Business VOIP Phone System: Everything You Need to Know

Business VoIP phone system is a powerful solution that uses the internet (instead of a landline connection) to make and receive calls. It may not seem like much, but it can actually bring a lot of benefits to your company. Here’s everything you need to know about a business VoIP phone system.

There is no doubt that business phone systems have changed over the years. These days, not only do they facilitate communication between employees, but they also serve as the primary tool for many customer support and sales teams. But as its popularity is rising, so are user expectations.

As a result, today’s business phone systems simply must have a lot to offer. Providing omnichannel support to call centers, allowing staff to communicate easily, offering advanced features and integration with other tools – these are just a few examples of what is expected of them. Fortunately, modern VOIP solutions are fully capable of meeting these expectations.

What is VoIP?

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) transforms analogue telephone signals into digital ones in order to send them over an IP network. This means you no longer need a local phone company – if you have a stable internet connection, you can use it to make and receive calls. Some people use it as a supplement to their “traditional” phone service, mainly because VoIP service providers often offer lower rates than phone companies. That’s not the only reason, however – particularly for businesses.

Business VoIP aims to replace the corporate phone systems that organizations leverage to connect their employees internally to each other and externally to their customers and partners. It offers a variety of features that can be useful for any company (such as IVR, conference calling or voice messaging). Furthermore, employees working remotely can easily access the business VoIP system from any location and device, which also facilitates communication within the team.

For a VoIP system to work properly, however, it needs a way to route calls between users and outside the organization. In a cloud-based telephone system, this is possible thanks to a telephone distribution center (PBX). A PBX works like a switching office for telephone systems: it usually consists of a few branches, switching connections to and from them whenever necessary. There’s no need to run a large PBX operation yourself – dedicated providers will take care of your call routing, allowing you to share your PBX with other customers for a monthly fee. These features are crucial if you have a large sales and support team and therefore handle a lot of calls on a daily basis.

What else can you get from a business VoIP phone system?

In addition to making calls easier and lowering costs, a cloud-based VoIP phone system can bring many benefits to your business. The most common features you should look into are definitely:

• Call queue – you can have all incoming calls sorted into queues, based on predefined rules and attendant availability,
• Call Recording – You record all your calls automatically and can access them anywhere and anytime,
• Personalized Greetings and Songs – You can easily customize the first thing callers hear when they contact you, and encourage them to leave you a voicemail that you can listen to later.
• Extensions – having custom numbers and extensions will allow callers to reach anyone in your company and allow you to forward a call to a different agent if needed
• Callback – the ability to automatically contact your customers whenever you miss their call can help you reduce call abandonment rates and increase customer satisfaction,
• Integrations – you can integrate your phone system with a CRM, e-commerce solutions or help desk tools to keep all relevant data in one place and better serve callers,
• Contact history – a complete overview of all customer interactions will always be at your fingertips, including past calls, orders, chats or notes, so you don’t have to look for them in multiple systems,
• Real-time Dashboard – it allows you to monitor your call center activities in real-time, regardless of the size of your team,
• Conference Calls – The ability to schedule conference calls can improve the flow of information within your team and with your customers or business partners.

Those are just some of the features you can find in a powerful VoIP phone system. In fact, they are the key differentiators between VoIP and traditional phone systems – and that’s not surprising given the benefits they offer. In fact, cloud-based phone systems can easily support the efforts of your customer service and sales teams.

Aircall is a perfect example of such a solution. It not only allows you to make and receive calls, but also leverage insights into your agents and calls, whether they are inbound or outbound. You can also integrate it with various tools you are already using – including CRM software, helpdesk tool or live chat to support your contact center.