Tag Archives: VOIP

VoIP and Remote Working

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Photo of a person holding a VOIP phone

VoIP will prove to be crucial in ensuring that remote work is smooth and effective.

COVID-19 has taught us many things, and one of them is that staying home is going to be a critical part of the future of work. However, we did not need an unexpected pandemic to realize this. Many businesses and organizations have been grabbing on to the benefits of remote work for a significant period of time.

Before the pandemic turned the world upside down, there were employees already working out of the office, whether it was in the comfort of their own home or other locations.

Communication and Interaction

Many people will feel that remote working will take away a huge chunk of the face to face communication and interaction that occur on a regular basis. Remote working has already proven that it will not eliminate communication or human interaction. While we understand that some forms of communication may not be as impactful as others, your business or organization does not have to suffer when switching to remote working. One of the ways the risks you are worried about can be mitigated is by using VoIP services.

VoIP(Voice over Internet Protocol)

VoIP systems use internet to transfer data and streamline communication. VoIP has proven to be one of the necessary components of remote working. The data that you may need to transfer through VoIP can range from audio, photos, videos, and documents. You have likely already used VoIP services, but you were not aware.

Telecommunications is made possible through VoIP services. When you are able to connect workers in real time, you will be able to reduce the chances of communication being lost while everyone is apart. Employees can connect with one another through video calls, and they can communicate face to face without being in the same room.

When you use VoIP, you will also be able to edit files and share them with a few clicks of your mouse. There are also systems that will allow everyone to share their feedback with the files, video files, and audio files that have been shared.

How Can VoIP Make Remote Working Better?

VoIP is used to give employers and their employees a great amount of flexibility in how they assign telephone numbers and use them. VoIP systems make it very easy for remote workers to utilize their VoIP phone number and extension. Since VoIP systems will allow employees to use their phone numbers regardless of where they are in the world, everyone can always be connected.

When VoIP is used, everyone can work together to improve the company’s productivity. You can have the security of know that your company is still able to operate even if all or most of your employees are working remotely. Remote workers are a critical piece to your company’s overall success.

Many VoIP platforms can easily be incorporated into the other tools and systems your business is using, especially audio and video conferencing. When you connect VoIP with your other collaborative tools, it can help reduce the isolated feelings many remote workers will develop once they have been working from home for a significant period of time.

Many businesses and organizations were immediately able to witness the impact of remote working. If your businesses or organizations want to remain competitive and demonstrate to their employees and customers that they are a progressive, while also prioritizing the health and safety of your employees, VoIP is one of the essential tools you will need.

During a global pandemic, VoIP has proven that it can be used to make remote working possible and efficient. To find out more about VoIP solutions and how you can use them to improve your business, contact SystemsNet today.

How VOIP Phones Can Secure Your Post-COVID Business

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Hand of man using ip phone with flying icon of voip services and people connection, voip and telecommunication concept

VOIP technology can ensure a seamless transition for your remote workforce.

Every business on the globe is adapting to the need for post-COVID protocols and business practices. A big part of that is emphasizing remote and online working instead of in-office and face-to-face work. If you have been relying on meetings and phone line calls, or if your business does not yet have an integral phone system, it’s time to rethink your infrastructure.

VOIP offers fully remote phone services tailored to the needs of a modern business. From customer service pools to official office phone numbers, a VOIP system can do anything a traditional business PBX system can do and more. But what do virtual phones have to offer in the post-COVID era? Being able to communicate remotely and set up your offices anywhere in the world with the same numbers will come in handy in the days of remote business. Let’s take a look at some of the key ways that VOIP phones can secure your business in a post-COVID economy.

Turn Office Phones into Home Office Phones

VOIP phone numbers are assigned and accssed based on employee login accounts, not physical phone lines. This means that your employees can take their office phones home with them for remote work.

Clients, customers, and business partners will still be able to find each in-office contact as if they were still in the office, at the same phone numbers and often during the same hours, even though your team has gone home to work remotely in COVID-safety. In fact, companies already equipped with VOIP experienced some of the least shake-up when transitioning to work-at-home policies.

Remain Available During Phone-Line-Cutting  Disasters

One of the overlooked consequences of COVID is lack of preparedness for local disasters. Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wind storms are still happening this year, but services are slower due to the need for extra care when in public. This means that natural disasters that take out phone lines can be devastating for local businesses. Unless, of course, your business runs on internet phones instead.

Rather than being cut off from the rest of the world. your offices and employees at home can continue taking calls even when competition with landlines are out for repairs.

Install Phones in a New Location Without an Installation

Business doesn’t stop either just because there’s a pandemic on the loose. If it’s time to open a new location or relocate your current business, phones are a big part of that. Normally, you would need a team of phone technicians laying wire and installing handsets. Not so, with VOIP. Internet phones can be installed via software.

Simply have your VOIP handsets delivered to the office and you can set them up without the need for strangers to enter your workplace. This allows for no-contact installation and, of course, helping your team set up in home-offices without the need for any serious hardware or technician-led installation as well.

Make Your Company Remote-Friendly and Remote-Accessible

VOIP is the single most remote-friendly business communication software. You can transform a once-limiting phone system into a full-featured and API-ready network for communication. Every member of your team can have their own number, access to a pool, or multiple numbers that can all be accessed from any internet-connected device.

New team members can be easily onboarded. Clients and customers can always find you at the same phone numbers, with or without a landline in between. Allow your team to be remote, your customers to be remote, and even remote onboarding and installation with VOIP phones.

Relocate or Disperse Your Office With the Same Numbers

Finally, remember how easy it is to take one system of numbers and reorganize. You can send an employee to a new office location with the same number. You can put together teams of people with numbers that follow them or assign new numbers just for team use. You can send everyone home, still able to answer their office phones or move to a new location, keeping the phones, access, and numbers all exactly the same.

For remote communication at business class, VOIP is up to the challenge. Contact us today to consult on your business’ VOIP expansion.

VOIP Opens Doors for Professional Parents

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VOIP enables working parents to telecommute while staying home with their kids.

In our society, it’s generally agreed that a fulfilling life is one where you can rock at your career and be a parent at the same time, but sometimes the two do not overlap well. Being a dedicated professional and being a good parent shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, especially since to be a good parent, you usually need to have a good job. The business world, in its own way, has waffled between seeing parents as steady reliable workers or as non-team-players. But the real problem is not that parents are more or less dedicated (everyone has their unique work style), it’s that parents can’t be in two places at once. Until now.

VOIP Parents Can Be in Two Places at Once

Traditionally, professional parents have had to make tough decisions. They have to choose when to come back to work after a new baby is born. They have to choose which spouse takes sick time off work when a child is ill. And for single parents, these choices are even more difficult. But often the problems associated with being a parent aren’t about not being dedicated, they’re about not being able to come into the office. This is exactly why VOIP along with sister-software on the cloud are opening doors for professional parents to finally do the impossible: To stay home with the kids and show up for work at the same time.

VOIP Telecommuting When a Child is Sick

When a child is too sick to go to school, a parent must stay home to take care of them. Especially if they can’t find a babysitter or don’t have a retired grandparent available for the task. The child must be comforted, fed nourishing food, and monitored for ‘go to the hospital’ symptoms. But other than that? The child is home napping in bed or watching cartoons in a semi-awake state and the parent is left… cleaning the house? Balancing their checkbook? Weeding the garden?

Trust us, we know that most parents with a napping child home sick would rather be tearing through their work to-do list. With VOIP, a parent can now set up their home office to take the calls they would usually take and collaborate on their ongoing projects with little to no interruption. They can answer the phone for their regular clients and even participate in staff meetings, all while also responsibly home with their sick child.

VOIP Telecommuting With a New Baby

In fact, even parents of newborns can take advantage of the ability to smoothly telecommute with a VOIP platform. Parents who have just brought home a new infant will go through that hallmark hectic sleep-deprived time when their brains are nothing but adrenalin and oxytocin. But once the baby starts sleeping through the night, often there are several hours a day where nursing mothers and bonding fathers have time to kill. They finally have enough sleep, the baby naps for up to 16 hours a day, and they’re left twiddling their thumbs.

When it’s not yet safe to head to the office but the house is quiet, this is where VOIP closes the gap. Parents who might be out of the office for another several months can come back and start picking up the slack from their understaffed team. They can get re-acquainted with projects making their later come-back easier and they can start re-engaging with clients, taking service calls, and managing projects in a way that is beneficial to both the company and the professional parents. The company gets their team back together early with one telecommuting member, the parent gets to refresh their mind from baby-time, and the team gets a few adorable pictures and video chats of a smiling baby to warm hearts and boost morale.

VOIP is the Key to Work-Life Balance for Professional Parents

Companies are always looking for new ways to improve employee work-life balance while getting more productivity from the team, not less. And VOIP is the key. VOIP unifies your phone and communication systems so that no matter where employees are located, they can jump in as if they were sitting right in the office. And while employers might be thinking “This will be great for business trips and unifying multiple offices,” VOIP is also the solution for parents. So they can clock in hours even when they’re home taking care of a child.

Finally, being a good parent doesn’t have to occasionally clash with being a dedicated professional. Because parents can finally be in two places at once, without even switching their phone number. Contact us today to discover how setting up VOIP for your business can keep your professional parents engaged and happily clocking hours even when family obligation takes them out of the office.

Are VoIP Services Included In Your Customer Support Strategy? (Part 2)

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Business woman on the go using her mobile phone to resolve problems with customer support

Having the right tools is key to delivering the best possible service to customers.

In our previous blog, we talked about VoIP services and other features that can be included in a business’s customer support strategy that can be used to provide high-quality services. There are various other features and components that a business can use in call centers and other customer service areas to provide an overall better experience for customers and clients.

Customer Self-Service

Today, many customers appreciate the opportunity to resolve some of their smaller issues on their own without having to call into a help desk. This is why it is becoming important for businesses and organizations to find customer support software that includes self-service options. A self-service option will give your customers the ability to find answers to some of the common problems they are having with a product or service.

Your customers will be able to obtain control over their problems by searching through the self-service option. When customers are having problems that other customers have been able to resolve, the community feature of a self-service customer portal can be very useful. Customers will be able to share their experience with the problem and share details about how they resolved the problem.

A self-service option will be convenient for the customers because they will be able to attempt to resolve the problem at their own speed and at their own pace.

Mobility

We are all aware of how important mobility has become. Customers love being able to use systems and software that do not require them to be sitting in front of a desktop computer in order to access it. Being able to resolve problems while being active and mobile can be a difference-maker for customers. Many of your customers will use your products and your services while they are out of their homes or out of the office, and they will often use the products and services on a mobile device.

If customers are using their devices to access your products and services, the chances are high that they will likely use the mobile device to reach out to you when they need assistance. This is why we recommend using customer support software that will allow customers to contact you through their mobile devices. If customers are accessing what you offer through a mobile device, they should be able to be assisted by your customer support team or access the self-service portal through that same device.

You will need customer support software that will provide you with the ability to notice which customers may need more assistance than others. Unfortunately, many customers do not receive the help they need and they will not contact the customer support team again because they did not receive the help they needed the first time.

Customers will become upset or distressed due to the lack of support. This is why it is a good idea to use various measurements in your customer support software so you can identify the customers who will need your agents to put in additional time and effort to assist those customers.

Customer support software that reports in real-time will allow you to stay in the loop on everything that is going on within your system. It will be easier for you to understand how impactful the features and components are. You will also be able to identify any weak points. Your customer support software will become a cornerstone of your business or organization. It is important that you look for features that will allow you to provide a high level of customer support for your customers.

There are many things you will need to look for when it comes to customer support software, but we hope the features we have shared with you today can give you a better idea of what you should look for while you are on your way to revamping your customer support system.

What features in customer support software do you think your business can use to provide a better customer experience? Contact us today for more information on VoIP service and help desk services.