With the constant pressures of managing a business, few managers ever give much thought to one of the most vital communications platforms connecting a business to its various stakeholders – the business telephone system. Scratchy phone lines, interrupted signals, and telephone system downtime could be losing your business vital leads – making telephonically conveying information a challenge. With managed voice services, you’ll never have to worry about playing broken telephone! Here are five benefits of managed voice services:
True Per Second Billing
Unlike the per-minute billing many service providers offer, you can enjoy true per-second billing when opting for managed voice services. True per second billing only charges you for the amount of time you spend on a call – whether it be one minute or one second. Per minute billing will charge you for a full minute, regardless of how many seconds of that minute you actually spend on the phone. This is a huge cost saver when comparing managed voice services to traditional telephone service rates.
Retain Your Existing Numbers
One common reason many business managers are reluctant to change over to managed voice services is because of telephone number changes. When an organisation’s telephone number changes, every platform where the number is listed requires editing. Business cards need to be reprinted, email signatures altered, and directories updated. When swopping over to managed voice services, a business can enjoy reduced telephone costs, and retain all existing telephone numbers.
Voicemail to Email Service
Remember when one could SMS a message to a landline number, and a robotic voice would read the message back to you? Just as innovative is the voicemail to email capabilities offered with managed voice services. With voicemail to email, clients can leave voice messages during out-of-office hours, and these messages are transcribed and sent to a designated email address. What this effectively means is that a business has a paper trail of every lead – even ones left via the voicemail service.
Call Recording
You’ve probably heard this phrase many times in the past few years: please note that this call may be recorded for quality control purposes. There are numerous reasons as to why an organisation would want to record its telephone calls, and these recordings often award a business great insight into the needs, wants and attitudes of their various stakeholders. By opting for managed voice services, you gain access – should you require it – to call recording capabilities compliant with the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (RICA).
Out-of-office Attendant
Another revolutionary amenity forming part of the managed voice services offering is out-of-office attendance. With the rise of chatbots – essentially computer programs that can engage people in voice or text conversations on websites – your business telephone system can actually engage with and answer questions posed by stakeholders who call your organisation after working hours. Should the out-of-office attendant be asked a question it cannot answer, it will recommend the customer get in touch via an alternative communication medium.
Managed Voice Services in Durban
When partnering with Stratus IT, you are able to reduce your expenditure on third parties by consolidating your internet, voice, network management, and IT support services with one service provider. Not only does this save time when issues do arise, but you can save costs by utilising your existing network that you have already paid for! Stratus IT will integrate your systems for greater efficacy, and keep you abreast of network performance. If you feel managed voice services could be beneficial to your business, get in touch with us here.
