PBXs with hundreds of employees working in the office are slowly becoming a thing of the past. There is an increasing need for flexibility. Employees want to work from home more often, organisations want to be able to scale up more easily and the demand for professional telephone service is increasing. Fortunately, telephone exchanges are modernising along with them to meet these new demands. With online business telephony, there are opportunities to further professionalise service and future-proof the organisation.
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What is a cloud-based phone system?
With business telephony via VoIP, one is no longer dependent on complicated hardware and physical servers. Online business telephony runs entirely in the Cloud. You can set this up in three ways:
1. Forwarding to mobile devices
The first option is to forward all incoming calls to a mobile device. That way, employees can receive calls on their own phones.
2. Forwarding to a softphone device
The term softphone is a contraction of ‘software’ and ‘phone’. So a softphone is software you install on your computer, tablet or smartphone. And which allows you to make outgoing calls, just like you are used to on a desktop phone. A softphone offers more features, such as easy call forwarding, managing the address book and insight into statistics and service levels.
3. Hardphone devices
Finally, you can also choose to connect a physical telephone handset to the cloud-based PBX. For example, a user-friendly Yealink handset.
So with a cloud-based PBX, you no longer need a physical office space where employees carry out their work. It is also possible to combine the above options! Useful if some of your employees work in the office and some at home. With an online telephone exchange, employees can be deployed from anywhere, as long as they have access to a (mobile) phone and a good internet connection. In addition, it is possible to get real-time information on service levels, employee availability remotely and you can manage this directly.
How do modern PBXs facilitate working from home?
As we increasingly work from home or even remotely, the demand for modern business telephony solutions is rising. Cloud-based PBXs are fully equipped to facilitate working from home. Indeed, with cloud-based business telephony you can:
– Simple and automatic call forwarding
Through preset routing and choice menus, customers are immediately directed to an available employee in the right department.
– Easy scaling up
Because employees only have a mobile device and a good internet connection, it is much easier to scale up when needed. When your organisation grows, your PBX easily grows with it.
– Set up a pre-announcement tone
With online business telephony, different ring tones can be set for different incoming calls. This way, employees can easily distinguish who is calling and answer the phone appropriately.
– Update your address book easily
Easily store internal and external addresses that are instantly accessible to everyone. As the address book is stored online, it is synchronised instantly and every employee has an up-to-date address book available.
– Setting an accessibility schedule
Thanks to the smart system, employees can indicate when they are available and when they are not, for example during breaks. Incoming calls are efficiently handled and forwarded to available employees.
– Viewing statistics and making analyses
Since everything is registered online, you can easily read statistics on what the peak moments are, how long callers are on hold on average and how long the calls take. You are presented with the most important data in a handy dashboard.
What numbers are available for business telephony?
Various extensions are available for online business telephony. Depending on your needs, you have several options:
Toll-free number:
An toll-free number is available to customers free of charge. This is a good choice if you want to offer your callers a free service and exude customer-friendliness.
National number:
A national extension is a national number and not bound to one region. Customers call at local rates.
Local phone number:
You can also choose from one or more local extensions to set up. this is especially useful if your business focuses on a specific region.
International number:
If you also want to be accessible to foreign customers, you can set an international extension. This way, you can still be accessible to foreign customers without having an office in that country. It is possible to buy spanish phone number online easily nowadays for example.
Make your organization flexible and future-proof
A VoIP telephone exchange is indispensable if you want to move with the times, scale up or down flexibly and further professionalize and optimize your service.
The virtual call center is a tailor-made solution to serve your customers as efficiently as possible without compromising on customer friendliness and service.