5 ways cloud telephony is powering growing businesses

By Devishobha ChandramouliMicrosoft has listed cloud telephony as one of the four technology trends that have the potential to shape businesses. Cloud telephony is emerging as a major enabler of new business trends for both established businesses and startups- as somewhat of a magic solution that intersects service and scale. And this is precisely the reason why cloud telephony is a boon for growing businesses. For a business in the growth phase, reliability and scale are the two most important factors. That is what cloud telephony promises. When reliability and scale are taken care of, it is easy for the business to focus on it’s core competence without having to worry about infrastructure to power customer conversation. Here the prime reasons why cloud telephony is the best way to power growing businesses:[caption id="attachment_339395" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Representational Image: REUTERS[/caption]Customer support infrastructure is taken careIn a growing business, addressing customer grievances to grow the tribe of happy customers is one of the most important tasks. Location, unavailability of agents, missing calls due to lines being busy, solving multiple issues, etc. are things that every business struggles with. Cloud telephony makes call management infinitely easier. The infrastructure is taken care of. There will no need to worry about issues like lines being down, unavailability of phone lines, untraceable missed calls etc. There is no need to invest in manpower or technology to ensure these factors don’t impact the performance of the support team.[caption id="attachment_357771" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image: Hashoo Foundation[/caption]Improves the quality of customer support Cloud telephony provides accurate information on every call and SMS sent or received. Using this data, companies can analyze patterns related to issues like call volumes, time taken to solve the query, number of missed calls, etc. This directly enables streamlining response rates and improving response quality.  For example, one premium hotel was able to use call analytics to recalibrate their staffing based on the calls they were missing. Their analysis revealed that they missed most calls post-lunch and during night-times where international travellers try to reach them. They dedicated 2 staffers to cater to these timings and saw their business jump by 30% almost immediately! [caption id="attachment_326989" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image: Reuters[/caption]Customer engagement improvesBuilding customer loyalty is one of the major to-do’s of any growing business. And simple customizations in the call flow can help companies do this. A healthcare company reported increased engagement with their customers when they were able to tweak their greetings to suit the seasons. One company creatively incorporated a short care routine for the prevalent seasonal health concerns to serve them better. This entire exercise probably took them only a few clicks and some drag-drop functions. But the results were not small!Agent productivity spikesA thriving E-Commerce business needed to make it easier for their customers to reach them, and adopted a cloud telephony system that gave them a single number that could be used to connect the mobile numbers of all its executives. This spiked their productivity because even annoying things like a mobile phone running of charge now failed to faze them, they could just pick up another mobile phone linked to the same number again making the transition seamless. Cloud telephony inherently supports today’s remote and flexible work culture and allows employees to take calls from their own mobile devices. As many businesses today operate from multiple locations, cloud telephony makes it easy to allow employees to work from wherever they are. Customer support - previously seen as a function tethered to a desk and a telephone, can now happen from anywhere without compromising on the quality of their work. Most importantly, scale without any worries Every business wants to scale, but scaling does not happen without happy customers. Switching to cloud telephony systems makes it lighter and faster to care for your customer. With rich features that come for a fraction of a cost of traditional system, scaling suddenly look less daunting. The biggest advantage that comes with cloud telephony is that scaling does not have to include costs on additional infrastructure or manually adding systems. Cloud telephony allows the addition/deletion/modification of users through a few mouse clicks and allows the freedom to make more calls and reach more people. Of course, the cost is only reflective of the usage. Running a growing business means having to stand up and stick to what you believe in. This is hard enough, and the best bet to ease this challenge is to readily embrace technology that integrates seamlessly with and compliments your grand vision for success.The author is an Inbound Marketer at Exotel