10 essential features for a great business phone system

A cloud-based business phone system does more than making inbound and outbound calls. It can oversee the entire sales funnel of your business from top to down. Generally, a business phone system consists of sophisticated features that handle all the business communications.

Each feature plays a different role while interacting with a customer or client of your business. The features of a proper business phone system are responsible for offering a great customer experience. They help your sales team and marketing team make a solid business strategy for your business’s sales process.

Features make a business phone system more productive, reliable, and efficient. Different systems have different ways of experimenting with features to make them better and different from other platforms. Whatever they do, you must always focus on those features that actually make an impact on the growth of your business. Let’s have a look at the 10 essential features that every business phone system should have.

Top 10 features of business phone systems

1.   Call Analytics

Data and reports are very important when it comes to closing deals in businesses. With call analytics, a call center can easily collect data from all the inbound calls. The data includes different call tracking data like caller’s name, location, phone number, and more. More importantly, it collects intelligence data from conversations. This information includes what the customer likes, product reviews, competitors, queries, etc. That helps your business to make strategies.

Businesses can incorporate call analytics data into their marketing platforms to gain a full picture of the customer journey. The data can not just be utilized to make better campaign budgeting decisions but also to increase conversion rates, target customers with contextual ads, and generate more leads at a cheaper cost per lead.

2.   Intelligent call routing

It is extremely important to distribute incoming calls properly to the right agents so that callers get the best customer service experience. Intelligent call routing allows you to recognize the callers, the reason for the call and connect them with the appropriate agent.

It relies on an agent’s track record, training, and skills to ensure that the caller is routed to the most optimal agent who can give the necessary solutions. Not only this, it requires the caller’s data to calculate the best possible route. These data can include call priority, past inquiries, their details, customer’s value, and customer’s personality stored in your company’s database.

Intelligent routing enhances customer satisfaction by lowering the average session time and reducing the number of times a customer is routed or put on hold. It can assist in personalizing call center software parameters to ensure that every request is sent to the right agent.

3.   CRM integration

CRM software integration is the process of connecting a cloud phone platform to third-party applications. Its main purpose is to move data between your cloud phone platform and third-party applications. It captures accurate data from your business software so you can get a full picture of your company and customers. It results in automatic activities that enhance the operation of your software by removing the need to switch between applications.

CRM software combines information from numerous departments, such as sales, marketing, finance, customer service, etc. All this information is taken into your cloud phone platform that can be accessed from any web-enabled device.

CRM also allows agents to take actions across departments and functions within a business which helps all teams to work together to improve the customer experience. Top business phone systems like KrispCall enable CRM integration with Hubspot, Salesforce, etc.

Email, Calendar, Social Media, Marketing Automation, and Team Communication are some of the important modes of CRM integration. Integrated CRMs can generate clear reports that illustrate the number of leads, deals, and prospects each salesperson has, which assists businesses in keeping track of progress and properly allocate resources.

4.   Interactive Voice Response

Interactive Voice Response is a form of the automated phone system. It enables inbound callers to obtain information through a voice response system that plays pre-recorded messages rather than speaking with an agent. It provides menu options to direct the phone call to specified departments or agents via touch-tone keypad selection or speech recognition.

IVR systems play a major role in improving customer satisfaction. It also boosts call center efficiency and KPIs. An efficient interactive voice response system can assist customers in finding the right answers and easily move around in the menu. This can help a lot, especially when there is high call traffic.

When a customer requires or requests to speak with a person, IVR technology can help route calls to the right call center agent to handle their inquiry promptly and efficiently. When calls are routed to agents, the chances of the caller being routed to the incorrect agent or department are greatly reduced.

5.   SIP trucking

Internet connection is the first requirement for any cloud-based business phone system. This is where SIP trucking comes into action. Session Initiation Protocol or SIP is an application layer protocol that allows you to run your phone system via the internet rather than traditional phone lines. Trunking is the foundation of phone lines that connects to a telephone network. SIP Trunks uses VoIP technology so that it can connect on-premise phone systems to the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

Every SIP truck has a number of different channels known as SIP channels. The ability to support incoming and outgoing calls is referred to as a SIP channel. They are essentially virtual phone lines. The number of channels you require is determined by the number of simultaneous calls your company makes or gets.

6.   Number Porting

Suppose you’re considering making a permanent switch from a traditional phone service to a cloud-based business phone system using your existing number. For such cases, the number porting feature can come in handy. Number porting is the general process of shifting an already existing phone number to the cloud-based phone system. You must notify your phone service provider and the cloud telephone service provider for porting your existing phone number.

You will have to do some paperwork, and it probably takes about 1-4 weeks to port your phone number. The cloud telephone service provider will supply you with a temporary virtual phone number until the porting is incomplete. The incoming calls in your phone number will be forwarded to your temporary one. So that you don’t have to wait to take benefits of cloud-based phone services. Your physical phone number (SIM number) will turn into a virtual phone number after the porting is completed. After this, your contract with your previous phone service provider will be terminated.

7.   Click-to-call

You are getting visitors to your business website but still are not able to convert them into your potential leads. This is a big problem for many businesses because your visitors can’t find a way to communicate with you quickly and easily. The solution for this problem is Click-to-call.

The click-to-dial widget is a web and mobile-based solution that automatically dials a phone number when you click on it. It is usually a button placed on a company’s website. It allows visitors on your website to directly communicate with the customer service representative of your company.

On some websites with the Click-to-dial widget, you may be required to provide your phone number. Once you provide your phone number, you will receive a call from the sales team.

8.   Voicemail

Voicemail has always been an important asset for leaving messages on the phone when a call is unattended. From traditional phone systems to cloud-based business phone systems, it has improved a lot and has always been a reliable feature. A voicemail is a digitally saved voice message left by a caller for the intended receiver to retrieve at a later time.

You can easily retrieve voicemails through phone, desktop, email, and other communications devices. Its interface allows us to select, play, and manage messages. The sender of the voicemail might opt to have the message played or transmitted utilizing delivery features. Additional alerting options are available that notify voicemail recipients of unanswered messages.

9.   Autodialer

It’s really time-consuming and frustrating to dial hundreds and thousands of phone numbers. With an autodialer, you won’t have to feel that. Every business has its phone number list of customers and potential leads. An auto-dialer feature is an outbound dialer that enables agents to automatically dial the preset list of phone numbers.

Autodialer allows you to save a significant amount of time at work. It allows you to connect a consumer to a live agent after the customer’s call has been settled. As a result, productivity and efficiency are at an all-time high. Using an auto-dialer, you can assign calls to different agents based on particular factors.

10.  Call forwarding

As simple as it sounds, call forwarding is a very important feature in any phone system. Call forwarding is a VoIP feature that allows customers to redirect incoming calls to another number or service. “Call transfer” is another term for call forwarding.

Several phone systems now have call forwarding as a standard function. Whether your organization handles all calls through one phone line or has a separate call center, it may substantially improve how you manage all of your calls.

Businesses want the phone call to forward to another phone number when one phone number is hard to reach.  This ensures that consumers receive fast responses and experience better customer service.  It enhances the customer’s phone interaction experience to the greatest extent possible.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that every feature of the business phone system is necessary to manage the heavy calling hours of your business. From making calls, collecting customers’ information, automating the sales funnel, to closing deals, they are a complete package to craft a successful business. Not all business phone systems have the same features, so do deep research before choosing a business phone system. Don’t forget to compare them with each other. After all, the future of your business depends on them.

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