Quick tips for choosing the right phone system

As businesses continue to shift to a hybrid or remote way of working, a full-featured phone system couldn’t be more needed! Your team still needs to be able to keep the communication going wherever they may be working.

When deciding on the right phone system for your business, you’ll come across many different options. With that in mind, we’ve listed some top requirements needed for your phone system..

Easy to deploy and manage

You want to make the remote working experience easy for your users, so you need a hassle-free phone system that’s easy to deploy and manage. When making your selection, there are two main options to choose from, On-Premise or Hosted.

Hosted
If you take the hosted route, you can choose for the system to be hosted on a private cloud (such as Google Cloud, Azure or Amazon) or by your service provider. Your provider will handle the management and support of the system for you.

On-Premise
With On-Premise, the system is installed on site, usually within a computer storage room, and virtualised on Linux or Windows for instance. You will be in charge of maintenance and associated costs.

Both systems tend to offer similar features, but hosted is much less of a headache for businesses as a provider will take care of any upgrades, updates, daily backups and 24/7 system monitoring.

Once your phone system is live, your employees should be able to have a hassle free set up, as well as access the system and answer calls via a web client or through their smartphone.

Improves your customer service

You very rarely get a second chance to make a good impression and despite the digitalisation of communications, the phone is still an important and direct route that connects businesses and customers – making it a critical part of making a good impression.

Consider services that come with advanced calling features, such as call queues with various agent polling options. Features like this will allow your business  to review how long customers have waited, and how many calls were answered or missed.

If you’re looking to enhance your customer service, there are services which provide offline forms to generate visitor information when employees are offline. With this tool, your employees will be able to access key visitor information, such as names and email addresses in order to contact customers back.

Includes a live chat box

Live chat plug ins that integrate into your website is a useful feature for increased engagement and better communication with your customers. Consider services that give your business the option to display a customisable welcome message to prompt visitors to start chatting. When it comes to customer service, messages are a preferred choice by customers. According to a study by Neilson, 65% of people surveyed stated they would prefer to message due to convenience and speed.

There are services available which come equipped with additional live chat features, such as integrating with your Facebook. If your business has a Facebook page, you might have seen the messenger feature which answers with, “Usually responds in X days”. Your team can keep their lines of communication open with this feature which allows them to easily respond to messages directly from their web client or the Facebook app. The live chat feature keeps all your communications centralised and also allows your team to respond in real-time.

Integrates with your CRM

To keep your data in top condition, look for a service that integrates seamlessly into your CRM system. This would allow your teams to keep track of customer interactions, knowing who is calling beforehand and ensure contact information is readily available. Find a phone solution that allows you to automate your customer workflows by using case numbers to save your team members time.

It would also be beneficial for your team to be able to use features such as call routing. This will route calls based on the time of day and use a natural language processing capability to talk to customers in their own language, which is key if you have clients worldwide.

Look for a system that supports a range of CRM’s and help desks such as, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, Zendesk and more.

A secure system

With any technology purchase decision, keep in mind that your new purchase doesn’t compromise with the security of your business and your employees. Now that businesses are working remotely, your phone system should address any security issues with remote connections. When researching, check if the service provides an extra layer of protection when your employees are on the move or working remotely.

There are providers who offer secure phone system services and will have VoIP security. Additional features are also available which include built-in VoIP Anti-Hacking settings to make your system more resilient to attacks.

Why choose a Hosted PBX?

A Hosted PBX (private branch exchange) is a hosted service, also known as Virtual PBX. If you’re looking to eliminate installation, maintenance and operation costs, a Hosted PBX might just be the right option for you. Selecting this route allows you to:

1. Save on maintenance costs
Maintenance is automatically done by your hosted provider and is often included in the cost.

2. Save on installation costs
Hosted VoIP means no installation on-site and ease of set up.

3. Diminish the need for a dedicated IT team
Regardless of the size of your business, hosted VoIP doesn’t require dedicated IT staff to manage your phone system.

4. Get fast and automated updates
For a reliable and secure VoIP set up, the advantage of using hosted VoIP means you have access to fast and automated updates. This is usually done in the background, providing no disruption to users.

5. Easily expand and scale
You can easily scale your VoIP system by simply talking to your provider with your requirements. With this, there’s no need to purchase or set up any additional equipment.

Ready to start connecting your customers and co-workers? Our team can work with you to get your business’s phone system up and running. Get in touch with us today.