How Virtual Phones Can Improve Your Business

Virtual phones have been buzzing around modern businesses, but are they the new frontier of business communications?

Virtual phones, also known as softphones, are communication applications that can make or receive calls through an internet connection. They can be implemented individually or as part of an enterprise’s unified communications system.

More and more businesses are turning to virtual phones as a solution to the challenges presented by landline or mobile business phones.

If you’re wondering whether softphones will work for your industry, here are six ways virtual phones can improve nearly all modern businesses:

1. Protect employee personal data

   When clients need to contact employees outside office hours, virtual phones make it convenient to keep communication lines open while protecting an employee’s private information.

   If a client wants to contact an employee, virtual phones allow customers to call or send a text to a corporate-provided number that is then forwarded to the employee’s private device without invading their privacy.

   Imagine you are a customer that desperately needs to get in contact with an account manager. You know your issue can be solved with a brief conversation, but your account manager won’t be at their desk at this time. You don’t have their personal mobile number, so you leave a message on their desk phone and hope your urgent issue doesn’t get worse.

   With a softphone, an account manager could forward inbound calls to their personal mobile device and speed up response time.

2. Save money by getting rid of old hardware

   If you want to provide your business with phones, you have a choice between installing desk phones, purchasing mobile phones or downloading virtual phone software for your company.

   Desk phones and mobile devices come with a handful of challenges: application installations, repair and upkeep, and replacement. On the other hand, softphones make it very easy to keep up with the most recent updates without needing to replace hardware.

   Fewer company phones purchased, repaired, and replaced can really add up, especially if your company is in its early stages. Softphones also cut down on the phenomenon of employees who typically spend a lot of time outside the office, like sales representatives, having two mobile phones.

3. Improve employee availability

   When using a virtual phone app, employees can set their availability hours. While active, phone calls will be forwarded to the employee’s smartphone or computer while also allowing for voicemail features to record messages when they are off the clock. Since the app can be implemented on a mobile phone, your work force can easily receive calls when working remotely.

   A project manager who frequently handles calls away from their desk can easily make sure that calls reach their mobile phone no matter where they are. The virtual phone allows the project manager to instantly respond to concerns or issues as they arise.

4. Localize the global team

   If your employees frequently travel, keeping in communication with one another can be tough. However, virtual phones make it especially easy for teams to stay connected by giving members contact numbers local to a specific country. No matter how many offices you have around the globe, you can centralize all contact numbers to come from one location.

   When employees working internationally need to hop on impromptu conferences with one another, virtual phones make it especially convenient for everyone. With a centralized phone number, everyone within your company, no matter where employee offices may be, has a reliable communication resource for contacting one another.

5. Easily scale your communications system

   As your company grows, you’ll want your communication tools to grow with you. A virtual phone makes it especially easy to give new employees communication resources without causing trouble for your IT team or having to pay unnecessary onboarding costs.

   If you plan to expand your company into a new city or country, virtual phones make it especially easy to get your communication tools up and running in less than a day. A softphone-based communications system makes it easy for companies to expand without hassle.

6. Establish a professional image

   Branding is especially important for a business to succeed. One major advantage a virtual phone system has is its flexibility to establish a professional customer-facing image.

   Virtual phones allow for businesses to quickly update their company-wide messaging and enhance support availability for customers.

   Whether your business is just starting out or you’re launching another international office, it’s always important to establish and maintain a professional image. Your clients will prefer to do business with a partner who is consistently available and easy to communicate with. Additionally, your employees will find it easier to uphold a high standard of responsiveness with easy-to-adopt technology that works whether they’re at their desks or traveling.

   If you want to grow your business, support remote employees, and reduce monthly operations costs, a virtual phone system has a lot to offer. With these use cases, you can create your list of requirements and confidently adopt virtual phones into your business.