How Hosted Telephony Is Improving Customer Communications

Consistency is key to creating a great customer experience and a hosted phone system can help.

Customers love a consistent, positive service experience.

92% of consumers in the UK have switched supplier at least once in the last year because of poor customer service. – NewVoiceMedia.

But how can your telecoms system help support a consistent service delivery?

Give your customers control

Consumers hate voicemail:

75% of purchasers faced with an automated telephone system will not leave a voicemail. 85% of those people never call back.

Answer-4u research

Many hosted phone systems have an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) feature.

A tailored IVR is an excellent way to:

› Allow customers to route their own calls to the correct departments;
› Offer an alternative to voicemail that provides an automated message offering other contact methods;
› Reduce waiting times and call queue lengths.

Never miss a call

A hosted phone system also allows for intelligent call routing:

› Incoming calls can be routed to the next available extension or hunt group
› Calls can be diverted or twinned with employee smartphones to be answered away from their desks
› Call plans can be created to route calls in different circumstances e.g. bank holidays or unexpected office closures

Using intelligent routing, customers can be sure of speaking to the right person, every time.

Drive internal efficiencies

Many hosted phone systems will also offer a ‘receptionist console’ that can offer enhanced call management features for employees controlling the majority of inbound calls to your business.

Using this console operators can:

› Utilise softphone capabilities to quickly and easily route calls to destinations via their desktop;
› Gain a complete view of the entire company network to assess resource availability;
› Direct calls to branch offices or offsite extensions;
› Divert calls to free extensions.

Customer calls can be routed to their correct destinations quickly and easily, minimising call abandonment rates, improving customer service delivery and ensuring consistency, particularly for businesses with multiple office locations.

Takeaways:

A hosted phone system can help your business to deliver a consistent customer service experience by:

› Giving customers greater control over their own support experience;
› Automating call routing to connect calls to real people wherever possible;
› Enabling more efficient manual routing to ensure experiences are consistent across every site.