Buyer’s Guide to Choose the Right Cloud Telephony Software
Since COVID-19 broke out, the private sector has undergone a massive digital transformation. In this very competitive market, businesses are switching to new technologies that help them stay in business. Cloud Telephony is one among them. This is why choosing the right cloud telephony software has become an important step in the life of businesses.
Half of a business’s success depends on how well it communicates, and since thousands of calls are made and answered daily, automating this part of the business is becoming more important. Cloud telephony makes this easier to do by making business communication more efficient and better.
It is a type of technology that fits and meets the needs of any kind of business, whether a startup, a small and medium-sized business, or a big multinational company. The main goal of it is to replace regular business phones.
A survey by the Times of India found that more than 60% of businesses already use cloud telephony to make their communication more efficient.
Physical Telephony vs. Cloud Telephony
Cloud telephony doesn’t require any complex and expensive setup. It only needs a VoIP service provider and a reliable broadband connection. The staff can talk to customers and each other using any device that can connect to the internet.
On the other hand, a standard landline phone system needs to be set up inside the office. It links all your phone extensions and connects them to a public phone network through PSTN or ISDN lines.
Complex hardware needs to be taken care of by a team, and calls need to be managed and sent to the correct department or agent. So, it takes a good amount of money to get started. Keeping it running takes a lot of work, and it needs an ample space to live in.
Call forwarding, conferencing, voicemail, and many other features are also available on traditional phone systems, but they all cost extra. All these additional costs and high maintenance costs make it very expensive for the companies. Traditional PBXs also have more downtime, which makes it harder to recover data.
Because their phone numbers are tied to a phone set, it doesn’t give them mobility and flexibility. This makes them less productive and less able to pay attention, which hurts the company’s productivity. Using the old system to make long-distance calls costs more than using the cloud telephony system.
Adding a new team member and connecting a new phone to these systems is a lot of work. If the business moves its office, it will have to set up the landline system again.
This could cause businesses to lose their phone numbers, which could also cause them to lose customers.
A traditional phone system comprises a complicated network of wires, but a cloud-based communication system only uses the Internet.
Cloud telephony is replacing landlines because landlines can’t keep up with the changing business communication needs. At the same time, cloud-based calling is always doing an excellent job of making calls easier. Mobile networks and broadband are always improving, which keeps the internet stable and makes the cloud-based communication system more reliable.
Even though landlines are reliable, they are becoming less and less important. Businesses need to invest money into cloud telephony to stay in business and grow in the long run.
Benefits of Cloud Telephony
Here are some reasons why your business should get a cloud telephony service:
Flexibility
Businesses have had to change how they work because of the pandemic. This has made cloud telephony systems even more popular in the private sector. It gives remote workers the freedom to work from home or any other place in the world. They can make business calls using a virtual number, which keeps their cell phone number secret.
So, they can keep their personal life separate from their work life. With cloud telephony, the workplace is more flexible. Since the web is how calls are routed, businesses can always stay in touch with their customers and employees.
The cloud-based phone system eliminates the need to use actual phones to talk. It gives its users full freedom of movement. They can put apps for call automation on their phones and computers, so the business is completely mobile and can be accessed from anywhere, at any time. It helps improve business productivity and makes it easier to handle business communications, even from afar.
Cost-effective
Not only is it good for businesses, but it’s also cheap. Every business wants to spend as little as possible on capital and operating costs. The low cost of cloud telephony is why many companies move their operations to the cloud. When a business moves to the cloud instead of keeping its old phone system, it saves a lot of money.
Putting together a physical infrastructure of phone lines that connect costs a lot of money and space. In cloud telephony, the service provider takes care of the infrastructure, updates, and maintenance of the system. Also, when you switch to cloud service, your tech staff can focus on more important tasks, which saves you money on hiring staff.
A cloud service is usually easier and simpler to manage, and it can be done through an online interface that is easy to understand and can be accessed from anywhere. Help desk staff can learn how to use the service quickly. Also, calls made with a virtual number are much cheaper than calls made with regular business phones.
So, a business investing in cloud telephony can save a lot of money on call costs.
Easy to connect to applications
Using customized APIs it makes it easy to connect to different ATS and CRM platforms. These integrations make it easier for the business to do its work. The business needs to keep in touch with its customers and serve them better to build long-term relationships and give the brand more credibility.
Integrations that work so well help the team members handle calls better. Businesses can better serve their customers by integrating with CRM platforms. It can help you find more leads and close deals more quickly. This will help boost sales and also make the team more productive.
In these never-before-seen times, making as many sales as possible to stay alive and get through this without losing a lot of money is important. Even though this is the case, businesses can grow only using these integrations. They can easily find and get new leads, even working from afar.
Call Records
Cloud telephony comes with several extra features that make business communication more accessible and more effective. It gives you ways to keep track of and keep an eye on your business calls. Every call that comes in and goes out is recorded and written down. Call recording lets you check the quality of the call and can also be used to answer questions or clear up doubts.
Since all customer information and call history are stored in one place, the user can tailor the conversation to the caller’s needs. They can get to this information at any time, so they can quickly answer questions and solve problems without having to call the customer back.
The managers can also look at daily call analytics reports to keep track of all the team’s incoming and outgoing calls and messages. It can help them track how each team member is doing and how the communication processes are going.
Scalability
To stay in business, every business needs to grow. Sometimes, you need to hire new people, and sometimes you must let some go. Cloud telephony makes it easier to grow. The cloud makes adding new users and teaching them how to use it easy.
Even if an employee quits or gets fired, business operations don’t change because communication is handled in the cloud. Small- to medium-sized businesses can easily switch from a physical phone setup to cloud-based phone services without spending much money. It makes growth easy because it needs few investments and overhead costs.
Safe and Dependable
Cloud-based solutions are easy to update and can be switched to the newest software without problems. It makes it easier for the business to get to and control its data. They can be trusted because they are always being watched and managed. All the data is saved in the cloud, so all the call records are safe and sound. This means no data is lost during downtime, software failure, or technical disaster.
Improves Customer Experience
Cloud telephony makes it easier for businesses to respond to customer needs. It helps them stay in touch with their customers around the clock. It ensures that customers’ questions and doubts are answered quickly and that no call goes unanswered. Cloud-based calling has ways to keep track of missed calls and makes it easy for team members to follow up on calls they missed.
Customers can become unhappy and switch to a competitor’s service if their questions aren’t answered or deadlines aren’t met. Customers are likelier to stick with a business with good customer service, which makes the business grow faster.
Some Issues You May Face with Cloud Telephony
The business has a lot to gain from cloud telephony, but there are a few things to consider before deciding which is the right cloud telephony software for them.
Depends a lot on the internet
Since Cloud telephony relies on the internet, it can be hard to talk if your broadband connection isn’t stable. To start the calls, you need a strong and consistent internet connection. If the power goes out or the bandwidth shrinks, the user and caller will have a wrong time.
If your business doesn’t have a stable broadband connection, cloud telephony might not be a good choice. Also, security problems like hacking and malware can happen with cloud-based phones. So, it’s important to make sure the connection is safe. The service provider should tell you about all the security steps it takes to keep your data safe.
Integration problems
It’s possible that your workflow tools won’t always work well with the cloud system. Before choosing a service provider, businesses need to do their research. They must choose a platform that works well with their applicant tracking system (ATS), customer relationship management (CRM), and other key applications.
Spend money on some hardware tools
Even though you don’t have to set up any hardware to use a cloud-based service, a business might still need to buy equipment, such as new handsets connecting to employees’ computers.
Migration is hard
Some businesses, especially large ones, may find it difficult to move to the cloud. For example, some countries don’t let users record international calls, even though they might need to. Users at different sites could have different needs and restrictions.
Before choosing a cloud telephony service provider, the business should know what all users need. The most important thing for a successful migration is a detailed planning process.
Cloud telephony is the future of business communication. It makes it easier for all kinds of businesses to handle their communication. It has many features that can automate business calls without sacrificing quality. This makes it possible for businesses to grow without any problems.
By moving their operations to the cloud, businesses can focus on more important tasks, like improving the customer experience and making more sales. It improves the way people talk to each other without tying them to their desk phones. This gives them more freedom, control, and better work at a lower cost.
With a call automation platform like Office24by7, you can move your business to the cloud and get a number of features that will make it easier to communicate.
However, with Office24by7, there is no need to worry about any of these things. Apart from depending on the internet, our product has no other issue.
Things to Think About Before Opting for a Cloud Telephony Provider
Here, we have curated some points to bring you a cloud communications buyers guide.
Does the service provider offer a way to try before you buy?
Most of the features, except for a few, will be available in a trial version. This will show you how the platform works and how quickly it delivers, and it’s free! Yes, businesses can still try this option before signing up for a paid version of cloud telephony for business solutions, but only for a limited time.
How do you know what features to look for in a trial version once you’ve signed up? Before buying cloud telephony solutions from a service provider, scroll down to find out what features you should consider.
Is it easy to set up your cloud-based phone service?
When you choose a service provider, a quick and easy setup is a big plus. Initially, you might not know how the system works like the back of your hand, but it shouldn’t take you too long, like a few weeks, to figure out how it works.
So, it’s always best to choose a platform that lets you and your team start using your customer service desk immediately.
If you need an outside team to help set up your call center and teach your employees how to use the tools, you should probably avoid such service providers.
One of your agents has trouble understanding how your call center works. If your team can’t find a way to explain it and always needs help from the system provider, it’s not the right choice. This will also change how long it takes to answer a customer’s question, affecting your brand and image.
A simple and quick setup is always easy to use and depends on the provider very little. This will not only help you grow your business, but it will also help you train agents faster. When a new person joins your team, they can use your customer service center immediately.
How many groups or agents can I add?
Since every business wants to grow, you should check to see if your provider has any limits on how many people can be added. Let’s face it: if you want to run a growing business, it makes sense that you’ll need more agents as your business grows.
Ensure that your chosen system can add or remove agents, change their shifts, etc. If the number of agents that can be added is limited by your Cloud telephony provider, check the maximum number of agents that can be added. Also, don’t forget to find out if they have a paid plan that lets you add agents and how much it will cost to add agents after you’ve reached the limit.
Does it have a way to route calls and keep an agent on the line?
Check to see if your provider’s platform allows you to route calls. This way, you can ensure that customers don’t have to wait as long and that the agents handle calls consistently. One of the best ways to ensure you don’t miss any customer calls is to use call routing. It also helps make sure that all agents get the same number of calls so that no one agent gets too many calls.
Moving on to the sticky agent option, we’ve all been in situations where we had to explain the same problem we had as customers over and over again to different people. This takes a lot of time and makes customers even more angry because they have to explain their problem to each agent. The sticky agent option lets your system send the call back to the same agent who has already helped that customer with a certain question. So, the agent will have all the information they need to answer the question, and the customer won’t have to give the same information repeatedly. This also saves time for your call center and makes it easier to answer questions quickly.
During a live call, can your agent take notes?
What do you do if, for some reason, the sticky agent can’t help the customer with their problems during their shift? This problem can be fixed with a call disposition notes option. An agent can quickly enter the details of the last call, making it easier for the next agent who logs in to take over the problem and find a solution.
Does the Cloud telephony platform let you transfer calls based on which agents are free?
You might be wondering what difference it makes. But it’s one of the most important things to consider if you want your customer service center to do well. With a good cloud telephony platform, you can see if an agent is offline or online and ready to take calls. You can set up rules that automatically send calls to agents based on their availability and how well they know how to handle the calls.
Set up the IVR right away!
Even though you can think about the other options, you should never give up on an IVR or interactive voice response. It’s how people see your customer service. An IVR is a feature that every call center with many calls needs and will find very helpful. Setting it up should be quick and easy. It should have several widgets that let you change your call center to suit your needs and make it more interesting for customers.
How easy is it to look at reports and recordings of calls to see how your call center is doing?
Reports and recordings of calls are direct ways to measure how well your call center is doing. It’s the best way to keep track of your agents’ performance and find out where they can improve, which will help them do their jobs better and give your customers a better experience.
Call reports and recordings help you identify customers’ most common problems so you can help them better and get fewer calls for the same reason.
Wrapping It Up
Investing in a cloud telephony platform is costly, and I am sure that the cloud communications buyers guide has helped you understand what you have to look out for before you make the purchase.
If you are looking for an easier solution, then Office24by7 is here. Book a demo call with us, and we will walk you through all the required details. For more details, give us a call on +91 7097171717.
