5 Reasons SMEs Should Use Hosted Voice

There’s a misconception that certain innovative business tools can only be used by larger corporations. This is particularly true for a tool like hosted voice or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which is predominantly viewed as a solution for bigger companies. The truth is that hosted voice is uniquely applicable to businesses of all sizes, including small-to-medium enterprises. In short, it’s worth considering for your small and growing company. 

Today, we’re going to demystify hosted voice for SMEs and unlock the key benefits that will help you improve your customer service and boost your sales strategy.

Why Consider Hosted Voice At All?

First, let’s review why hosted voice is useful, regardless of the size and type of business that you run. After all, there are a wide variety of channels that you can use to communicate with your customers and deliver customer service, from Facebook Messenger to live chat functionality on your website. 

Ultimately, though, the majority of customers want to talk to someone on the phone, making voice the preferred channel for you to connect with and care for your customers. Hosted voice is a powerful way to deliver exceptional customer support, and while you can support your customer services with alternative channels, hosted voice will unite your entire business with a single cloud-based, hosted telephone system that includes unique features. 

Here are our 5 main benefits that SMEs will benefit from when it comes to hosted voice.

1. Stay Connected

Frequent service disruptions, a pandemic, riots, and other scenarios outside of your control can and do occur, impacting all businesses – but SMEs in particular, who don’t always have the reserves to survive such disruptions. Not only can you lose key information, but you probably won’t be in a position to take calls and manage your customers’ queries, orders, and expectations during emergencies.

But because hosted voice lives in the cloud, you won’t lose information, you can still take customer calls remotely from wherever you’re located, or reroute calls if necessary.

2. Professionalise Your Operation

With hosted voice, you’re not tied down to a traditional office line and relying on your cell phone number to operate remotely. There’s nothing wrong with using your personal number, but as an SME looking to professionalise and upgrade your brand perception in the market, a business line is a strategic move. 

Hosted voice has all of the standard bells and whistles, from IVR, call waiting, and custom voice prompts to automated customer services conference calling, and more. Features like these ensure that you never miss calls, are always available to do business while you’re on the move, and reinforce your brand identity at the very touchpoint.

3. Reduce Missed Opportunities

Hosted voice also enables you to be mobile with features that allow you to make or receive extension calls at any time, from anywhere, and on any device. What this also means is that you won’t miss any calls and sales opportunities, because with call routing you can reroute key numbers that can’t go unanswered. Like those big clients whose calls you prioritise and can’t afford to miss.

4. Hosted Voice Scales With Your Business 

One of the most important benefits that we’ve found with hosted voice is the fact that this tool is provided as a consumption model, so it’s perfectly scalable with an SME’s growth trajectory. You don’t have to get all the features at once, you can use what is beneficial now and add what will help you keep up with your sales and customer demands as you expand. Interestingly, you can also scale down, a benefit that’s useful for those SMEs relying on seasonal employees to help them maximise their peak sales periods, like Black Friday, Christmas, and post-Christmas sale seasons.

5. Data Rich Decisions

As a digital tool that lives in the cloud, you can collect data about your business’s calls and analyse things like average call time and call volume by time of day. These insights can help you make data-driven decisions around your customer communications and interactions. 

The question you should be asking yourself is, can your burgeoning SME afford not to take advantage of these benefits? Because the world has shifted to digital and for your business to survive and thrive, you should ensure your business is able to move and scale in this environment.

If you aren’t sure how to take the next step, then connect with us. Huge Connect works with SMEs to create bespoke solutions that fulfill your business’s needs.

Call us on 087 820 0220 today.