Our digital world is constantly evolving – but for many companies, telephony systems are significantly behind the digital evolution that’s redefining the way we use our computer systems.
In reality, they two can grow together, hand-in-hand – and now traditional telephony systems are starting to show their age, it could be the right time for you to consider the benefits ‘hosted voice’ telephony systems could bring your company.
Here, we’ll look at what hosted voice actually is – and delve into some of the benefits that a hosted voice system could bring to your business – whether you’re a small startup, or a large enterprise.
What is hosted voice?
To get an understanding of what a hosted voice system is, it’s worth considering what traditional telephone systems look like.
Analogue systems have supported businesses for a long time. They’re based around copper lines and have a small handful of features – although generally not more than the ‘hold’, ‘mute’, redial’, ‘speed dial’ and ‘forward’ functions.
Analogue systems are almost always based in the location of the business they serve – and they require an engineer when there’s a call for maintenance, upgrades or repairs.
Of course, digital systems have also been around for a significant amount of time. They expand the functionality of analogue systems (adding hold functions, VoIP integration and some customer interface) but are still generally based at your business location – again requiring ‘hands on’ support when upgrades and maintenance are needed.
Hosted voice solutions take your telephony completely off-site. Rather than being physical systems that rely on physical equipment, they’re cloud based – and therefore require nothing more than your existing network infrastructure to deliver a huge range of voice options to your end-user devices. Hosted voice packages all of your telephony requirements into one, neatly delivered service, usually provided by a communications company specialising in managed networking.
What are the benefits of hosted voice?
A hosted telephony system is likely to have a huge number of benefits over more traditional alternatives, including:
Security
Don’t be fooled into thinking that a system residing on your site offers you great security. In actual fact, the security of hosted system is far greater – and the reason relates to the dedicated security that’s wrapped around it.
The company handling your hosted system will lock it down with the same level of security that’s keeping your entire network safe – and with very limited human interaction with the admin part of the system, that security is likely to make your telephone system one of the most bullet-proof parts of your business.
Disaster recovery
Removing your hardware from your site makes a lot of sense from a disaster recover point of view. Should anything untoward happen to your business – a hosted system will remain entirely unaffected – instead, sitting patiently waiting in the cloud, ready to help you pick up where you left off.
Call quality
There’s no doubting the call quality of traditional, copper based, telephone lines – but sadly, the same cannot be said about the integration of VoIP calls, especially if your network isn’t ideally configured to carry them.
With hosted voice services, call quality is absolutely key to the set up – so the right company will make sure your network is designed to deliver exceptional quality at all times.
Customer service
A customer won’t know what type of call service they’re dialing in on will they? Well, they might not know the technicalities – but customer satisfaction services show that they almost universally prefer the features that hosted voice provides.
With traditional services, your customers can, at best, select some call routing options with the number pad. With hosted voice – you can give customers access to a world of automated information before they need to talk to one of your end users. If they do need to access one of your team, any waiting time can be used to automate security clearance or route their call to exactly the right people.
With such smart routing of calls, the perception that call wait time is reduced – and increased efficiency when the call is handled, it’s no wonder hosted voice is a hit with customers.
Productivity
The same efficiency that is offered to customers when they dial in on a hosted system is also afforded to your end users. When your team pick up the phone, they’re far less likely to need to redirect the call – which leads to greatly reduced handling times.
Of course, there’s a deeper world of automation that comes when hosted voice services are linked to customer relationship management (CRM) systems too. When customer details and interactions are automatically logged and recorded, your team can immediately handle other calls – or switch back to their primary role – greatly increasing productivity.
Cross-device calling
When your telephone communications are delivered through your IT network – any constraints that analogue or hybrid systems imposed are lost – meaning a huge range of networked devices can become your primary means of takings calls.
If you’re leaving the office but expecting a call – simply reroute your system to call through to your mobile cell phone. Want your team to choose the device they take calls on to suit their role? Just configure the system accordingly.
Scalability
Modern businesses often need to scale quickly. Whether you’ve taken a new contract on, a new client, expanded your team – or a host of other possibilities – there are instances when significant paydays will rest on your ability to have infrastructure in place quickly.
With a hosted voice system, your management portal will allow you to grow your system in a few clicks – and at a price that’s predictable. You won’t be left waiting for an engineer to get to your site either – meaning response times that leave nothing to chance.
Expanded features
Additional features for hosted systems generally don’t require any costly hardware add-ons, so, if there’s a business need, adding functionality like voice recognition, remote management, voice-to-text transcription, teleconferencing and much more is simply done – whether that’s by you, or by your hosted voice provider.
