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5 Ways to Upgrade Your Business Phone System

If you haven’t made any changes to your telephone system in the past decade or so, there is a good chance it is not meeting your business’s communication needs. Today’s business phone systems come in various configurations and offer a wide range of benefits. Upgrading to a phone system that matches your business size and mode of operation can help increase efficiency and productivity within your workforce. Here are a few easy ways to upgrade your phone system:
  1. Improve call handling
Features such as call display, three-way calling, automated attendants during off-hours, call transfer, and conference calling help ensure all calls are tracked and answered by the right person in the office. This can have a direct positive impact on sales and bolster client relationships. An all-inclusive telephone service company such as Call Cowboy is the way to go if you want a hassle-free upgrade for your small business.
  1. Consider call reporting capabilities
The call reporting capabilities in some phone systems provide in-depth information and statistics that can improve your business’s customer service and facilitate sales growth. Oftentimes, these systems will come with novice-friendly dashboards that give you access to real-time reporting and a view of the flow of calls in and out of your business. This provides critical insights into performance and usage metrics, which will come in handy when making management calls on staff and operations.
  1. Integrate it into a CRM
Pairing phone systems with customer relationship management systems is something giant companies have been doing for decades. Adopting it for your business can enhance teamwork in the workplace and speed up internal processes. Most contemporary phone systems are also equipped with intercom and paging capabilities, which further foster internal communications.
  1. Get a system with the “presence” feature
The “presence” feature in advanced business phone systems lets employees know who is occupied and who is available to answer phone calls. This feature ensures callers are not put on hold for too long, and only employees who are not occupied are called upon to answer a call.

Call routing or automatic call distribution is another feature that offers similar capabilities. It allows you to route calls depending on the department the caller is targeting. For instance, a billing-related call will be automatically directed to the billing department. Such systems also allow you to calibrate actions, such that the call is, again, automatically routed to another employee or department if the first point of contact can’t be reached.
  1. Consider a phone system with visual voicemail
Old phone systems typically place voicemails in a pile and do not offer any filter-down capabilities. To listen to a specific message, you have to find it manually and by guessing. Visual voicemail provides you with an interface from where you can identify the message you are looking for in an instant.

Endnote
Your old phone system is obsolete and could be the reason you are struggling to catch up with your competition. These five upgrades can help you simplify communications within your workforce and between your business and your customers.