Does it feel like you spend most of your days solving internal issues rather than focusing on ways to grow your business?
You’re not alone.
The life of a business owner is filled with daily obstacles while also balancing employee’s needs, customer’s needs, and the company’s needs.
Does this sound like you?
Of course, every business has its inevitable problems it needs to push through, but you may be going through unnecessary pain when there are practical solutions waiting for you.
See for yourself!
Here are 10 common business frustrations you’re most likely facing and how a PBX system can solve them right now.
1. Unhappy Customers
The main reason most customers stop doing business with a company is their customer service.
This can be due to the agents that are handling the calls, but it can also be due to the calling experience as a whole- long wait times, being transferred multiple times, and even busy tones can be off-putting and affect the way people view your company.
Stop the madness before it even begins with a virtual PBX solution that helps you automate and organize your call flow to create a seamless experience for your callers.
Why is this important?
When people feel good about calling your business, it sets a positive tone for your interactions and can even encourage them to refer your services to others.
2. Miscommunication Between Departments
It happens often: the phones ring but employees don’t answer because they’re either busy or they assume someone else will answer the call.
There’s no structure to your call flow because everyone gets the same call. As a result, employees go deaf to the ringing while callers become annoyed with the endless ringing and hang up.
What if you could categorize your incoming calls based on common caller inquiries and direct those calls to the right department or agents?
A PBX system can deliver this type of organization with a cloud receptionist.
This set up makes it easy to guide callers through a menu of possible selections. For example, if they need to speak to sales, they can press 1; if they have questions about their bill, they can press 2; etc.
Once the selection has been made, the phone rings only to the designated departments. This automated call flow ensures that employees are answering the calls correctly and that your callers are getting the attention they need.
3. Unable to Track Marketing Campaigns
How do you know if your marketing campaigns are working?
It’s easy to track online campaigns by monitoring traffic sources. Even when you’re marketing offline, you use offer codes to pinpoint the best-performing campaigns.
The problem is that sometimes people don’t bother remembering your offer codes.
They just see an offer and want to claim it as soon as possible with as little hassle as possible.
The best way to track your campaigns, both offline and online, is by using campaign-specific phone numbers. With a PBX system, it’s possible to use multiple phone numbers and route them to either your main line or to a set of extensions.
For example, say you want to send out a total of 200 flyers by mail to 4 local areas where your target market lives. Then, say you print 4 batches of flyers, each with a different phone number and send them off with high hopes.
When the calls start coming in, they are automatically directed to your sales team for increased efficiency.
Later, you will be able to identify which flyer a person received based on the number they’re calling you from and compare the number of total calls with the number of deals closed to see which area had the best closing rate.
This helps you keep track of which campaign generated the most inbound calls. The goal here is to find the area that responds best to your flyer for a more targeted campaign in the future.
[Read: 8 Easy & Powerful PBX Phone System Tips for Your Business]
4. Spending Too Much on Inadequate Features
For many business owners, less is more.
With a PBX phone system, you don’t have to worry about paying too much for features you won’t use.
It’s easy to find a provider that offers tailored solutions or one that offers a plan with the features you need at the right price.
The low cost of a PBX system is what makes this a great solution for small business owners facing the cost frustrations of traditional phone lines and unnecessary features.
5. Limited Scalability
The great thing about most PBX service providers is that they make scaling up to the next service tier easy.
Despite the rapid growth of VoIP as a preferred communication technology for businesses, however, traditional phone service is still an option for some.
Unfortunately, these business owners attached to Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) aren’t seeing the benefits of PBX system’s easy scalability.
When the time comes to branch out to different locations or add an extension to your existing system, all it takes is a phone call to your service provider and possibly purchasing new desk phones.
Since VoIP is cloud-based, there’s no need for clunky or complex hardware installation, so business growth is always seamless.
6. Limited Volume
Limited volume is another frustration that business owners are experiencing.
Once you outgrow the capacity of the phone service, you may find yourself having to supplement your existing phone service with additional services, costing you significantly more time and money.
Avoid this headache once and for all with a PBX phone system that gives you the scalability and volume that you need for long-term success.
You can have virtually unlimited extensions with just one phone number without worrying about snowballing costs or downtime.
This is what it means to have control over your communications.
7. Missed Messages
Missed calls are bad, but missed messages are even worse.
Why?
Because when a caller leaves a message, they have the impression that their call will be returned. When it’s not returned (for whatever reason), it can hurt your credibility and leave a negative impression of your company.
Instead of relying on hand written messages from a receptionist or plain old voicemail to take your messages, use voicemail to email.
Voicemail to email uses the additional step of sending the voicemail audio file to an email inbox to ensure that the message is seen.
Receiving your messages in a place that you constantly check improves reaction time, as well as customer satisfaction.
8. Limited Reporting for Employee Development
Decision-making is always easier when there’s data to inform your decisions.
By taking advantage of the reporting capabilities of a virtual phone system, you’re able to visualize the performance of your agents, track performance and talk-time, and even gather data to pinpoint the best times for making outbound calls.
[Video: How to make an outbound call]
Precise metrics of overall employee performance allows you to give accurate performance reviews, discuss areas for improvement, and develop strategies for your sales and customer service teams for future successes.
Live coaching tools, like Whisper, are also an option for daily development and can result in an increase in customer satisfaction rates.
9. Communication Gaps Due to Rapid Growth
As your business begins to grow, you learn that there are new hurdles to jump and even more frustrations to deal with, like keeping your communication unified.
Close this communication gap with a PBX system that makes it easy for employees in separate locations to stay in touch with each other using robust functionality like extension dialing.
Whether you have two locations or several, you can preserve a unified presence and keep your communications tightly knit with one phone solution.
Call overflow is another unexpected, but common, communication problem that can easily be prevented by managing your call flow with simple features like call forwarding and hunt groups.
Alleviating your call volume and spreading it throughout locations helps agents assist callers without becoming overwhelmed.
[Read: How VoIP Phone System helps manage multiple locations]
10. Increased Mobile Usage and Remote Workers Creates Disconnection
Today, almost half of all U.S. workers are working remotely at least sometimes. With companies seeing their staff being separated more and more, there are new issues arising when it comes to maintaining consistent communication.
Along with this trend, more business owners are opting to use their smartphone as their main business communication device. Although it’s a more convenient option for some, it can also mean jeopardizing a professional image.
Kill two birds with one stone.
A PBX system makes it easy to turn your cell phone into a professional communication device while simultaneously unifying your scattered workforce.
Use a toll-free number for callers to reach a main line and extensions to reach workers wherever they are, be it at the office on an IP phone or on their mobile phone.
Callers won’t even realize that they’re speaking to a remote worker or cell phone user, and you can rest easy knowing your employees and customers are satisfied.
What are some frustrations you’ve experienced? We’d like to know! Share your comments below.