Cost Savings and Service Improvement through VOIP

Voice Over IP is one of the buzz-words the past 12 months, and with the global economic crisis, there is a increased hype about the technology, but what can it do for you?

Well, VOIP isn't just about cheap phone calls, it's about taking advantage of the modern computer technology to provide smarter, more flexible ways of communicating.

What is VOIP

VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. It refers to the technology that allows voice to be carried over standard PC networks rather than over traditional copper phone lines. VOIP is often refered to in the context of cheap phone calls over the internet, but it can also refer to using the same technology within your business.

When used in the business, a VOIP Phone System generally also includes sophisticated computer software that provides telephony features previously only available to the largest corporate and government offices, including voicemail, automatic call distribution, FindMe rules, in-house conference rooms and more.

Reducing Call Costs with VOIP

External Calls

If you have traditional phone lines from an old-style telecommunications carrier, then you're probably paying more for phone calls than you need to. In the old world, where owning the copper lines form a quasi-monopoly, there wasn't much in the way of competition.

Now that you can carry multiple concurrent voice calls over a single inexpensive ADSL line, that strangle-hold on communications has largely been broken and now there are literally hundreds of VOIP carriers out there, from the two-man band operating in a garage, to some of the biggest ISPs in the country.

While price and quality varies from company to company, even the high-quality VOIP carriers are offering prices 30-40% cheaper than you might now be paying .

Typical call rates are 10c untimed calls to anywhere in Australia, 18c per minute Mobile calls, and competitive international calls.

Internal Calls

With a suitable VOIP PABX system, calls you make between offices can travel over the internet for free. Additionally, if you have people workign from home or other remote locations, you can give them a VOIP extension and their calls to and from the office can also be conducted for free.

Improving Staff Productivity with VOIP

There are many ways you can improve staff productivity with a VOIP phone system. Improving staff producitivity can either mean increasing what you can do with existig staff, or potentially reduce the staff needed at your current workload.

Removing Unnecessary Distractions from Knowledge Workers

There are many distractions in a workplace, and constantly ringing phones can be one of them. But distractions have a a real cost associated with them. In the classic text "Peopleware", Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister studied the effect on distractions in the workplace and estimate that every unnecessary call answered by a knowledge worker will take them on average 5 minutes to deal with the call, and a further 15 minutes to re-immerse themselves into the work they were doing before being interrupted. This means, that for an average knowledge worker, each distraction can cost in the order of $20 or more.

A smart PABX system can help with this by providing features that help get calls to the right person first time, and allowing staff to choose to take phone calls the way they want to.

Direct In-Dial Numbers

If you don't have direct in-dial phone numbers, and all you customers are forced to have a main office number then you probably have one of two options to deal with those calls. Either you have someone nominated as receptionist, or you spread the load and ring lots of desks until someone picks up. Either way, the person who answers the phone is not necessarily the person the caller needs to speak to, so the call needs to be transferred to another staff member, meaning two people are distracted for each call.
Integrated Voice Response (IVR) and Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)

IVR and ACDs are the features than enable the sometimes annoying "Press 1 for Sales, press 2 for Support". While many small businesses will state that they prefer every call to be answered by a person, I'd argue that this is only a good strategy when the person answering the call is helpful.

When I call a company, I'd rather press a couple of keys to ensure that I get through a person who can answer my question, rather than have to repeat myself to two or three people to achieve the same result.

A well designed IVR menu can actually improve your customer service. For example, if a caller simply wants to know your opening hours, then hearing a recorded message can be a better experience than waiting on the phone for 2 or 3 minutes until a staff member is available to take the call.

Being able to record the IVR yourself, and change and adapt your message and menu flows whenever you like, means you can constantly adapt your companies telephone "persona" to meet your changing customer relationship strategy.

Voicemail

A VOIP Phone System with can provide each person with a Voicemail box, just like on you mobile phone. However, many VOIP phone systems will provide "Voicemail to Email" functionality which will also convert this to an audio file and email it to to you. This means that if you're not at your desk, you can receive a call without interrupting another person in the office.

Moves, Adds and Changes

A VOIP Phone System uses your existing computer network to also carry your voice traffic. This means that your new VOIP handset simply plugs into the same type of cable that your PC uses. Many handsets even include two network ports, so that you can "daisy-chain" your phone and PC on a single network cable.

Because each handset knows it's own extension, it doesn't care where it's plugged in, so you can move your handset from one side of the office an plug it back into any network port, and it will keep working with the same extension number. You can even take the handset home without and plug it into your home network without it having to be reconfigured.

If you do want to change the extension numbers on the handsets, you can do this yourself via a web-based control panel. If you want to add a new handset, then you can do this yourself too.

With new VOIP phone systems, you can say goodbye to the phone-guy who drives around in his truck and carries a screwdriver. That's an expense you no longer need.

Working Smarter

Telecommuting and In-House Conference calls

VOIP technology now allows business to work smarter and reduce the time and costs of travel. With a VOIP handset and a good internet connection, anyone can work from home, and have their phone behave just like they were in the office. Incoming calls would ring on the handset just as if the handset was in the office, and both internal calls and external calls would behave exactly the same. This means that you don't need to sacrifice communication and collaboration in your office in order to introduce the flexibility of telecommuting like you used to.

VOIP phone systems now have the capabilities to host in-house conference calls. You can now invite customers, partners and staff to a voice conference call without payign external service providers large amounts of money to do this for you. Your in-house calls are easier to setup and manage, and don't need to be booked in advance, making you more able to react quickly when needed.
FindMe Follow Me
Sometimes you don't want calls to simply go to your voicemail, so features like FindMe are designed to let an end-user configure the way that calls are directed. For example, between 8am and 6pm on weekdays, I would like calls to ring my desk for 15 seconds, then try my mobile phone for 15 seconds.

This sort of functionality provides the balance of being accessible to customers and partners, but on your own terms, and configurable by the end user, so that this soft of functionality doesn't simply move the costs to an extenal phone-guy.

VIP and After Hours Customer Service

As a small business providing exceptional customer service, there are probably time when you want to provide a different level of service to certain customers. Using rules to distinguish between customers using either their caller ID, a "priority" phone number, or an IVR with a password, you can choose to route the calls differently. For example you might want some callers to go directly to voicemail after hours, whereas you want your VIP customers the option of having the sytem try calling one or more mobile numbers.

Like many technologies, the cost savings and productivity benefits of VOIP are depend on your specific situation, but can be strongly influenced by your imagination.