The increasing expectations of customers today demand a lot from sales and service teams. The high volume of calls can often no longer be handled, which leads to frustration for both employees and customers. In this article, we want to show you which telephony features you can still use to get the best out of your customer service.
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Table of Contents
1. Call transfer
Like holding and swapping, call forwarding is part of the standard functionality of a telephone system. This in no way diminishes the value of this function. Because you don’t always have the right solution for every problem. If a sales or support employee receives a question to which he does not know the answer, he can simply push the button on the phone to forward the call to the right colleague. This saves the customer a lot of time and forwards him directly to the right contact person.
2. Time-Based Routing
With individual forwarding rules of a cloud telephone system, you decide for yourself when, where and how you want to be reachable for your customers. For example, if you would like to remain available outside of your regular opening hours. So you are guaranteed not to miss a call again.
3. Group call
In addition to time-based routing, a group call function is available for the sales and service team, with which an entire department can be reached via just one phone number. The group call function enables calls to be distributed efficiently and helps to increase a company’s availability. You can choose between different options:
- Standard group (within the group, an incoming call rings for everyone at the same time)
- Hunt group (The employee who has not answered a call for the longest time gets the call delivered)
- Pickup group (group members can flexibly pick up calls from colleagues)
4. IVR
With IVR (Interactive Voice Response), customers can use an interactive voice menu to decide for themselves which department they want to be connected to. For this purpose, the customer is first provided with an announcement with various options, eg “Choose 1 for sales, 2 for support and 3 for marketing”.
The customer then selects the option that suits him by entering a key on the telephone. Depending on the issue, telephone calls can be selected accordingly and forwarded to the right contact person, which saves a lot of time for both the customer and the employee.
Also Read: Improve Your Customer Communication With SMS
5. Busy lamp field
The busy lamp field function provides a good overview of who is currently on the phone using the illuminated lamp fields on the respective telephone. In combination with the pickup function, calls can also be picked up by colleagues at the touch of a button on their own phone. This is particularly useful when employees are not at work, for example. In addition to the good overview that busy lamp fields give a department, the telephony feature can also save a lot of time. Because users who are saved on a function key can be selected directly at the push of a button.
The advantages of the busy lamp field function at a glance:
- Individual assignment of the busy lamp fields
- Always in view who is currently on the phone
- Internal direct dialing by pressing the BLF button
- Pick up calls from other employees to your own phone
6. Call Recording
Recording phone calls allows employees to listen to them again later and access important information without having to write down everything on the phone. Hectic notes during the conversation are a thing of the past, so that agents can now fully concentrate on the customer and his concerns. In addition, call recordings can be used by managers to gain customer insights, identify any weak points and train them specifically in training courses in order to optimize service quality in the long term.
7. Voice Mail
If you want to give the user the opportunity to leave a message outside of your business hours or when all lines are busy. This is possible for each user as well as for groups such as your sales or service team. Incoming messages end up in your event list indefinitely and securely, so no more information is lost.
And best of all, you can easily have messages you have left sent to you as an mp3 by e-mail – this way you are always up to date on the most important things.
8. Queue
Especially for larger companies or call centers, queues are an excellent opportunity to optimize customer service. If all lines are busy, customers are no longer rejected with a busy signal, but simply wait until the next employee is free. The use of skill-based routing is also interesting in connection with queues. Depending on the topic, calls are distributed to call center agents with the highest level of knowledge in this area.
9. Live Call Monitoring & Statistics
Cloud phone systems usually have an intuitive web interface that provides good insight into call traffic. Here you can see accepted, missed and blocked calls at a glance. If these key figures alone are not enough, many VoIP providers also offer call center solutions with which further metrics can be reported, for example on talk time or waiting time.
10. CRM & Ticketing Integration
Whether CRM or ticketing system: The tool landscape in companies is constantly growing and ensures a complex and versatile corporate architecture. In order to accelerate work processes, it is therefore more important than ever to link software together.
11. Native Cellular Integration
Use all telephone system functions at any time, even on the go, and work just as productively as in the office? With a native mobile phone integration, the cell phone easily becomes a mobile extension and offers sales employees a high degree of flexibility. In this way, you can always be reached on an office number, for example for customer appointments or business trips, and you can display the office number for outgoing calls. At the same time, colleagues can even see whether you are on the phone and can easily take over your calls if necessary – for optimal customer service even when you are on the go.
12. From audio to video call
Face-to-face communication has many advantages. Through body language and facial expressions, we can see much faster than in a pure telephone conversation whether a customer really understood what was said – we receive live feedback and can also interpret the emotions better. In this way, understanding and trust can be built up better, which can make a decisive difference in building a relationship and thus also in the sales pitch.