Though people have more choices for contacting each other than ever, voice calls remain popular. In fact, customers prefer calling local companies by phone over any other channel, making a business phone service essential.
Still, smaller companies constantly fight cash flow challenges and may hold off setting up a business phone system. Since practically everyone always has a phone on them anyway, owners might encourage employees to use personal lines instead.
Find out why you likely need a business line and how it helps your company thrive.
Key Takeaways:
- A business phone service is superior to using personal phones in most ways.
- Business phones help you enhance the customer experience, separate business communications from personal ones, and manage internal communications.
- Business phones offer greater reliability and flexibility than personal lines.
- Top business phone systems provide key features, such as call recording, transcriptions, interactive voice response, softphones, app integrations, and vanity numbers.
A Business Phone Service Is Much Better Than Using Personal Lines
A dedicated business phone service outperforms personal phones for the following reasons.
Improve the Customer Experience
You can offer a better experience to your customers with a business phone service. Cell phone lines won’t have the features that allow customers to access self-service or reach another team member quickly when you’re unavailable.
Enhance Your Branding
You’ll likely hesitate to put your personal number online or share it freely with everyone, which cuts down on your ability to promote your brand. You can post your business number on the web with confidence so that customers can easily find you.
A separate line helps you look more professional and can eliminate doubts that you’re running a legitimate operation. You can even create a vanity number that is easy for customers to remember and serves as a great branding tool.
Gain Greater Reliability and Flexibility
Individual and family cell phone lines do not have business needs as their focus. Any features you might need, such as an auto attendant or integration with business software, would likely be costly and difficult to implement.
A business phone service offers various backup features and security that personal phone lines don’t need to worry about. You’re also able to share and add lines for team members without much hassle.
Additionally, the top business phone solutions run their service over the internet. You can set up office lines anywhere and easily move them to a new location if you expand or relocate.
Keep Your Personal and Business Communications Separate
Preserving a healthy work-life balance is more vital than ever. With a separate number for your business, you’ll know when a call is personal or professional. Needy customers or aggressive salespeople won’t have access to your personal phone 24/7.
You also don’t have to worry about whether changing your personal number will create problems for your business.
Maintain Greater Control Over Business Communications
The preceding problems compound when you have employees. If someone leaves the company or changes numbers, you have to do tons of legwork to update clients and other associates.
Your communications are also a vital part of your productivity. When employees only use their own phones, you surrender your ability to oversee their activities. A business phone service allows you to monitor everything and preserve vital or sensitive data for compliance or legal requirements.
A Top Business Phone Service Has Features That Enhance Your Company
How can a business phone service offer all of the preceding benefits? Look for the following features.
Call Records, Transcription, and Archives
It’s become commonplace to hear a greeting that reminds you that a call may have someone “monitor it for quality assurance purposes.“ A vital feature of business phone services is automatic call recording.
Archiving communications gives you access to them later for those key details you may need. You can also review agent performance for training and evaluations.
Interactive Voice Response
Customers hate to hear a phone ring endlessly with no response or hear that the mailbox is full. IVR quickly answers the phone and attends to your callers.
IVR also lets you set up a menu system that enables callers to determine who they would like to speak to or what self-service features they would like to access. For example, a customer might want to:
- Check an account balance
- Change a password
- Look up information
- Make a payment
- Leave a message
With IVR, you can ensure your callers can take care of routine issues and sense that you’re caring for their needs.
Softphones With Cloud Capabilities
Your business phone service gives your team the ultimate flexibility by letting everyone install apps on their own devices that connect them to the company’s secure communications solution. An employee can easily answer calls on a company-owned or personal smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer.
This softphone capability means you don’t have to purchase physical hardware, saving you money. Also, your unified communications solution runs through the cloud, so you don’t have to purchase extensive infrastructure. The simplicity lets you set up a solution in a matter of days.
Productivity App Integrations
When your team uses various software to manage data and enhance customer service, you can import details from communications seamlessly into those apps with integrations. A top business phone service syncs with common productivity programs and also uses APIs so you can connect your custom apps.
Setting Up a Business Phone Service Is Simple With Intermedia Unite
Setting up a separate business line is more convenient than ever, and Intermedia makes it easy with outstanding onboarding and support. Contact our team to learn more about Intermedia Unite, a business phone service offering all the necessary features.
Mariel Santos
Mariel Santos is the Director of Marketing Communications at Intermedia
May 1, 2023
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