Despite the several modes of business communications available today, a modernistic and digitized business phone system remains the core hub for businesses, big or small. Restaurants, hospitals, clinics, and even retail shops require a central phone with multiple lines or extensions to take calls from their clientele or customers. With the growing popularity of VoIP, business phone systems have evolved considerably. Long gone are the days of purchasing expensive equipment that not only takes up space but one has to pay through the nose to maintain it. For business communications, companies are switching over to cloud phone systems that come with features that offer much more than just handling voice calls.
Are Cloud Phone Systems the Future?
The Covid-19 episode has been an eye-opener for business owners around the world. If there’s one thing the global business community has learned from the Covid-19 pandemic is how to run businesses and lead their workforce beyond the limitations of a fixed location. We can continue to work from anywhere without restricting or limiting ourselves; and to be able to do this, we need to bank on modernized communication systems.
As companies made a switchover from offices to remote working from home, they recognized the importance of using critical tools and platforms that continue to support their running business. Among them, a speedy shift and digitization of communications in the form of cloud phone systems tops the list in delivering multiple benefits to companies, including flexibility and agility. It is safe to say that cloud phone system is the future of business communication.
However, before we plunge directly into discussing why cloud phone systems are the future, it’s crucial to look at the precursors and understand this switch-over narrative better.
On-Premises vs. Cloud-Based phone system
During the pandemic, a vast majority of organizations were exposed to the inadequacies of the traditional on-premises phone. Its inability to serve them properly while being usable only at a particular location is a big constraint. Even if they do use VoIP, they still rely on connecting phone extensions to the public phone network. On the other hand, a cloud-based phone system uses only the internet, and gets the same access, call quality, and features from anywhere, anytime.
The Cloud and Mobility – an unbreakable bond!
Although companies worldwide are reopening their offices, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that employees will be bound to go back to offices. The remote working or WFH (Work From Home) option remains on the table. One of the lessons we’ve learned in this pandemic is to give flexibility to employees to work from wherever they are, as long as they deliver their best, even if not 100%.
With a cloud communication system, you can streamline your business communications, while continuing to avail advanced features in a completely secure environment.
A cloud phone system is a practical solution for the remote workforce. Your employees can easily use the app on their laptops, desktops, or mobile phones and enjoy maximum benefits from useful features needed to make or receive calls, or even transfer calls as per need. Mobility and flexibility are the future of work and businesses. It’s true – employees who work in a flexible environment are more productive, focused, and engaged. Various studies conducted during this pandemic have proven that remote working improves productivity and performance, which leads to a better turnaround on projects.
Cost-Effective in every sense!
Reducing cost drivers is the highest priority for any business. In the same way, your phone system should not, in any way, be breaking your budget. Ever looked into the fact perhaps your phone system is over-exceeding the budget, taking money away from other key investments. On-premises phone systems can cost you a fortune, especially when making international or long-distance calls. A traditional on-premises system requires not just on-site servers, but also regular maintenance and support, which adds more digits to your communication system’s budget.
Migrating to the cloud can cut these expenses. How? You see, it doesn’t cost you any hardware or installation charges. A fixed monthly or yearly subscription type of payment makes budgeting light and easy.
Cloud Phone Systems Are Scalable!
Plan on onboarding more employees? Cloud-based phones make a sensible choice. Scaling such a communication system is not just easy but easy to control and administer from an admin panel. You can add new users easily in just a few clicks. No customer support agent, no waiting in the queue, and no manual tedious work needed for these tasks! Plus, the software update installation is automatic. That means minimal manual effort and maximum benefits.
Multiply Your Talent Pool
On the bright side, the pandemic helped many companies acknowledge and accept a remote working environment, including those located in small towns away from metro areas. Some industries event felt the need to bring more people in the team, add more customer support agents in their help or support centers, and simultaneously, hire more managers and senior authorities to manage all of the upgradation. Because of cloud phones, this whole process of hiring and onboarding has simplified, streamlined, and helped boost the company’s growth to a great extent.
Interesting to say, this trend is expected to grow for organizations all across the world. The sheer idea of not being restricted to hiring your talent pool from a particular geographically defined border accentuates the value of recruiting outside of their bubble. If you can have the opportunity to hire superstars to your team regardless, concerns about their location become the least important factor.
To sustain the growing needs of an ever-evolving workforce and their expectations, we would have to wholeheartedly embrace the cloud for your phone, business communications, meetings, collaborations, and a lot more.
Cloud Phone Platforms Support More Features
Even though on-premises and cloud phone systems have quite a lot of similarities in terms of functionality, nonetheless the cloud comes with some extra features. Transcribing voicemails, for example, is among the most useful features that sends alerts to users via phone or text. This means no more suffering from the agonizing process of retrieving voicemails when virtual voicemails are readily available.
Similarly, call analytics is another beneficial feature that comes with cloud-based systems. It allows you to track the usage and performance of your sales and customer support staff. With several configurable reports, you gain insights that help you convert into actionable steps.
Spam caller protection is another useful feature that helps to easily classify and sort callers and choose to block them or forward them to voicemail to avoid unnecessary interruption.
Enhanced Call Quality and Reliability
Perhaps the most significant reason that makes cloud phone systems the future of communication is the highest level of quality and reliability. We can safely say that a modernized and digitized cloud phone system is more superior and resilient in every sense compared to the analog on-premises phone system.
However, it isn’t true for every cloud solution service to function equally. For that, you need to look into choosing the right vendor with maximum uptime averages. Ultimately, if your phone system fails to function as it should, it will have adverse effects on your business and reputation. You must be watchful and prudent when choosing a service provider because your future depends on it!
Time to future-proof your business!
The future of any business depends largely on the technology they choose. In the case of cloud phone systems, you get benefits and advantages that are likely to help you successfully pull through for years to come. Take a closer look at how Xinix’s cloud phone system can boost your business communication through an advanced virtual PBX system supported by a wide range of features and no upfront costs.
