Every business understands the importance of communication. While many channels exist for contacting others, phone systems remain the most vital.
For that reason, you need to get the best you can. Upgrading to a cloud phone service can provide your company with substantial benefits over analog phone connections.
Get ready to ditch your legacy phone system and gain considerable advantages that help your brand grow without communication barriers.
Key Takeaways:
- A cloud phone service runs your business phone lines through superior internet connections.
- The benefits of switching to cloud phones include lower costs, advanced features, greater customization, and easier scalability.
- Cloud phones can also support business continuity, enhance the customer experience, improve productivity, and protect against spam.
- Online phone services are extremely reliable and secure.
What Is a Cloud Phone Service?
A cloud phone service works differently than on-premise solutions. The technology facilitates calls by leveraging the internet instead of traditional phone lines.
One critical distinction relates to mobility. If you still have a legacy phone system, then it ties employees to your location. The “plain old telephone service” is simply not functional outside your office.
On the other hand, a cloud phone service uses Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP converts audio to a high-quality digital signal, allowing you to make calls from a wired phone, computer, or mobile device.
What Benefits Can You Expect with Cloud-Based Platforms?
Making the shift to a cloud-based platform doesn’t have to be complex. The switch can be seamless and worry-free with the right provider. Once you make the transition, here are the benefits you can expect.
Pay Less and Gain More Features
Legacy phone systems are expensive to maintain and manage. They constantly require attention with new hardware and maintenance. Plus, you’ll need IT support to make changes, adding to the costs.
Remove all those capital expenses from your budget by leveraging cloud phone service. You’ll pay a fee that doesn’t vary by usage and never have to worry about the cost to expand or scale. Studies suggest your total savings could be as much as 30% or more!
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Design Your Own Phone System
When moving to the cloud for voice, you have complete control over the setup without limitations. You can select the features you need as they become necessary.
Because you have full autonomy with such a platform, you have the ultimate flexibility. Employees can make or take calls from anywhere with their own devices as long as they have an internet connection.
Scale Easily
Your business is always changing, and you likely have plans to grow. That growth could mean new employees and new offices. Further, with a greater focus on remote work, your company’s structure is probably changing to include work-from-home team members.
Luckily, a cloud phone service can shift, grow, and restructure with you. You have the freedom to add more extensions with a few clicks and enable desired functionalities. Such simple upgrades are practically impossible with outdated phone systems, providing one more reason to make the switch.
Support Business Continuity
Running your business means doing all you can to avoid downtime. If you want to support your business continuity efforts, then moving to the cloud is a must.
A cloud phone service is less likely to falter due to severe weather or other external impacts that can decimate traditional phones. Ensure you can keep your organization connected and communicating with cloud-based platforms.
Enhance the Customer Experience
How frustrated would your customers be if they couldn’t get in touch with you? That’s the risk you run with on-site phone systems.
Being customer-focused should be the mantra for most companies. Often, the key to better customer experiences boils down to accessibility.
Your customers need your support beyond typical office hours, and you can provide that to them with a cloud phone service. Make sure your customers know how much you value them by being easier to reach.
Reduce Worry About Quality or Reliability
If you’ve ever encountered static or low quality from landlines, you understand how this can negatively impact communication. The cloud trumps on-premise systems in quality and reliability, hands down.
That wasn’t necessarily the case years ago. However, modern broadband and fiber connections far outperform copper phone lines.
Not every cloud phone service can boast the highest quality or reliability. Therefore, you need to consider those characteristics when shopping around.
For peace of mind on quality and reliability, ask your provider about their uptime averages. Don’t accept anything less than 99.999%.
Protect Against Spam
All companies have to deal with fraudsters and telemarketers, just as individuals do. It’s an annoyance that can derail employee productivity.
Cloud phone service offers spam caller protection that identifies these types of callers and blocks them if you choose to do so. This protection continues across the entire system, no matter the device. Your remote and on-site team members all benefit from the same protection.
Improve Your Productivity
Cloud phone service can integrate with other business software. With this capability, you can make workflows even more efficient.
For example, customer-facing teams can quickly access customer relationship management software. As a result, agents can rapidly understand and resolve a caller’s situation. Recording and transcribing features make preserving call details much easier.
CRM integration also means callers don’t have to repeat themselves over and over again to different agents. Your customers and agents will be happier because of smoother transactions.
Also, supervisors can more easily access and evaluate previous conversations. The data allows them to enhance training and provide more accurate performance reviews.
Better Security and Compliance
Nearly all data now exists somewhere on the web. Customers and partners want to be sure that their information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
A top cloud phone service provider follows strict protocols to protect your data and conversations. Additionally, cloud phone service makes it easy to comply with regulations for security and privacy.
Are You Ready To Upgrade to a Top Cloud Phone Service?
Make the move to upgrade to a cloud phone service for your telephony needs. You’ll find all the features you need as part of our unified communications platform, Intermedia Unite. Learn more by reviewing features and benefits today.
Kirsten Barta
Kirsten Barta is Sr Marketing Communications Manager at Intermedia
May 23, 2023
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