The world of business phone services has been greatly expanded due to VoIP technology. So today there’s a wide universe of business communications solutions available. It can be hard to sift through so many choices and find the option best suited for your business. It’s best practice to do your due diligence and research current market trends.
However, the best business phone service providers give you the most important call features.
Local phone number porting lets you keep your existing business phone numbers and retain your brand equity. With a platform like 8x8’s Business Phone, you can choose a local number from over 120 different countries to maintain a local presence wherever you operate. This makes it easier for your customers to reach you without having to dial long-distance or toll-free numbers from another country.
VoIP providers like 8x8 offer unlimited free calls for any standard rate domestic landline or mobile phone number. You can make and receive calls from up to 48 countries. Recent studies have shown that nearly all of the workforce intends to continue working from home. Combined with the 8x8 Work app for mobile devices, this lets you and your team handle calls from wherever you are.
Businesses like yours can also expect:
- Unlimited nationwide calling, free extension-to-extension calls
- Free calls to all 8x8 Work users
- Unlimited international calling to destinations including France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Puerto Rico, and Spain
- Unlimited SMS text messaging with 8x8 Work (Canada and US only)
- Receive and manage faxes in the cloud–download or forward via email
Using a flexible cloud-PBX will help future-proof your business for the evolving trends of hybrid and remote working.
The best phone systems use VoIP technology to give your business ultimate flexibility and adaptability. Desktop, mobile, and browser-based apps allow you to turn any smart device into a VoIP softphone.
VoIP makes it easy to add new lines and users or add-on features and upgrade services as your business scales. It also saves you money by letting you avoid the heavy upfront costs of telecoms equipment and the maintenance cost of having an in-house IT team.
VoIP business phone services help streamline call routes through the use of auto-attendants. These auto-attendants act as virtual receptionists for callers through interactive self-service menus to connect to the right person or department. Auto-attendants can shorten average handle time (AHT) and improve first call resolution by getting callers to the right destination as quickly as possible.
With a business cloud phone solution like 8x8, you get what’s known as a multi-level attendant. This type of attendant is much more intelligent and capable than your bog-standard virtual receptionist. A multi-level attendant comes with a complex set of customization rules that let you set multiple call flows. Businesses can create many auto-attendants with multiple profiles to fit the needs of their various clients or customers.
Today, forward-thinking businesses operate on the move. This means they also employ several remote teams or workers. Audio and text-based communication are always great for getting core business processes done.
Video conferencing can be very effective for improving comprehension and collaboration between team members. Additionally, platform tools like file sharing and screen sharing provide visual aids that enhance the process by increasing engagement. With 8x8, you get unlimited video messaging and video conferencing so you and your team can stay connected.
Businesses can streamline the process of handling inbound calls with features like call forwards and transfer. With 8x8, users can set up custom forwarding rules to prioritize things having alternative or personal phone number calls forwarded directly to their business lines. This ensures you’ll never miss an important call while out and about, working from home, or in the office.
Easy and quick call transferring also makes for a painless call resolution process for your customers. If an agent isn’t the right person to handle the call, they can transfer the caller to another extension within seconds. However, with what’s known as a warm call transfer, they can first check the extension to make sure the other team member is available to handle the call beforehand. Warm transfers help avoid wasting time and increasing caller frustration.
Unlike a traditional PBX, VoIP business phone systems can come with automatic call recording. With 8x8, you can store call recordings on Dropbox or use the platform’s cloud storage. Supervisors and managers can use call recordings to improve training materials and individual agent performance. Users can record calls themselves to easily recall important information or monitor their own call performance.
For compliance purposes, you can turn on an audio notification to alert all parties that the call is being recorded. For platforms like 8x8, administrators can also configure recording to automatically begin for incoming or outgoing calls as well as implement on-demand call recording from the Virtual Office Online dashboard.
People these days live busy lives and being put on hold during a phone call can be frustrating. Custom greetings and hold music can help improve the customer experience while waiting to connect to a team member. The use of royalty-free music can cheer up impatient callers. And custom greetings/messages can be used to keep callers up-to-date with call waiting times and important company announcements or promotions.
Voicemail should be a standard inclusion of any business phone system. It’s a modern-day necessity for callers to reach unavailable people in a business. Cloud PBXs like 8x8 come with visual voicemail that can add a great deal of flexibility to how messages are received. With visual voicemail, recordings are automatically transcribed and sent to your email inbox.
This makes it easy for users to access voicemail when the environment isn’t so conducive such as when in a meeting or on public transportation. Since the transcription is delivered via email, it can easily be shared or forwarded to other colleagues for rapid coordination or clarification. Emailed voicemail transcriptions also include an attachment of the audio file and can serve as backup storage in case messages are deleted from the service.
Call queuing can vastly improve the customer experience when dealing with customer support. This is because it will constantly update the caller on their position in the queue and their expected wait time. Vital information like this can be the difference between a caller waiting it out and hanging up on the call in frustration.
With plans like 8x8 X2 or X4, businesses can give callers the option of a queued callback. This feature synergizes with call queueing to save customers as much time as possible. Callers will be prompted if they wish to receive a callback when an agent is available. Caller ID can automatically record their phone number or they can choose to provide an alternative number. From there, they can go about their day, ready to receive a call and be fast-tracked to an agent or representative.
Call monitoring can improve call quality and the customer experience. This is accomplished by enabling supervisors to listen in on sales and customer service calls and seize opportunities for team growth and learning. And if things aren’t going so well, managers can jump right in to call to assist or take over as needed.
With the 8x8 platform, this feature is known as “barge” and it instantly creates a 3-way call. This feature can be especially useful during training or for helping out newer agents while they get lose their training wheels. Another useful feature of 8x8 Business Phone is a more subtle option to whisper guidance to the employee that the caller will not be able to hear.
Businesses, large and small, can all benefit from reporting and analytics once only available to large enterprises. With a business phone line solution, you can connect information from multiple sources to have it viewable all from one place. Advanced call analytics can help managers and supervisors track and identify trends in employee behavior or adoption.
With customized reporting and analytics, important information like call logs can be monitored in real-time. And important metrics like call quality and average handle time help decision-makers gain valuable insights for improving business communications.
VoIP phone services come with fully functional apps so businesses aren’t tethered to their desk phones. A business phone system like 8x8 comes with desktop apps and mobile apps for iOS and Android. This lets your team turn any computer, tablet, or other mobile devices into a highly capable softphone. Your business will be able to operate from anywhere in the world and at any time as long as there’s connectivity to the internet.
Your team members can work remotely or conduct business while on the go. From one app, they can communicate and collaborate with colleagues and also interact with customers. This includes features like team messaging and video conferencing that can all be handled from one central space.
Unlike a traditional business phone system, modern-day technology like a business VoIP phone service can connect to other company tools. Integrations allow for a seamless exchange of data between business systems as well as adding capabilities to your existing applications. These connections can vastly improve workflows and further enhance platform analytics by enlarging important datasets.
With 8x8, you can connect your phone system to some of the most powerful business solutions on the market today. This includes giving agents access to customer account information in real-time with CRM integrations for solutions like Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, and Salesforce.
Other 8x8 Work integrations include:
- Freshdesk
- Netsuite
- Zendesk
- Slack
- Google Workspace
- Office 365
- Microsoft Teams
- Skype
- Zoho
Flexible pricing and phone plans
