as a

Mass communication technique which broadcasts pre-recorded voice messages to thousands of call recipients at once.

Like other mass communication technologies, voice broadcasting also has both commercial and community applications. At present, organizations use voice broadcasting services as a direct marketing tool to promote products/services, generate leads, conduct market research, and collect consumer response.

At the same time, the non-profits organization use voice broadcasting solutions to convey a variety of information to their members, subscribers and donors. Voice broadcasting solution enables people to record and send voice messages in bulk without investing in hardware-based infrastructure. It further comes with robust features that help to monitor and boost the performance of voice campaigns.

10 Benefits that Voice Broadcasting Offers to Business

1. Voice Messages are more effective than Text Messages

While using mass communication technologies, many organizations opt for SMS or text messages due to their extremely high open rate. But decision-makers must remember that more and more people these days are using voice messages to communicate on mobile apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Market research also suggests that voice messaging is going to be the next big thing in the upcoming years.

2. Maximize Your Audience Reach

Voice broadcasting, unlike other mass communication techniques, enables an organization to send voice messages to thousands of call recipients at once. Businesses can create and send voice broadcasts to thousands of people in minutes. Not only that, with the retry option, organizations can maximize their outreach by resending the broadcast to people who did not answer the call broadcast in the first attempt.

3. Create and Personalize Campaign Messages

Campaign managers can create voice messages and personalize them in several ways. They can pick the predefined message scripts from the portal or can type in their personalized message by adding a company’s or customer’s name.

Along with the script, managers can also pick from the existing voice samples or can upload a new voice recording. They can also use the in-built text-to-speech feature to generate dynamic voice samples by altering the script.

4. Keep Campaign Messages Consistent

Earlier, call center agents used to manually call and talk to customers to communicate an important message or offer. But the challenge was to maintain the consistency of the information being communicated. Often, messages were altered during the communication which affected the consistency of the message.

On the contrary, voice broadcasting allows a business to send the same voice message to thousands of customers with zero chances of consistency failure. Hence, it helps marketers to maintain uniformity and consistency of the campaign message.

5. Collect Response and Conduct Surveys

Interactive voice broadcasting technology allows call recipients to share their feedback/suggestions after listening to the broadcasted voice message. Customers can interact with the IVR by merely pressing the numeric keys on their mobile devices. Businesses also leverage interactive voice broadcasting to collect consumer response, conduct market research, and organize opinion polls quickly without investing extra resources.

6. Do not Violate DNC Rules and Regulations

Many customers have do-not-call (DNC) or do-not-disturb (DND) service activated to avoid receiving commercial messages and calls. While running voice or telemarketing campaigns, businesses need to ensure that no call is made to phone numbers which are on DNC registry. If companies fail to do so, the repercussions can be massive, that can result in hefty fines. Voice broadcasting software takes care of this for you. While uploading your contact list, the software automatically eliminates the DNC contacts from the list.

7. Option to Schedule Voice Campaigns

While planning marketing campaigns, the managers need to ensure information is broadcasted to customers at the right time. Voice broadcasting software allows a business to send campaign messages at the right time by scheduling campaigns based on critical parameters like time, days and geographic location.

8. Run Multiple Voice Campaigns Simultaneously

Cloud-hosted voice broadcasting solutions can run multiple voice campaigns simultaneously. Managers can monitor the performance of every campaign on a web-based portal. Also, they can generate campaign reports based on real-time data and send the campaign reports to various stakeholders regularly.

9. Curtail Marketing Campaign Cost

Outbound campaigns require organizations to deploy additional agents. Also, it is tedious for agents to contact a large number of customers and convey the message manually. Voice broadcasting software helps organizations to run marketing campaigns by sending the same promotional or campaign messages to thousands of customers and leads at once. Hence, many businesses these days use voice broadcasting as a direct marketing tool to run marketing campaigns without investing in extra resources.

Voice broadcasting is one of the widely used mass communication technologies which have both commercial and communication applications. The benefits of voice broadcasting services for both for-profit and nonprofit can be determined from the consistent growth of the global HD voice market. However, the decision-makers must remember that the features provided by voice broadcasting solutions differ across providers. To leverage the benefits of voice broadcasting fully, they must select the right voice broadcasting service provider.

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Here is Why Unified Communication Important Today

Swastika Dhakal

Author

Contact Center

September 27, 2019

4 mins read eye

Table of content

A good customer service does increase the sales of a business. Hence, the customer needs a medium through which he can communicate with the business organisation.

Gone are the days of writing letters, not only it consumed a lot of time but also often went unnoticed and receiver hardly responded to the customer’s query or complaint.

With the advancement in technology, the communication gap between the two has been filled with various communication services. Out of all the possible communications, Unified Communication (UC) is the best solution for a business.

What makes Unified Communication different from other communication services?

Unified Communication is a combination of more than one type of communication in a single entity. It includes channels such as voice, text, video, and social media.

How would you define Unified Communication?

(UC) is defined as the integration of all the communication services used in business and marketing. It integrates chat and IP telephony and email, voice email, fax etc. to optimise business communication.

It is the unification of all individual components in one homogeneous medium to improve the efficiency and user experience. Cloud technology has made this unification much easier. A fully cloud-based model helps in connecting better with customers.

The services included are SMS, email, fax, video, voice, chat, IVR and more.

Communication is not only about sending or receiving messages. It is about understanding. It has to be effective, and it means the receiver must get the message just the same way the sender intended it to.

Effective communication is like a pillar of strength for any business. It helps to maintain a healthy relationship between the business and customers.

Unified Communication gives a chance to the customers to inquire, send feedback, and ask questions to the organisation. It also allows communication between the employees divided by the departments or location to send, share, and receive information without delay.

UC allows a single user to access communication services such as SMS, e-mail, fax, video, voice, chat, and many more through a single portal. It is a solution which combines all the separate channels into one.

Improves Employee Collaboration

Unified Communication enables your employees to collaborate and communicate irrespective of the different departments or geographical differences. It provides the employees with the live chat feature, which is a better and faster way to communicate within the office than sending emails.

Impress Your Customers

Unified Communication provides faster and easy communication between the customers and customer service agents. Appropriate and immediate responses with the help of the UC system has resulted in gaining the trust of customers. Customers are more satisfied with the consistent and fast response through UC.

Mobility

Mobility lets enterprises of any size to make use of their smartphones and tablets in a secured, cost-efficient, and hassle-free way. It lets the users to use the device of their choice from any location (home, office or in a bus).

It provides communication through multiple devices and device types. A user can access it from more than one device irrespective of the device type (smartphone, personal computer, laptop, or tablet).

Increase in Revenue

Good customer service ultimately results in increased revenue. As good customer service improves the sales of your business. The use of cloud-based UC has effectively influenced business growth.

Reduced Costs

Unified Communication reduces business expenses to a large extent. It is a modern technology which runs through the internet. You only need a good internet connection, a headset and a computer or a hand-held device.

Scalability

In context to Unified Communication, scalability refers to the ability to addressing the varying communication needs of the organisation. UC system can be customised by scaling up or down, easily through the portal itself.

Reliability

UC provides reliability in terms of reducing the downtime. It is highly dependent on the smooth functioning of the network. Service providers take tough measures to ensure the business continuity that makes it even more reliable. The reliability of UC results in customer satisfaction which eventually upgrades the business’s revenue.

Security

It is the responsibility of the service provider to host the services on the most secure data centers. So, the users should choose the service provider after proper research. One of the reasons that makes UC more secure than traditional communication technologies is that all business applications are integrated into one system.

Having one integrated system which provides high security by protecting all apps and data within the network. It is very much secured than having multiple insecure communication channels separately.

Conclusion

Unified communication is a very good way to save time whilemaking a communication. Fast response time always attracts customers. It helps in connecting all the employees on a single platform. Also, it increases employee productivity as they can collaborate easily producing better results. Good communication is the key to a highly productive work environment.

Unified Communication supports the businesses to market products or services to the customers. With time, Unified Communication is very likely to replace the traditional system, completely.

Have a question about Unified Communication? Contact our Solutions Consultant at 1888-859-0450,

If you're interested in improving your business communication solution

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Swastika Dhakal is working with the Digital Marketing team at Acefone. She is interested in technology and likes to write on it. She loves to explore historical places, as well.

10 Ways To Choose A Hosted Phone System Provider For Your Business

1. Research Well

2. Quality of Service

3. Customer Review

4. Pricing

5. Integrations

6. Disaster Recovery

7. Advanced features

8. Customer Service

9. Latest Technology

10. Easy to Use

Summary

Top picks for you

6 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Free Phone Number

Why Free Phone Number?

Does your business offer a free phone number? If not, then why?

1. Improves Customer Satisfaction Rate

2. Increases Revenue

3. Easy To Remember

4. Portability

5. Brand Recognition

6. Professionalism

Summing It Up

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9 Benefits of Integrating CRM With Hosted Phone System

1. Better Client Experience

2. Enhanced Agent Satisfaction

3. Increased Profitability

4. Cost Saving

5. Automate Routine Tasks

6. Managing Call Recordings

7. Scalability

8. Better Conversion Rates

9. Enhanced Agent Productivity

Conclusion

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Top 10 Ways to Deliver Excellent Customer Service

1. Facilitate Multi-Channel Service

2. Equip Your Customers

3. Increase First Contact Resolution

4. Build a User-Friendly Portal

5. Boost Social Media Responsiveness

6. Send Customer Service Notifications Proactively

7. Never Argue with Customers

8. Emphasize on Employee Training

9. Assess Customer Service Quality

10. Collect and Leverage Customer Feedback

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Hosted vs. On-premise Phone System: What To Choose?

What is a hosted phone system?

What is an on-premise phone?

Hosted Vs. On-Premise

1. Cost

2. Scalability

3. Mobility

4. Security

5. Reliability

6. Automatic Upgrade

Conclusion

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10 Ways To Improve Team Productivity At Your Call Centre [Infographic]

1. Define Concrete Goals

2. Work From Home

3. Gameathon

4. Keep Pace With Technology

5. Review And Ask For Feedback

6. Distribute Work Efficiently

7. Reward Them

8. Lead By Example

9. Acknowledge Your Team’s Work

10. Focus on Agent’s Development

Conclusion

Top picks for you

25 Important VoIP Statistics You Need to Know

Key VoIP Statistics You Should Know

Conclusion

Top picks for you

5 Industries That Benefit The Most From Inbound Contact Centres

Why does your business require an inbound call center?

1. Healthcare