What to do when you can't answer the phone 24/7?

Providing 24/7 customer service has immense benefits for any business and is the optimum business setup. However, for businesses large, medium and small 24-hour customer service often in practice, for most, is just not feasible. For these businesses without always-on customer service staff does not mean that business leaders and managers have to resign themselves to losing out on all the out-of-hours calls and sales opportunities. This is where the beauty of virtual switchboards comes in. A virtual switchboard allows you to manage calls and users in real-time from a single, simple-to-use interface. With a virtual switchboard, you can transfer calls, park and retrieve them and above all, you can set up call solutions for out-of-hours customer service. Virtual switchboards offer a multitude of options that can help maintain a permanent presence.

These intelligent VoIP solutions involving virtual switchboards and virtual receptionists are responsible for establishing different mechanisms and call scenarios that can help us minimise the loss of leads, optimise customer service time and, ultimately, improve customer satisfaction levels. Zadarma offers virtual phone numbers in 100+ countries, free cloud PBX and CRM systems. Zadarma’s virtual switchboard comes as part of Zadarma’s Standard VoIP call plan. The switchboard is free and includes all standard VoIP services, thus becoming one of the most popular virtual customer services tools out there, due to its unbeatable price and quality in virtual switchboard solutions.

Configuring Scenarios For Each Call

Configuring call scenarios is the first step that you should consider when setting your cloud PBX. You should ask the question, to what destination should each call arrive depending on the time? It is something that we must first consider on paper and then transfer to the configuration of our virtual switchboard. Furthermore, an additional benefit to Zadarma’s business phone system, is that you don't have to have high technical knowledge or go through dozens of menus to set this up. In fact, with tools like the visual editor, in Zadarma’s case, it is as simple as using a powerpoint. You simply are dragging the figures on the left and configuring each call step in a very intuitive way.

The Virtual Switchboard Visual Editor

The key here is to be clear about what we want to do with each call. We, therefore, need to establish a voice menu that allows each agent or department to be reached if they are connected or, if not, to end up in a voice mailbox where the user or customer can leave a message. In just a few minutes we can have organised all the possible call scenarios and various call paths that your users must follow to achieve rapid customer attention or, in the case of being out of hours, register their callback request.

How To Rescue All Calls?

During working hours, your customer service team is available to pick up calls quickly, minimising call waiting times. But what happens when your staff clock-off and the customer service desk is unmanned? What to do when messages accumulate in the call mailbox? Well, there is no other option but to review them first thing in the morning to properly attend to the requests. However, Zadarma offers a far simpler and more operationally efficient solution. When you have the transcription option activated, with each call registered in the CRM, you have a feature that allows you to listen to the audio of each call or, even more interesting, read the transcript of what they said.

CRM Call Transcript

In comparison to other switchboards, Zadarma offers a unique but simple feature to assign a label (complaint, sale, request, etc.) within the CRM function to each call. This is in addition to seeing the source of origin of the call. With these two pieces of information, it is possible for a sales or customer services manager to order and distribute calls across his entire team in a matter of minutes. Managers can attend to a multitude of requests and synchronise tasks that have been registered from calls that were made outside of business hours.

CRM Labels

In addition, all this call data is also included in Zadarma’s call analytics part offered by the virtual Cloud PBX. With this system, it is possible to enter a more complete part of Business Intelligence with which to have an exact vision of how long it is taking, for example, to attend to a call complaint vs. the duration required to close a sale call. It is also possible to study what complaints come from each place to discover if, for example, there is a problem with shipments to a specific area. These are two examples of the hundreds that can be mentioned and they all start from something as simple as labels.

In short, a virtual business phone system is essential to optimise any customer service that seeks to improve its operations. ​​Virtual Cloud PBX is quick and easy to integrate with other company’s business tools. It can be connected to a CRM and communication or work applications. You can automate call scenarios for out-of-hours customer service and enter tasks to avoid any time wastage, add tags to calls or set up call routing. A business phone system is a simple way to increase productivity, improve customer and user experience, even after hours.