How VoIP boosts your productivity

Whatever your business, you need to maintain quality contact with your customers. That's why business telephony has always been one of the cornerstones of your productivity.

Your telephone network needs to keep up with the pace of your work and be flexible enough to keep pace with changes in your company. The development of new technologies and digital transformation have reinforced the strategic importance of choosing the right business telephony solution.

Whether you're a large generalist company, an SME or a call centre, you're using the innovations in business telephony and gradually abandoning traditional fixed telephony. This is especially true when you need to use this tool to develop your communication campaigns.

Today, there are many names to identify this new solution for business telephony: Cloud connected telephony, VoIP telephony, voice over IP, IPBX networks, IP Centrex, Virtual PBX. And we haven't even mentioned the connected tools derived from this system yet :).

In this article, we'll be looking at the benefits of this digital revolution for business telephony.

How, in the space of a few years, the PSTN system has been superseded and relegated to the back burner.

But above all, which connected telephony tools have become a pillar of productivity when it comes to call campaigns.

VoIP telephony solutions: a beneficial development

Like all good explanations, let's start by defining the subject.

What is VoIP?

VoIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol, is the technology that enables voice communication over the Internet. In practical terms, it :

• takes audio data, such as the caller's voice
• encapsulates it
• then breaks it down into small packets of data.

In simple terms, it's Skype, WhatsApp, or any other system that enables voice communication over the internet from any medium (phone, tablet, computer).

While individuals immediately embraced the concept and quickly moved away from traditional telephony, businesses were slower to join the movement.

The first to join in were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Subsequently, companies needing to manage call centres or contact centres joined the new business telephony system.

The benefits of VoIP

Why, you may ask?

There are many reasons, but we can simplify them into three points:

• Price,
• Flexibility,
• Performance equivalent to the PSTN system.

IPBX systems (virtualised or otherwise) are less expensive than PBX systems (private branch exchanges), because they are mainly software, which makes them much more flexible.

A VoIP system can do everything that an old-fashioned PBX could do. But there's a very long list of things only possible with VoIP, which makes it ideal for most offices, especially those that operate in a hybrid way.

💡 Some examples of VoIP's unique features:

• Webphone: no need for an expensive telephone set or a softphone to set up! A simple internet connection lets you call, wherever you are. Launch the Webphone from the interface and your phone is ready to use without any configuration.
  
  
• IVR: all your incoming calls are picked up, directed to a voice menu with a pre-recorded script, qualified at the touch of a button and routed to a programmed destination: an extension, a group, a voice mailbox, a sound, etc.
  
  
• Virtual number: geographic numbers or virtual numbers improve your professional image and enhance your company's standing. This allows you to have a number with the area code of your choice.

💡 The benefits of VoIP business telephony are particularly compelling with the COVID pandemic, when so many employees now work from home.

If you opt for VoIP, all you have to do is download a softphone client onto an employee's PC. They can use that computer as they would their office phone, in a single step.

VoIP tools to boost your productivity

Clearly, the move to VoIP for business telephony has been beneficial.

But this technology has also enabled the creation of connected tools that have revolutionised customer relationship management.

CRM, the essential tool

A company doesn't just need telephone lines to maintain customer relations. It also needs a CRM system.

While some companies opt for ad hoc solutions from different service providers, others opt for more centralised solutions.

The advantage of connected tools is that they make customer follow-up and call management as interconnected as possible.

What is a CRM?

The question may seem simplistic, but in order to highlight the essential interconnection between the two, I prefer to start at the beginning.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a technology that enables you to manage all your company's relationships with your customers and prospects. The main aim is to improve commercial relations in order to grow your business.

CRM tools can now be used to manage relationships throughout the customer lifecycle, encompassing :

• marketing
• sales
• digital commerce
• customer service interactions.

The benefits of CRM connected to VoIP telephony

It seems logical to integrate a CRM into your VoIP business telephony solution, so that you can use it as a lever to optimise intra-company exchanges and promote smooth, efficient collaborative customer relationship management.

Some IP business telephony providers, such as Kavkom, offer solutions that include a hybrid CRM as standard. This provides the company's various employees with :

• a wide range of means of communication (email, telephone, text messages, notifications, etc.),
• simultaneous access to CRM customer records and a synchronised history of interactions (updated in real time), guaranteeing that every request is dealt with efficiently, even without a dedicated adviser.

All this is done using a tool that can be accessed via a simple Internet connection, so that all the company's employees, wherever they may be, can access their virtual workstation in a secure online environment.

The result: close-knit teams, connected services and satisfied customers!

With this in mind, there are now connected tools based on VoIP telephony that can improve the productivity of your teams in managing your prospecting campaigns.

The Predictive Dialer, or how to increase your productivity

One of the levers of productivity is the intelligent automation of calls.

A predictive dialler is a type of automated dialler that makes telephone calls even before agents are available.

It is designed to increase agent efficiency by calling as many prospects as possible. The system quickly moves on to the next prospect after an unanswered call.

Unlike an autodialer, which distributes connected calls among available representatives, Predictive Dialer dials several contacts at once and ensures that agents achieve maximum customer connectivity.

What's more, a good Predictive Dialer can also :

• manage the call rate
• detect answering machines,
• qualify calls,
• record calls
• insert music on hold for the telemarketer,
• integrate a webphone,
• manage several campaigns simultaneously.

💡 Once again, the trick is to find a service provider who provides turnkey access and where the various tools are all on the same interface. Like Kavkom's Predictive Dialer, which is on the same platform as the classic VoIP lines and the CRM.

The Predictive Dialer is therefore an indispensable tool for call centres or telemarketing centres, for example, because it increases agent productivity.

Going further: Robot Dialers

Have you ever heard of Robot Dialer? It's a tool specific to connected Cloud telephony that enables companies to :

• Develop sales,
• create new leads.

Here's an example: you're a marketing prospecting company and you want to broadcast a message to a target population, then collect the responses, but also be put in touch with the prospect meeting your criteria.

The Robot Dialer is the ideal way of reaching millions of prospects, thanks to its intelligent automatic dialler, a powerful marketing tool.

Depending on your service provider, this robot can be configured to a greater or lesser extent and integrated into your telephony and CRM systems.

As far as Kavkom's robot is concerned, it includes numerous features such as the creation of customised voice messages, hourly call rate management and the RGPD blacklist.

In conclusion

The evolution of practices in favour of unified communications via the Internet, which are more mobile and more economical, has revolutionised the management of prospecting campaigns.

It has made it possible to find new connected tools that can increase the performance, efficiency and productivity of call campaigns while maintaining flexibility.