Small businesses often have an advantage over larger competitors as they can offer a more personal, one-to-one level of service. Being able to ensure customers are more than just an entry on a balance sheet is vital in boosting revenue and supporting growth for startups in particular.
Sometimes, though, less-sizeable firms may struggle to provide the same level of quick, professional response as bigger firms. This may especially be the case for micro-businesses that can't afford to dedicate full-time staff to manage communications such as phone lines.
Whereas large enterprises can afford professional contact centres, a small firm with just one or two phone lines may find it difficult to meet today's high consumer expectations. Customers now expect any queries they have to be answered quickly and within a single call, and don't want to wait on hold or be passed around until the right person is available to help them.
Fortunately, there are tools you can use to help with this. VoIP phones don't just provide a cheap small business phone solution - they also come with a range of additional features that let your company compete on a more even footing with larger brands.
Here are five that can help you come across as more professional and boost the level of customer experience you offer by delivering a full contact centre experience at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions.
1. Call flows and forwarding
Call flows and forwarding features ensure that your employees never miss an important call, no matter where they are. You can set this up so that all calls are redirected to an alternate number or implement this selectively so only certain calls are rerouted. What's more, these features let you set up custom flows to automatically direct calls to specific numbers, extensions or teams.
2. Custom greetings
First impressions count, so the ability to record customised greetings for your incoming calls is another useful feature. As well as providing helpful information to callers, this can be combined with custom call menus to help with navigation and get people in touch with the right employee as quickly as possible.
3. Define business hours
The ability to set the business hours for your company and implement different routing solutions for different times also ensures customers aren't left frustrated. Your own office, holiday and out-of-office hours can be scheduled with set options for each one, such as call forwarding or voicemail.
4. Hunt groups
Customers will find it frustrating to receive busy tones if they try to dial into a phone in use, or be left waiting for a long time if there is no one immediately available to answer the phone. However, you can remove this possibility by setting up hunt groups, so incoming calls can ring on every line. You can also customise this to ring selected teams or any available user to ensure swift answering.
5. Reporting tools
Finally, comprehensive reporting tools give you full visibility into your phone system, both in real-time and for later performance analysis. This ranges from monitoring solutions so you can see exactly who's free to call logs and analytics to gain insight into questions such as how long queries take to resolve, how many calls you miss and when your peak times are to help you plan accordingly.
All of these features are easily managed via your VoIP phone system's dashboard, ensuring that owners of even the smallest firms can take full control of their communications. Get in touch with bOnline to learn more.
