The telecommunication’s industry moves fast with new products and services hitting the market every day. Keeping up with all these new technologies can be difficult, even for the most advanced businesses, but like with most things in business you have to move with the market or worry about being left behind.
Because of this, here at Tech IP we thought it would helpful to businesses if we put together a list of just a few of the most popular current telephone technologies on the market in order to help you improve the way your telephone system works for you: –
- Voice mail – Voicemail systems make a phone system more flexible by allowing information and messages to pass between users when they may not be available. A lot of people use business voice mail for personal answerphones and staff phones to reduce the amount of lost messages, saves time on taking and distributing messages and makes the user more responsible for managing their own messages using the technology. It is important to note however that voice mail systems can also deliver the following technologies which can improve the efficiency of your telephone system: –
- Greeting messages – if you greet your callers on a 1 ring cycle, thanking them for calling and then confirm their call will be answered shortly, it is proven that the caller will wait longer before hanging up as opposed to just hanging up.
- Auto attendant – this technology combines the above greeting message whilst also providing options for the caller to select different departments by pressing a number or holding for the reception.
- Call queue announcements – This technology interrupts your caller waiting on the line with a message such as “your call is in a queue and will be answered shortly” again a proven way to reduce hang ups.
- Off – Site intelligent routing platforms – these “cloud” based systems offer you the ability to manage your incoming calls more effectively without having to buy the system yourself. This can be good as you have no upfront costs and is a good way to increase the coverage paths of incoming calls being answered, yet still in a professional way. Features such as the ability to answer or queue callers with announcements and route callers to multiple locations at the same time are just a couple of the advantages of using “cloud”.
- Voice Over IP telephones – with voice over IP telephones you can easily extend your office phones out to remote locations so if you or your staff work from home or are at different offices, it gives you more options to ensure you have someone always available to take the calls quickly.
- Call Logging – a call logging system can help you make improvements in your business by providing you with the facts about what is happening with every call that you make or receive. For example a call logging system can tell you how many calls a day you receive, what your average answer times are, how many minutes a day your callers can’t get through and how many callers are hanging up before being answered. Once you have the facts about what is happening right now, you can start to implement changes and monitor the results clearly.
- Computer telephone integration – By connecting your telephone on your desk, it enables you out dialling from your database by just clicking a button, alternatively you can set your database to automatically screen pop your caller contact record when the phone starts ringing and your PC recognises the number.
- Trunk to trunk Transfer – this feature allows to answer a call in the office and then transfer the call to any number including external numbers outside of the office.
- Call recording – when it comes to staff training or dispute resolution, call recording can prove to be a very effective technology to improve customer service levels quickly.
- Mobility twinning – This feature simply makes your mobile phone ring with calls that appear on your desk phone giving you the options to pick up the calls when you are not at your desk.
There are many more technologies which may prove useful to you when looking to improve your telephone system. If you would like advise on which of these technologies would work best for you then please do contact us on 0800 50 533 50, alternatively you can download our telephone systems buyers guide as useful reference material or even run a quick quote to obtain a budget cost for a new telephone system in less than 60 seconds by clicking here.
