What’s the common thread that affects both customer satisfaction and employee productivity? Your business communications system. The phone is the front door for customers to your business and the primary tool for your employees to collaborate and get work done.
Research indicates 65% of people still prefer to contact a business by phone versus only 24% who prefer a web form. And by 2025, it’s estimated that over 90% of the North American population will have a smartphone.
Despite this, many businesses still rely on old on-premises phone technology that was installed before the smartphone was even invented. These legacy phone systems usually require a hard-wired phone switching system—a server box tangled in wires and randomly blinking lights, often hidden in a closet—that routes calls and manages telephone lines and phone features.
But the advent of smart phones, tablets, and other mobile and connected devices, as well as the
trend of moving business functions to the cloud, has evolved behavior and expectations from
customers and employees alike. It’s a new world—and competitive companies in all industries are switching to less costly and more flexible cloud-based business communications to keep current with customer needs. In fact, 86% of U.S. small businesses claim they plan to evaluate new business communications systems in the next three years.
Cloud-based communications systems offer three advantages over hard-wired, on premises legacy phone systems:
1. They help you maintain better contact with your high touch customers.
2. They enable you to attract new talent and optimize productivity based on their individual needs.
3. They reduce costs and eliminate surprise expenses.
Read on to learn how these advantages benefit your business.
1. They help you maintain better contact with your high touch customers.
2. They enable you to attract new talent and optimize productivity based on their individual needs.
3. They reduce costs and eliminate surprise expenses.
Where Your Legacy On-Premises Phone System Fails Your Business
• Mobile productivity: Traditional phone systems are not built to seamlessly support mobile
capabilities, which severely inhibits collaboration between distributed employees and their
ability to address urgent customer issues while on the go.
• Cost: Even if you’ve paid off your traditional on-premises business phone system, you face
continued costs for managing the system and adding new phone lines.
• Complexity: If you want to easily integrate modern business productivity and collaboration
features such as video conferencing, screen sharing, team chat, and file storage and backup
to your traditional on-premises phone system, well, you really can’t. Plus, adding new phone
lines as you bring on new employees takes too much time and costs too much with
a traditional phone system.
• Downtime: Every minute your on-premises phone system is down due to a power outage or
some other system failure that is out of your control is a minute that a customer cannot reach
you. This lack of redundancy can be costly, adversely affect your reputation, and diminish your credibility.
Want to learn more? Read our whitepaper here: 3 Ways Cloud Communications Benefit Your Business