Business telephony: how can you easily adapt to teleworking?

Basically, you know the heart of the matter: your company cannot do without the telephone to operate, you have a basic functional installation on your premises, and... your employees telework a (large) part of the time!

In fact, the amount of time spent by your team - particularly your sales staff - teleworking has followed the successive waves of restrictive measures over the last 24 months. And as a pragmatic, well-informed surfer with a clear view of the conditions, you know that the waves will continue and that teleworking will become a permanent new habit in the world of work.

That said, this acceleration is not without its day-to-day operational problems. This is particularly the case for monitoring and managing telephone calls with your customers and prospects, when your sales staff and the rest of your employees are no longer physically in the office every day.

So how can you quickly and easily adapt your business telephony to this new organisation? Here are some serious, practical ideas that have been tried and tested!

(Re)take control of your company's telephone numbers

One of the major difficulties in introducing teleworking into your company is that some employees start using their own mobile phones to communicate with customers.

When it's a business mobile, it's not always easy, because it poses additional constraints in the event of holiday, absence or departure to ensure continuity for your customers' calls. You can quickly find yourself with customers who have no one at the end of the phone, often in high-stakes situations (that's why they're calling you). This can significantly increase customer dissatisfaction and generate instability internally.

But when your teams, with nothing else to do, start using their personal mobiles to call your customers, that's when things get even hotter for the company. You no longer have any control over calls to your customers and prospects!

But there is a simple first step to adapting to teleworking: use virtual telephone numbers known to your customers and prospects. From there, you can dissociate the telephone numbers from the equipment used. And that makes things much simpler, especially if you use a cloud telephony solution behind your virtual numbers.

So you can make and receive calls from customers using a fixed business telephone number, directly from your own mobile phone , for example!

Adapt your telephony solution to your employees' environment

Not the other way round! In the office, workstations are pretty much the same. All your sales staff have a computer, a good internet connection and a fixed and/or mobile phone to make their calls.

In the case of teleworking, everyone's environment is much more different. Some will have a fixed telephone at home, while many will only have their mobile (and personal in most cases). Some will have a very good Internet connection, others much less so.

How can you ensure that everyone in your team is in the best possible condition to communicate with your customers by telephone ?

As long as you have control over the telephone numbers known to all your customers, using virtual numbers, which are ideal for teleworking, you can ensure that everyone in your team has the best possible conditions for communicating by telephone with your customers.Ideally, when teleworking, you should be able to do whatever you want behind these numbers, so that you have the flexibility you need.

In practical terms, you can opt for a telephony solution that works :

• with the telephone network, by redirecting calls to fixed and/or mobile lines,
• and VoIP, using a softphone to receive and make calls from a web browser.

So you can cover all your employees' configurations:

• fixed lines
• business and personal mobile phones,
• good or poor quality Internet connection, etc.

To adapt easily to teleworking, it's a good idea to have a telephony solution that's flexible enough to work, whatever the use case.

Give employees autonomy to manage their own calls

Well, you have better control over your numbers and you have a flexible solution that adapts well to each employee's environment. Now, how do you avoid having to call on your IT team every time there's the slightest change to be made?

Give your employees the power!

The expression is perhaps a little strong, so let's say instead: equip your employees with tools that give them the autonomy to organise the management of their telephone calls themselves.

With a cloud solution, you give them access to web and mobile interfaces so that they can :

• view their calls
• listen to their messages
• make calls
• manage their availability (presence, holidays, absences),
• configure call overflow to a colleague, and connect to CRM, among other things.

Emails are entitled to simple, user-friendly software, so implement the same type of solution for calls.

With a dedicated console, each sales representative is a user of the telephony solution who can act on their calls and interact with the other members of the team. In this way, each salesperson is autonomous in managing part of the telephony solution they use on a daily basis to communicate with customers.

Give managers the means to monitor their teams effectively

One of the major concerns for managers when teleworking is introduced is having the right tools to support, monitor, refocus and train the teams for which they are responsible.

With a cloud solution, managers have an overview of their team's call management. They can easily monitor each other's activity, using real-time reports to ensure that calls are picked up or transferred when this is not possible, and that all customers or prospects are called back.

With detailed user management, he can access each sales rep's call log and help him organise his call flow. In the event of unforeseen absence (sick leave or childcare, which are relatively frequent at the moment), the manager can configure a period of absence by activating the redirection of calls to another member of the team.

This transparency, coupled with individual autonomy, creates a great deal of trust and security in each team. The unknowns and suspicions no longer exist, and everyone is working efficiently to serve your customers. It's a win-win situation for customers, sales people and managers alike.

How can you put this in place quickly and at a reasonable cost?

By going digital! And the French market offers a variety of SaaS solutions for business telephony, which can support you according to the nature of your needs. These tools have the advantage of simplifying the day-to-day work of your teams by :

• giving employees autonomy, flexibility and transparency ;
• providing control and visibility for company directors;

To do this at a reasonable cost, without having to involve your team in a major change process, you can opt for a solution that modernises your current installation and operation, without changing everything. The French company Dexem, for example, allows you to set up cloud solutions to manage your calls on top of your existing installation, without replacing it.

This allows you to adapt quickly and gradually to teleworking, while still operating efficiently on site, and benefiting from a host of new features, so that you can continue to have direct, human contact with your customers over the telephone.

It's definitely the right time to get equipped!

Teleworking has become a major trend and has been given a real boost by the measures introduced to deal with Covid-19. Companies and employees have seen that it is possible to continue to perform well with teleworking "at scale".

A large majority of employees are now very much in favour, in hybrid or full-time mode. Some employees, in agreement with their company, have even decided to move elsewhere in search of a better living environment. And, of course, many companies are also reaping the benefits: increased productivity, employee loyalty, easier recruitment, lower premises rents, and so on.

Teleworking is set to become a new norm in the world of work.

To support this change, remain competitive in your markets and provide your employees with the right tools, telephony is essential! It's a particularly effective means of communication for recreating proximity and trust with remote working. It's definitely the right time to get equipped!