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Your new marketing campaign was a huge success and your office is receiving the highest level of calls you’ve ever experienced in your growing business. Your staff is taking live calls, checking voicemail and returning customer inquiries as fast as they can. Can you imagine the impact if your phone system goes down mid-morning – at the peak of the call volume? Who knows why disaster strikes? It could be a clumsy utility worker, a lightening storm or some other unpredictable problem. Phone system issues are a reality with traditional telecommunications systems and can create enormous business headaches for you. If your business hasn’t planned for adversity with a disaster or redundancy plan, those kinds of communication failures can significantly disrupt your business from, well, doing business. What is your communication continuity plan? In the past, developing a disaster recovery plan meant that your IT staff would need to re-engineer your business phone system so it could be recovered successfully. If you’re a growing business, you likely don’t have that kind of unlimited resources for equipment and infrastructure. This is where cloud communication can help. Cloud phone systems have greatly advanced system recovery and business continuity in the face of an outage. They’re hosted virtually, so there’s no need to worry about the types of disastrous scenarios that used to disrupt on-premise or landline phone services. If a phone line is cut, cloud-based systems are totally unaffected. If Internet service goes down, phone calls can be re-routed to backup cell phone numbers or other business offices. 3 Essential Business Benefits of Switching to the Cloud As you think about a continuity plan for your phone system, there are several important benefits to the cloud that you want to consider.
Simply put, recovery and continuity is a non-issue. With these benefits in mind, the question, then, is why you wouldn’t switch to the cloud?
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What if you were challenged by your CEO to hire a significant number of new employees within the next 6 months? He would want you to find the right talent that will do the jobs exceptionally well and meet the demands of your growing business. As a senior manager, you know that finding employees with the right stuff will require you to look outside of your current office locations. Your goal is to find the right people – location is no longer critical. And, you need to remain close to the new team with fewer layers and more attentive communication. Of course each new employee will have a personal smartphone they can use remotely, but you know that business calls are better conducted on a private line that provides more reliable call quality. You need your team to be efficient and professional as quickly as possible. How will you ensure you have a phone system for the new remote employees that will enable them to be productive right away? You know your current on-premise phone system may limit the efficiency and capabilities of your off-site staff. On-Premise Phone Systems May Limit Remote Employees Generally, the benefits of on-premise phone systems are about reliability, caller identification, and voicemail functionality. Businesses that have onsite systems want to maintain control of their technology, have concerns about data privacy and often have international locations. Modern cloud phones systems, on the other hand, allow employees (including remote workers) to:
Is a Cloud Phone System the Solution? With cloud-based VoIP technology, you no longer have to deal with these challenges. Onboarding a new remote employee is as simple as purchasing a phone, connecting it to the Internet and downloading some software. Gone are the added setup, management, maintenance costs and headaches. Your employees have immediate access to the exact same functionality as your on-site employees. And perhaps best of all, cloud phone providers ensure your phone system is constantly upgraded and protected. All these changes provide your company improved uptime, call reliability and customer experience. In a word, a cloud-based phone system just makes things simpler. If you’re looking for a more effective way to sync remote workers to your company’s network, then you may want to consider moving to the cloud. Your remote employees — and their customers — will thank you for it. If you’d like to examine cloud phone system options for your company, contact us and let’s determine what makes the most sense for your company’s situation. If you make money using the phone, then your phone system needs to be a business enabler, not an inhibiter. It needs to differentiate your business from your competition. Your prospects must be able to reach you in a timely manner. Your customers need to find you wherever you are, at the front desk, in a meeting or outside the office. In short, your phone system needs to work for you, not against you. Your business communications system needs to ensure you have the best tools that will help you do a better job with your customer…today and tomorrow. Below are two ways an onsite phone system can improve the customer experience by improving flexibility and enhancing reachability. Improving flexibility through work groups When a customer or prospect calls your company and the phone rings endlessly without being picked up, or it goes to a general voicemail box, they may question how capable your business is. Since today’s customers have higher expectations than ever before, you want to give the impression to current and potential customers that you can serve them the way they want to be served, regardless of whether your employees are in the office or working remotely. A ShoreTel Connect ONSITE phone system allows you to improve your business’s flexibility by routing calls using the power of work groups. Here’s how: Work groups can be created to respond to what’s happening in your business. For example, you might have a new advertising campaign and you need more people ready to answer the phone. Perhaps there are changing weather conditions and you need to re-route how support is handled. Or you want to better enable how calls are routed to a call center team and establish a top-down or longest idle calling pattern so your best salesperson or available call center consultant gets the next call. You may even have a business that requires seasonal considerations like greetings or auto attendance during high call volumes. Using work groups gives you speed and flexibility in how you organize your employees and respond to your customers, allowing you to deliver a consistent level of service no matter the dynamics taking place in your business. Enhancing Reachability for Mobile Employees Today’s business reality is such that if you aren’t reachable and you aren’t set up to respond to your customers, then your customers will go elsewhere. Reachability is how easy it is for a customer or prospect to locate you or your team. It’s not just how long it takes to reach them, but how easily a customer can access them. Employees are no longer tied to an office or a desk phone. You need to make sure your staff has a mobile office with them. A ShoreTel Connect ONSITE phone system can help your employees be more reachable by allowing your phone to find you or key staff members wherever they are. ShoreTel Connect ONSITE gives you the ability to use external assignment rules that have phones ring wherever an employee is – whether that’s in a meeting, traveling or at a client site. It can even mean having several phones ring at the same time, say, your desk and cell phone ringing simultaneously. World-class phone systems using unified communications allow you to implement tools making you and your team more accessible through Microsoft Outlook integration, and desktop sharing and mobility features like find me/follow me. These basic communication and collaboration tools are a must in today’s business environment and critical for future business success. Such capabilities enable your staff to be reachable no matter where employees are located or what type of technology may come next. That’s a differentiator your customers will appreciate. Creating a Better Customer Experience You pride yourself on how you serve your customers. If your current phone system isn’t helping you be flexible and reachable, then it might be inhibiting your business – not enabling it.
It’s time to consider how your business communications can help you even better serve your customers…now and in the future. If you’d like to evaluate how your phone system can be a business enabler by implementing ShoreTel Connect ONSITE, email us at info@btxchange.com or give us a call at (408) 374-8727. Remember the days when the only way you could empower your team to collaborate was in face-to-face meetings that required time and travel that were planned far in advance? That brings up not-so-fond memories of securing landlines, delayed flights, flip charts, windowless meeting rooms and maybe even slide projectors! Of course in today’s business world, this is an outdated and impractical proposition. You and your team are mobile, on demand. Your mobility requires today’s flexible business communication tools that enable quick teamwork to solve business problems. But how do you create collaboration when you and your staff may be located all over the state, or even the country? Communication Tools that Drive Collaboration It all depends on the tools you are using to gather team members together to share information, plan and innovate. Many businesses lack the communication equipment their teams need to work together effectively. In today’s business world, your employees access information from their desks, laptops, cell phones and a variety of other devices and locations. To share that information they use email or separate web applications that require additional steps to use. Even with web conferencing, the personal cell phones that remote employees rely on may not be connected to the company’s main phone system to join a conversation. Unfortunately, your current phone system may be creating limitations for you and your team. It’s drastically more difficult for remote employees to access company systems for conferencing and voicemail with personal landlines and cell phones. And since it doesn’t make business sense to fund frequent company meetings, you need another way to encourage employees to work together whenever and wherever they need. Thankfully, there’s a relatively simple way to solve that problem: Implementing a company-owned communication system that’s flexible, mobile, and collaborative. Enable Mobile Employees with Functional and Professional Tools A unified communication system encourages collaboration. Team members receive company calls, access corporate voicemail, and setup virtual conferences from a basic Internet connection.
It’s one click to start a meeting or share a document. No more separate emails, links and phone numbers. It just happens in the flow of the conversation. Traditional phone systems, on the other hand, often hinder collaboration because of their limited mobile capability. This results in lost money, lost productivity and lost opportunities. To top it off, you may be paying more in the form of multiple carriers and disparate systems. Cloud communication systems give you a continuous connection to your partners, co-workers, customers and suppliers from almost any location your employees are working. Your teams can collaborate as easily from the road as they can from the office. Forget about fragmented conference calls and impersonal emails. In today’s business environment, it just makes sense to bring teams together using cloud technology. 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 info@btxchange.com. Stay tuned for all the latest BTX news you can use at the BTX blog! We'll be sharing tips and tricks, product reviews, specials and promotions, and so much more! While you're at it, get plugged into all things VoIP on social media by following us on Twitter and LinkedIn!
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