The use of VoIP phone systems for both external and internal communications is increasing in popularity among organisations. However, not all systems are designed and manufactured equal. As such, these systems are appropriate for use in call centres. Many of them lack the necessary features to handle large volumes of calls.

How Are Call Centres Different?

Unlike organisation phone systems, a call centre entails a centralised office that manages telephone inquiries. These services can be dealt with in-house or outsourced to a professional company, like Call Center

What Features Do You Need In A Phone System For A Call Centre?

Over the last decade, call centres and the technologies that power their function have changed enormously. For instance, call centres handle more calls today than they did in the past. Moreover, customers’ expectations from call centres have grown. Customers expect more than being able to contact businesses by phone. They also want the option of communicating with businesses via live chats, forums, social media, emails, and other non-voice platforms. As such, call centres have the responsibility of setting up multiple communications channels.

Multi-Channel Communications

A modern call centre communications system should incorporate everything you need into one system. To this end, the system should have email, call recording, and messaging capabilities.

Software & Working Together

Beyond incorporating the various communications channels into one platform, there is also a need for the various platform to connect and work complementary to one another. To make this possible, many vendors are using the industry-standard – Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technologies. Moreover, phone systems are also equipped with more than traditional cables, phones, and headsets. The system needs to have the software required to make everything possible.

Your Call Centre Will Need the Following:

• Call & queue management,
• The capability to direct calls to particular groups or teams of agents
• Call recording – record calls for playback (training & feedback)
• Analytics & reporting
• Enterprise tools such as ERP and CRM
• Call monitoring – allowing supervisors to monitor agents without intruding
• IVR (Interactive Voice Response), which influences the success of a call centre. If a customer needs you to provide them with basic information (including outstanding orders, unpaid bills, etc.), the IVR system will handle such information. This technology frees up call centre agents to deal with more complex issues.

Telephony

The final set of features is the telephony features. These are standard features that every VoIP phone system comes with. Some of the features that falls under this category include notifications, voicemail, call hold, and transcription, and much more. There are also other call centre systems that offer click to call functionality, allowing customers to call your business right from their website on their browser.

Why Is VoIP Technology The Best Solution For Call Centres?

1. Price

On the pricing front, VoIP phone systems have an enormous advantage. There are no services or products that can compete with VoIP technology. Long-distance calls over hosted VoIP costs a fraction of the traditional services while the internal calls between employees are free.

2. Features

On the feature front, VoIP technology also has an advantage over traditional technologies. Being digital technology, call centres can incorporate sophisticated features that you simply cannot get from traditional landlines. Analog systems are incapable of integrating multichannel communications similar to VoIP. Importantly, you do not have to invest in extra equipment to get these new features.

3. Continuous Innovation

Cloud or hosted VoIP call centre systems deliver all the telephony services via the internet. The services provider is responsible for managing the software and equipment. As such, the vendor is capable of launching and delivering new features faster. Likewise, they can upgrade/improve existing features equally faster. With competition in this market segment fairly stiff, vendors are in a race to deliver innovative features to their customers and clients, you can rest assured that vendors will constantly work to improve your experience. It is also easy to switch vendors, which is an incentive for all vendors to provide the best services possible.