Both small and large companies often struggle to answer their phones. In a small company, key personnel is often out of the office. In a large one, the problem is often a call queue or routing confusion that prevents frustrated callers from connecting with the right person. In either event, the result is lost business or an extremely dissatisfied customer.
An answerphone rarely fills the gap. Customers don’t want to talk to beep and go straight to a rival business; office personnel fails to transcribe and channel recorded messages. At one time, putting these problems right entailed heavy expenditure, for example, by hiring extra personnel or installing a PBX to automate call forwarding to the right department.
In today’s connected world, a business with a poor phone system is a business ready to fail.
VoIP solutions
An international VoIP wholesale provider, such as https://www.idtexpress.com/blog/2018/02/27/expect-international-voip-wholesale-provider/, can help you set up a phone system to solve all these problems with virtually no outlay on hardware or training. Using a web-based interface you can easily redirect calls inside or outside your offices, block nuisance callers, queue calls in an efficient way, create menu systems, record and archive your calls for follow up actions, integrate them with a CRM, and monitor your sales conversion performance on a daily basis.
A bonus is your calls are connected at wholesale prices negotiated by your international VoIP wholesale provider, so they are low rate regardless of distance and volume. You can choose numbers that are local for your target markets, and stay linked to your VoIP even when you’re out of the office.
Set-up tips
Start by recording a short welcome message on the lines of “Thank you for calling, we are connecting you now”. This creates the impression of a well-organized professional company backed by a modern phone system and a large team.
Even though you want to avoid using it, remember to set up voicemail. With VoIP, recorded messages can be attached to emails and sent to someone’s inbox for action. No more memos on scraps of paper.
You can easily divert calls to another desk when you’re busy, but if you still need to queue them you can provide messages letting them know where they are in the queue or offer them a call back service.
