By Mr Vidhu Nautiyal, Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer, CloudConnect Communications Pvt. Ltd
Cloud telephony is a cloud-based phone system that works through your internet connection. Every call a business receives gets connected through cloud servers with top-quality services like call recording and IVR. The best part is that there is no need for any expensive equipment and investment, as it offers reliable and scalable communication for all types and sizes of businesses. According to a survey, the Global Cloud Telephony Service Market can reach $40 Billion by 2027, with such huge numbers in the SaaS industry; it will be a clever step to move on to cloud-based services.
For many years companies have been shifting from on-premises solutions to cloud-based services. Upon the pandemic onset, such services have provided relief to several businesses by proving to be a practical step ahead. Companies realize significant benefits of unified communications, including video conferencing, chat, messaging, and file-sharing, but they are still missing out on what any enterprise will attain by integrating telephony with these tools. Moreover, when offices shifted to work from home and hybrid work culture, the prerequisite of cloud telephony for small and medium businesses came into play. This shift encouraged several large enterprises to move to cloud telephony to make their business functions run smoothly.
Here are some of the reasons why one should shift to cloud-based communications by now:
Available on a Customer Call
The most prominent challenge organizations confront while working in a remote culture is being available to their clients. However, sometimes the customer supports personnel who work from home, may face a challenge while attending calls from home. Here cloud solutions become a game changer since they allow for easy call routing to a responsible person, regardless of their location. In addition, employees may access their accounts and handle calls from their mobile phones, allowing them to continue working from home.
Work Seamlessly Together
When a business implements cloud telephony, it develops a proper unified communications and collaboration platform. For example, it allows employees to make a voice call from the same user interface they use to chat, meet, or share files with their co-workers. In other words, staff will not have to switch from one system to another because all of the technologies will operate together effortlessly.
Better Customer Service
During the epidemic, businesses may continue to provide excellent customer service using cloud telephony. It enables the team to take advantage of the virtual receptionist feature to reduce client wait times and provide better service. Furthermore, even if an employee is unavailable, cloud telephony helps calls get answered in time with contextual messaging via IVR.
Increases Employee Productivity
A recent study shows that employees can save upto 30 minutes per day by having better access to voice calling through cloud telephony solutions. This little time saving can boost companies having hundreds or thousands of employees. For example, it has been found that an average company of 5,000 employees can save more than 2 million dollars a year with this increased productivity. It will also be easier to establish connections to external customers and partners, increasing sales and improving company decision-making processes.
Cost-Effective
Cloud Telephony saves time and increases the ease of business, but it can also cut down the technology infrastructure cost. Companies can easily replace their old and expensive on-premises equipment, which is hard to maintain. Apart from the hardware savings, companies can also reduce their expense in terms of employees required to manage the equipment. Finally, cloud telephony – using IP-based calls – can also reduce a company’s international mobile roaming and long-distance bills.
Instant Meetings
Customer satisfaction and retention are the most critical concerns for any firm during a pandemic, but employee efficiency and productivity cannot get overlooked. Maintaining the correct flow of information and sustaining connectivity meetings was vital during the transition from office to remote work culture. Employees are never inaccessible or out of reach because the cloud communication system helps them set up instant meetings via audio and video conferencing.
Control Over Security
As most people work from home and various locations, security is a significant problem. Data can be lost or stolen with malicious intent. Cloud telephony can significantly help since it gives businesses dependable security control. If necessary, it also allows you to meet auditing and compliance needs, such as mandated call-logging. A component of a cloud telephony system is the ability to track employees’ activity and ensure that they do not compromise call data or client experiences.
Cloud-based Contact Centre
Finally, adding cloud telephony to the collaboration platform allows amplifying customer experience with a cloud-based contact centre. With this add-on implementation, a customer looking for support can quickly contact the company through their channel of choice, whether a phone call, text message, email, or chat. In addition, these contact centres have intelligent features like call routing based on availability, skill set or other factors.
Cloud telephony allows focusing on things that matter for a business, i.e. satisfying customers and increasing sales. Eliminating outmoded systems and empowering cloud-based systems can quickly and easily make companies work more effectively.
Installing cloud telephony in unified communication tools includes increased productivity and collaboration, significant cost savings, and feature-rich services that benefit customers and internal teams, all covered under one umbrella. There would be no better time than this to move your business towards cloud telephony.
Recent research has shown that 61% of receptionists are still unable to transfer calls to those working anywhere outside of the office. On the contrary, one of the perks of cloud telephony is that it can be relocated anywhere on an IP network and used in any location.
