Your personal smartphone would be nothing without all the great apps that make your life easier. So, why do people often find themselves thinking more about business phone system hardware than software?
What makes a phone a phone has transformed tremendously in the last twenty years. But even though 85% of Americans own smartphones, it has been much harder to update the idea of what a business phone system is and does. It’s easy to picture something a little bit retro – like the Bat-Phone. In fact, the term has been used in business for a private line that’s handled with a high priority.
In today’s world, a business phone system needs to be much more dynamic. There’s no time for it to sit in a glass case under a spotlight. In addition to helping you communicate with your customers, business partners, and vendors, it also has a role to play in empowering your personnel.
Many businesses simply can’t deliver their best work without a high-quality phone system.
And the software that system runs is just as important as the hardware.
Business Phone System Software Helps You Protect Your Enterprise From Data Theft
One of the most critical elements in a phone system’s software package is its administrative suite.
Phone administration might seem like a dry topic but consider its importance. When you onboard employees, all sorts of gears kick into motion throughout your company. A structured off-boarding process is also becoming more crucial for safeguarding proprietary business secrets and sensitive customer data.
A modern administrative software suite makes both these projects far easier.
These days, secure networks are generally operated on the Principle of Least Privilege. According to this idea, everyone in an organization should have access only to the resources needed to carry out their duties. This is usually understood to apply to network resources like data files, but it can really apply to any business asset.
Whenever someone joins the organization, your IT team ensures that person has access to exactly the right resources, with nothing extraneous. The same should be carried out for the business phone system, too – and that looks very different than the old process of making sure a phone handset is plugged in!
Since many phones are location-independent, a strategy needs to be in place to set them up, provision them (that is, assign them to the appropriate user), manage them, control them, and ultimately terminate the access.
A central administration suite is a huge selling point because it facilitates business travel and remote work at minimal risk. In the event a phone is lost on the road, it can be “bricked.” That is, no one will be able to use it to access your network or get to your data. That can save a lot of embarrassment (and potentially a lot of money!)
With regular data backups or cloud computing, no data is lost, either.
Business Phone System Apps Can Help Sales Teams Be More Productive Anywhere They Go
If your team does any selling, the right software on your phone is a must.
The “smartphone age” has helped to professionalize the sales function in many organizations. Individual sales reps no longer rely on their Rolodex or a file cabinet stuffed full of notes about their top customers and leads. Software enables sales pros to use the same data and speak the same language to go after top accounts.
This has been ideal for sales departments where the team previously used a “technology stack” of a half-dozen unrelated solutions to manage deal flow and execution. But not all leaders have been thrilled with the way Customer Relationship Management replaced all that with high per-seat licensing fees.
What if your business phone system could do it all?
The best business phone brands heard the call: Teams need enterprise-grade software to track and follow up with leads, but they don’t want to sacrifice a significant part of their revenue for infrastructure. Since a phone is inseparable from what sales teams do, why not combine both ideas?
The result is a command center that meets everyone’s needs:
- Sales teams collect, use, and share information from a single source that minimizes manual data input.
- Information technology leaders can easily ensure that all phones meet organizational security policies.
- Business leaders can reduce costs, complexity, and dependence on third-party vendors in one stroke.
Team members might or might not be excited about a new phone experience at first. After all, everyone has a different level of change tolerance. People often want results before they will commit fully. But once they see what their phones can do for them, they’re more likely to adopt with gusto.
Customer Care Teams Need Business Phone Systems That Smooth The Path To Success
No other part of an enterprise is more reliant on phones than the customer care team.
Seconds count when resolving a customer’s dilemma. If the phone doesn’t deliver a reliable connection and clear, crisp voice, it dooms the call from the very beginning. The finest business phone systems in the world today combine data and traditional voice, leading to exceptional sound clarity.
Forward-looking companies love Voice over IP (VoIP) for bringing quality to a whole new level.
But in the customer-facing world, a phone serves a whole other purpose: It’s a data-gathering tool. It needs to give you seamless, at-a-glance access to all the information that tells you where a call went right or wrong. That turns it into the ultimate asset for training team members and reducing avoidable turnover.
When you’re not set up to reach this goal, your phone system can turn into a data black hole.
When you’re evaluating your different phone configuration options, be sure you take into account the needs of stakeholders who use the system most often. Customer service managers, for example, not only want to be able to sit in on calls but also record them for training purposes and analyze their length.
It can also be very helpful to go up and down the hierarchy. Newer employees can tell you things that might not occur to experienced ones and vice versa. This will help you come up with guidelines for your new system’s requirements – making it much easier to work with vendors to get your needs met.
At Atlantic Communications Team, Our Business Phone Systems Are Central Florida’s Best
As Central Florida’s leader in business phone systems, our technical experts have diligently researched and compared all the options out there. We are confident that the NEC SV9100 PBX is the robust and modular communications hub that will make a difference for both your employees and your customers.
As Florida’s largest NEC dealer, we hold NEC Triple Diamond Dealer distinction. Our team has thousands of hours of experience with NEC systems to help you install, deploy, adopt, and enjoy value from this market-leading technology. And its on-board productivity and management software is second to none.
Contact us to find out more or get started.