VOIP is becoming increasingly popular for businesses that want to streamline their internal and external communications. Not all systems are suitable for call centres however, which may have more sophisticated routing requirements or need to handle much greater call volumes than a small business.
What Makes Call Centres So Different?
Call centres are centralized locations that handle large numbers of calls, and as such they need software and hardware that can facilitate that.
What to Look for in a Phone System?
Call centres have come a long way in the last ten years. They now handle far more calls, and customers have much greater expectations. They want to be able to reach people across multiple channels, and to solve a lot of jobs without having to talk to someone over the phone. Email, chat, forums, social media and web apps are all important. These services can even be outsourced to companies in the UK, like Call Center, based in Bournemouth.
Facilitating Multi-channel Communications
Your call centre phone system should support tickets from other systems such as email messaging, and should also handle call recording. These are the bare minimum requirements for a modern system.
Integrated Software Solutions
If you want to facilitate working across multiple platforms, then you should make sure that your systems use the industry standard SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Remember that the phone system is not just the hardware – yes, the cables, headsets and phones are important. The software matters too.
The features you need are:
- Call management
- Queue management
- Directing calls to particular groups/teams of agents
- IVR (Interactive Voice Response) to allow customers to make basic enquiries through an automated system, freeing up agents for other, more complex calls
- Analytics and reporting
- Enterprise tools such as ERP and CRM
- Call recording to offer training and feedback to agents and maintain quality control
- Call monitoring for real-time agent monitoring and training
Telephony Systems
Telehony features should be a part of any standard VoIP phone system. These features include transcription, notifications, voicemails, call hold features, etc. A lot of call centre systems will also add click to call routing options for your website so that customers can get put through to the right department.
Why Choose VoIP for Call Centres?
Affordable
There is no question that VoIP phone systems offer good value for money. Traditional phone systems are far more expensive. Hosted VoIP makes internal calls free, and cuts the cost of long-distance calls as well, saving your company money while not having to cut corners on the quality of customer service that you provide to your end users.
The Best Features
While VoIP is very cheap, it still manages to be the best option in terms of features, too. Thanks to digital technology, sophisticated features that wouldn’t be available in other settings suddenly become affordable. Analog systems cannot integrate multichannel communications in the way that VoIP Can. You don’t need extra equipment, once you’re up and running it just works. The ongoing cost is low, and you get great tools.
Continuing Upgrades
Choose hosted or cloud VoIP call centre systems and you can enjoy a variety of polyphony services, all offered online. Service providers manage the equipment and the software for you. The vendor can deliver new features faster than they would be able to with standard coper telephony, and service providers are always working to roll out new, improved features. As a user, you win, and this means that your clients win too, because the service providers are vying for your business every single day.