Why do I need a hosted voice solution?

1. 1. Small businesses

   If you are running a small business, sometimes winning the larger clients can be tricky. It’s difficult to prove your credibility to these types of customers. To help with this, one of the features of hosted voice is to create a Non-Geographic Number (NGN) which can be set to a landline number with a certain geographic code of your choice. For example, if you are based in Essex but are targeting an audience predominantly in London, then you can choose a London short code to position your business within that area.

   Alternatively, you may not have a permanent office space to route a landline from. Maybe you make use of hot desk areas or you own a van to hold your materials that you work from. In these cases, hosted voice can give the illusion of a permanent office with a landline number that transfers to any device. This can improve your company’s credibility by making you look larger than you are.

2. 2. Sales teams

   Sales teams can spend a lot of their working day on the phone, talking to customers about products and services to make a sale. Therefore, it’s important that the phone system used by the team makes the salesperson and the business look as professional as possible. Basic hosted voice functionality, such as call parking, forwarding and holding, are extremely useful for ensuring this professionalism is displayed, however other more complex services can enhance the functionality of the sales team. Options such as call monitoring and recording can be used for training purposes, shared lines and answering rules are useful when members of the team are away from their desk, and call statistics display all inbound and outbound calls. It is simple and easy to add that extra level of efficiency and productivity to your sales team.

3. 3. Global business

   With the continual increase in globalisation, businesses of all sizes are operating on an international scale. Because of this, technology has had to adapt to cater to this international market and now brands are asking for more cost effective, more reliable and international solutions to scale with them. Hosted voice is a key example of this as it has moved from the clunky on-premise solution to hosting everything in the cloud.

   For international businesses operating on different time zones, it can be difficult to coordinate internal calls, let alone calls from other global stakeholders. With hosted voice, automatic diverts can be set up for areas within specific time zones during out of office hours. For example, a customer service department might be based in the UK however a customer may call from America during UK night time. In this case, an automatic diversion can be set up so that any enquires are diverted back to someone in America. This means that your customers are always able to speak to someone if they need help with your products or services.

   There are also financial advantages to choosing a hosted voice solution for your global business. As well as avoiding the cost of installing and maintaining physical hardware, standard calls via PSTN can become expensive when a large percentage of your workforce are abroad. Alternatively, when your business is set up on a hosted voice system, all your calls are made via a VoIP network, enabling you to make cheaper internal and external international calls.

4. 4. Flexible workers

   In the past, employees who wanted to take advantage of flexible working had to set up a VPN, have another telephone line installed in their home, or rely on a poor internet connection to communicate via VoIP. Today, hosted voice enables you to connect to any device in any location with a click of a button and with the same level of audio quality as your office desk phone. If you are working from a mobile or tablet, the customer can receive the same professional experience by optimising the same features that are present on their office phones. For example, call transfer, hold and divert are all still present within the hosted voice app. Similarly, Quality of Service (QoS) technology can be implemented to recognise when you are using VoIP and give you priority bandwidth on your network so that you can get crystal clear audio at all times.