By Ned McRae
Why do you need a hosted phone system for your business? The reason is pretty obvious, a virtual Private Branch Exchange (PBX) provides a lot of advantages compared to the traditional office phone system. You just need to pay for the plan you choose and the initial setup costs which include handsets, routers, modems, and switches.
With a hosted phone system, you don’t need to allocate more budget for expensive hardware costs or bulky equipment as it works through an internet connection. A cloud-hosted phone system allows your landline, desktop, laptop, and mobile phone to double as a business phone. It uses VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol to make outbound and inbound calls. To ensure optimum performance, make sure that your hosted phone system has the advanced features that your business requires.
VoIP services have a voicemail feature, but it is better to choose a provider that offers transcription of voicemail to email. Listening and extracting important information from voicemails can be time-consuming and tiring, so it helps a lot when they are transcribed into text messages and then sent to email. Voicemail transcription generates a real-time transcript of business-related conversations. You and your staff can easily double-check, review, and read transcriptions that are necessary for everyday transactions.
Call recording is a necessary tool for audio conference calls. This feature of the hosted phone system allows you to review what transpired during remote meetings and not miss any critical points or ideas during the discussion. Recorded calls help you pinpoint patterns that affect the performance of business or customer experiences. By going back to recordings, you will know what to improve or change to retain the trust of clients and motivate your teams. The recordings are also valuable resources for job onboarding or evaluation of daily business dealings.
Auto attendant (AA) or Interactive voice response (IVR) acts as a virtual receptionist who receives business calls. It lets you set up the system rules like Press 1 for X, Press 2 for Y, and Press 3 for Z. A superior call routing system gives customers a more pleasant experience when they want answers to their questions or complaints. This interactive tool of a hosted phone system supplies customers with automated information and options to direct the call to a live agent. Moreover, auto attendants also eliminate the need for your administrative specialist to attend to every call, allowing him to work on other crucial tasks.
These features of a hosted phone system enable your business to process more calls. The call waiting feature notifies you discreetly of the new incoming call. It allows you to decide whether to take the call, send the call to voicemail, or put the active caller on hold. Call transferring tool make it possible for clients and colleagues to find your available contact device. With this feature, you are allowed to customize the settings of call sequences or allow simultaneous ringing of all connected devices. If you are not available at the moment or cannot be reached, your hosted phone system automatically sends the caller to voicemail.
A hosted phone system generally offers a basic process of call logging, which includes the record of all outgoing or incoming calls, the date and time, and the duration of every call. If you want a more efficient and reliable system, look for a provider that offers a phone system with call logging features that sort out the types and durations of calls and allow call logs downloads into an excel spreadsheet. In addition, the business phone system you choose should provide real-time call analytics like call volumes during a specified time, call patterns, average speed to answer, answered calls, missed calls, talk time, voicemail calls, total calls, toll-free calls, international calls, and calls in queue.
It helps a lot if your hosted phone system easily integrates with other communication tools you are using. This ensures a unified communication system and allows seamless functionality of the integrated apps. Examples of other communication platforms are Microsoft 365, Zendesk, Google Workspace, and others. By having a unified interface, your business operations become more efficient.
Security is essential to all types and sizes of businesses. It is important to give customers, business partners, and other stakeholders a safe and secured business environment. As the owner of your own business, finding a trusted service provider of a hosted phone system is a major priority. Your choice of PBX system must have strong security measures against hacking and other threats that can leak critical data. A cloud-based business phone system with built-in firewalls provides more security to users and entrepreneurs.
Future-proof your small business and improve your relationship with clients by switching to a hosted phone system. The perfect choice is SpinTel PBX. It has plans to suit your business needs like Pay As You Go and Unlimited Calls. It is cloud-based with advanced Telephony and Line Pooling features that maximize your communication process while breaking the budget. For more information about its plan and benefits, call 13 22 10, and chat on Messenger or Whatsapp.
