How to make your business comms easier, better and more productive

The high price of over-complicated comms

Businesses are taking advantage of a wide range of tools to improve employee and customer communications, creating workforces that have never been better connected.

But it’s not all happy talk. The average employee now switches between 35 job-critical apps more than 1,100 times a day^[1]. Dealing with multiple phone numbers, inboxes and communication tools can result in important calls and messages being missed. Your responsiveness and productivity suffer. And you’re not alone – it’s estimated that UK businesses lose over £30 billion every single year due to missed calls^[2].

The question is, can you afford a comms infrastructure that can have such a negative effect on your revenue, not to mention the longer-term impact on customer dissatisfaction?

Swap struggle for easy

Phone systems can also be difficult and expensive to deploy and maintain. It’s a pressure on your budget and your tech people – especially when they have to work evenings and weekends to avoid system downtime during business hours.

Happily, it’s a problem you can easily put in the past. Today’s best cloud telephone systems make it simple to contact your colleagues and customers, anywhere, any time. They allow you to assign just one telephone number and inbox to every employee, making communications simpler and faster. Wherever they’re working, your people can respond immediately and deliver more value for the business. And solutions that also integrate with other collaboration platforms – such as Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business – deliver a truly unified communications (UC) experience: 93% of businesses that invested in UC saw an increase in productivity and motivation gains^[3].

The leading communications solutions not only reduce the physical infrastructure you have to manage, but they’re also easy and fast to deploy as well as simple to manage and support. You save business time and costs, and your tech team saved stress and frustration. Businesses adopting UC solutions save 50% in network costs compared to legacy phone systems^[4].

The questions to ask before choosing a cloud telephony solution

Before you invest in a new cloud telephony solution, make sure you choose one that’s designed to make your communications easy for everyone. You need to know:

• Does it provide a single phone number and inbox for every employee, so that calls can be transferred to them whether they’re in the office, at home, or out and about?
• Will users have full control over how they want to be reached (office, home or mobile phone) at the push of a button?
• Will you be able to transfer calls between people and devices with a single swipe of your finger?
• Does it provide presence awareness, to show colleagues’ availability?
• Does it have an intuitive UI and simple communication features?
• Does it provide tools for prioritising important calls and sending less important calls to voicemail?
• Will you have 24/7/365 access to a UK-based technical support team?
• Can end-user training be provided?
• Will it reduce the physical infrastructure you have to manage?
• Does it offer plug-and-play deployment alongside your existing phone infrastructure?
• Does it offer zero-touch hardware auto-provisioning?
• Is it maintenance free?
• Does it provide simple tools for adding and managing users?

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For individual advice on ensuring your cloud telephone solution makes life easy for everyone,

call us on 020 3740 6740 or email us at hello-uk@nfon.com

[1] Pega (2018) Demystifying the desktop: What workforce intelligence reveals

[2] Aircall Blog (2016) Missed Calls: How to Measure the Real Impact on Your Business

[3] Eastern Management Group (2019) Unified Communications Productivity Analysis: Small Businesses

[4] Eastern Management Group (2019) Unified Communications Productivity Analysis: Small Businesses