Are you getting the most out of your PBX phone system? Or do you feel you may be overlooking or underutilizing your VoIP phone system? The following article explores various steps you can take to support PBX users to better leverage and optimize your business phone solution.
Understanding Your PBX Phone System
Many PBX system users are using just a handful of their phone system’s features. Users are simply not aware they exist and how to use them. Business owners and managers often should remind themselves why they have reached for a VoIP-powered PBX system in the first place. Zadarma, one of the leading global VoIP providers, offers a free PBX system.
This operates by using either VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) or via analog or digital phone lines. With a PBX phone system in place, you can be offered multiple lines, across multiple locations. Any VoIP system allows users to communicate with one another over the phone via internal lines, making and receiving external calls.
Beyond its call capability, a PBX will often provide a wide variety of features such as call forwarding, call transfer, call queuing, call back, auto-attendant, and voicemail to allow you to optimize your call handling strategy and processes. Some VoIP providers will offer the majority of the additional PBX features for free.
Making the most of your VoIP phone system features
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Call Routing, Call Forwarding & Call Transfer
It is highly advisable to spend some time setting up a call routing, forwarding, and transfer process for your internal team to follow. Features such as call routing provide customer teams with the ability to send inbound calls to specific departments or individuals based on pre-set criteria. Call forwarding redirects calls to another phone number often occurring when they are traveling, or users can’t get to the phone.
The VoIP phone system will forward calls to co-workers or a voice mailbox. Too often, companies fail to consider other call forwarding options beyond voicemail, which presents a sense of inefficiency and will disappoint your customer’s experience. Call transfer works in a similar way to forwarding, with the feature allowing call handlers to transfer the caller to another agent or department very quickly.
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Virtual Attendant (IVR)
One of the most important features of a PBX system is the automated attendant. The automated attendant provides a virtual receptionist capability. This allows you to direct calls to the different departments, voice mailboxes, and extensions on your PBX network. If you spend some focused time on programming your auto attendant, then it will provide your business with the ability to manage a high volume of calls without the need to hire more employees to answer phone calls.
When setting up your virtual attendant or IVR it is important to remember that callers often are not prepared to wait and go through too many call-directing menus. They will be often disappointed if they reach a voicemail. Therefore, when setting up your IVR, make sure you redirect your callers as quickly as possible.
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Call Recording and Call Analytics
Call recording is a highly useful feature to allows you to better understand your customer. Call recording is a feature that is often free to utilize through a VoIP phone system. Call handlers and managers can analyze call recordings, looking back over calls that have occurred. These features help control your call operators and help analyze the call performance.
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Call Tracking
Call tracking is an underutilized VoIP PBX phone system feature. Most providers will offer call tracking within their standard package. Call tracking is a way to measure and analyze call voice data, allowing you to improve your call handlers’ performance and efficiency and customer satisfaction rates. You can track the volume of calls around peak periods as well as call duration. This data allows you to better prepare call handlers around peak periods as well.
There are often two types of call tracking. Static call tracking where VoIP features can be used to forward calls based on the tracking. For instance, when a prospective customer calls a tracked phone number, it is forwarded to your main business phone line number. This allows you to track and collect call metrics around how many calls each campaign generates.
Then, there is dynamic call tracking. Dynamic numbers are unique phone numbers that are generated instantly. They are often used to collect call metrics to track website visitors, who call the number displayed on your website or can be used to route calls to different call centers.
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Call Holding and Call Back
Being put on hold is one of the most frustrating complaints for customers. Most PBX phone systems offer the ability to play waiting music and estimated wait times to keep customers on hold engaged. It is vitally important that when you set up your call holding rules you test the system to ensure the customer user experience is as customer friendly and reassuring as possible when callers are placed on hold. Call-back widgets are often offered through VoIP phone systems but are underutilized.
You can usually add a form on your website, where a prospective customer can enter their contact details and suggest a convenient time when they wish to be called back. Once the form has been submitted, your call agent will be notified, through the phone system, to make the call back to the prospective customers.
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Integration with your CRM and integration with other systems
VoIP CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integrations allow you to automatically record call history and centralize customer data. This data includes phone numbers, call duration, and hold times as well as provides a record of the call conversation (what was said and agreed).
VoIP providers will offer different API integrations. Zadarma, mentioned earlier, provides an entire CRM system, free of charge to all PBX users. The Teamsale CRM allows you to attach call recordings to customers’ CRM profiles and make calls directly through the CRM system, centralizing your customer conversations.
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Call Monitoring, Call Barge & Whisper Modes
Call Monitoring, Call Barging, and Whispering Modes are a suite of features offered within a cloud PBX (Private Branch Exchange). These are advanced telephony features that are not often leveraged enough by phone system users. Call Monitoring, Call Barge, and Whisper Modes are features offered for free by Zadarma. They are most useful when you are looking to maintain a high level of customer service even during peak call times.
Call barging enables additional call center agents to drop into live calls to speak with both the inbound caller as well as the call agent. Senior managers can drop into calls when negative phrases are expressed and a customer care team needs a third party for support or intervention. Agents can ask a supervisor to drop into a call or senior managers can drop in unannounced. Whisper modes are a feature that allows another call agent to enter an ongoing call between two other parties, however, in this instance, only the supervisor can hear what is being said on the call with the customer.
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Voicemail
All VoIP phone systems will have the capability to set up a voicemail. It is always best to customize this to your business and your customer target. Most VoIP phone systems will also offer welcome messages that can be used, so worst case, you can leverage the automated voicemail that is set up as an intermediary solution.
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Call Analytics
The more sophisticated PBX VoIP phone system providers will have call analytics features and reporting tools. This allows you to leverage all the call data points and centralize this into a single dashboard or statistical report. Zadarma offers a user-friendly call reporting feature whereby you can set up reporting rules to pull various call scenarios. This allows business owners to interrogate the incoming and external call data to ensure they can learn and optimize the call handling performance.
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Audio and Video Conferencing Calling
Often the video conferencing capability within VoIP PBX phone systems gets missed. Video or conference call is one of the more powerful features of a PBX as it provides you with the ability to communicate with a large number of people in real time over the phone. A virtual call is far more effective than a faceless phone-based call. Zadarma offers a free video-conferencing capability to all PBX registered users. Free video conferencing allows you to forget about time-consuming and complicated conferencing solutions as the video calling function is well integrated into the PBX and CRM systems. Its simplicity provides for easy use.
To set up a video call, only one participant is required to register. You then share the link provided with the attendees to your virtual meeting and you can commence the video call. This video conferencing capability provides video and audio encryption, instant access from any device, easy screen sharing, and messaging to allow for file sharing. Virtual face-to-face communication builds trusted customer relationships and engagement.
In conclusion
Customization and integration of your PBX system are highly advised. To ensure your VoIP-powered PBX phone system performs at its best, it is vitally important to customize your phone system and communication strategy to meet your business and customer needs. This does not have to be extensive customization but more simply ensuring you configure call attendant menus, activate on-hold messaging as well, and set up call routing rules and a customized answer phone recording.
Furthermore, it is wise to look at how you can integrate your PBX phone system with your other technical systems. For instance, you can integrate Microsoft Teams or a third-party CRM. That said, too many communication systems in place can become overwhelming, and you’re at risk of missing important messages or not picking up on crucial information. VoIP phone systems have a variety of free tools and features that limit the need for too many additional technical systems. A VoIP phone system provides a unified communication solution, decreasing the need for further technical integration.
Most VoIP phone systems take minutes to set up, however, it is important to work through the PBX phone system feature list to ensure you have set up each feature’s capabilities, bespoke to your business. Customization and integration will help to streamline your internal call process. This will ensure you accelerate your call handling cadence providing significant productivity gains and a competitive edge.
