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Business competition in today’s economy is fierce. Your customers expect the highest level of care, and you and your staff need to be reachable, professional and customer-focused at all times – no matter where you’re working. If that’s your business model, is your phone system supporting you and your employees like you need to support your customers? Use this checklist to evaluate if your business communications gives your customers the experience they expect from their chosen providers. Any items checked off may signal that you could be getting more out of your phone system. Reachability and Professionalism 1. Customers can access your sales staff anytime and anywhere, with mobile capabilities that direct incoming office calls to be received on your sales staff’s mobile phones. 2. Outbound calls look professional, coming from the main company number, even when your employees are using their smartphones or other mobile devices. 3. Customer focus is enhanced by [Begin hyperlink to blog post 1] integrating your Outlook and CRM tools [End hyperlink to blog post 1] with your phone system to track conversation history with your client. 4. Employee productivity is increased by merging call records with customer records to improve sales trending projections and staffing optimization. Employee Productivity 5. Employees can bring their own device and integrate it with your phone network. 6. Teamwork is made easy with voice and video calling, instant messaging and desktop sharing. 7. Employees feel secure that voice and data are safe, even in public hot spots. Cost Effectiveness 8. Ongoing administration, such as adding a new employee, is easy vs. labor intensive.
9. Local support is available to train your staff to use features that improve the customer experience. 10. You have the option of outsourcing your phone system management to an experienced local company. How did you do? Depending on your responses, here are some things to think about:
You want your employees to function effectively while improving company productivity and increasing customer satisfaction. Your phone system should help you do all that – and boost your competitive advantage. Find out how a ShoreTel Connect ONSITE business communications system can get you there. If you’d like to discuss your phone system’s capabilities and see what’s possible for your business, give us a call at 408-374-8727. In the 21st century, work is no longer a place you go, but a thing you do. That’s the nature of the changing work place. And your phone system needs to work with you – in multiple locations, with a mobile and growing staff, and a customer that demands high quality communications. You do more. Your phone system needs to support you, not hinder you. As your business changes and grows, you’re likely hiring employees that will work remotely and flexibly. You may have sales people who telecommute, consultants who are in the field or staff who work in remote offices. You might be hiring millennials that expect to work with greater flexibility. You are creating your workplace to meet the changing demands of your employees and your customers. In fact, there are some estimates that up to half of workforces will be working outside of traditional offices by 2020. And, if you’re trying to attract millennials to your staff, flexibility is key to them wanting to work for you. Will Your Current Phone System Support this Changing Work Environment? Today’s organizations must find ways to empower all of their employees to work effectively and efficiently from any location at any time. Thankfully, cloud technology is making this kind of flexibility a reality — allowing employees to access virtually any file, application, network, or communication service from any place with a secure Internet connection. With a cloud phone system, you can hire staff wherever and whenever you need them, and ensure they will be able to connect consistently and professionally. Meet Your Employees Where They Are Cloud phone systems allow team members to receive company calls, access corporate voicemail, and setup virtual conferences from a basic Internet connection. When employees step out of the office, calls can be forwarded and certain features can be accessed from their cell phone.
Traditional phone systems, on the other hand, often hinder remote workers’ communication effectiveness because of their limited mobile capabilities. This often results in lost money, lost productivity, and big headaches. Even worse, businesses often pay more for traditional phone systems in the form of equipment maintenance and outages. Unified communication systems create an overall user experience that makes people feel like an effective part of the team, wherever they are. At the end of the day, that’s good for your team, your company, and, most importantly, your customers. If you want to unify your communications system with your business, employees and customers, then it might be time to consider making a change to the cloud. With so many phone system options to pick from, it’s difficult to know which one will fully support your business. But you do know one thing: your current phone system no longer meets your company’s changing needs. So you do what any smart business person does – you conduct a thorough assessment of your options. You quickly learn that what you need is a unified communications system that will integrate with your current business applications at a reasonable cost. Most importantly, you want to control how you use, manage and pay for the phone system over the long term while building for the future and enabling an easy migration to the cloud as your business evolves. If this scenario applies to you, it’s time to consider a unified communications system that gives you total control in three critical ways: 1. Control Over Custody Is ownership your preference? If you have a certain comfort level when the assets you buy are sitting under your roof, an onsite phone system will give you complete custody of the equipment. Simply put, you own it. This type of investment creates a future benefit for your business by reducing long-term system costs while increasing the book value of your company. The financial decision of leasing, renting or buying is up to you. A ShoreTel Connect ONSITE system gives you investment protection while laying the foundation for a later migration to the cloud. You decide how you spend money on care, maintenance and growth, helping control costs in a way that makes sense for your business. That’s brilliantly simple. 2. Control Over Care If you like the idea of being able to control how and when you complete a phone system upgrade, and who administers changes to your phone system, then a ShoreTel Connect ONSITE phone system may be right for your business. An onsite solution gives you physical control of your phone system. You have the ability to determine when you want to make system changes and upgrades. It also gives you the ability to have a non-technical person manage moves, adds and changes as you need them. The system’s flexibility gives the administrator access from anywhere, meaning it’s a single image administration, no matter how many sites or locations you have. 3. Control Over Administration The ease of administration with a ShoreTel Connect ONSITE phone system means it will work with the business applications you already own and enable future growth. Applications you have purchased, developed or customized, like Microsoft Outlook, Skype for Business, Salesforce and other CRM solutions, easily integrate with a ShoreTel Connect ONSITE system. This gives you a unified communications strategy for the short and long term. The best part? You get to keep what you’ve already built and connect it with a phone system that adds additional business communications and collaboration capabilities, giving you more control without affecting your users’ productivity or your customers’ experience. Determining What’s Right for Your Business Many companies want to move to the cloud. Just as many companies want to maintain control of the assets they own. As you consider your phone system options, think about how an onsite phone system will give you the control you require in your business today, integrate to applications you’ve already customized and manage how you pay for the system. ShoreTel Connect ONSITE might be the best solution for your business giving you control today and a unified communications phone system for tomorrow.
How well is your current phone system really meeting your needs? Let’s find out. Call us today at 408-374-8727 or email us at [email protected]. |
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December 2023
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