Giving all your employees a desk phone, landline, or even mobiles may have worked ten years ago, but times are changing and this simply won’t make the cut anymore. Companies know how to cater to larger networks, to keep track of inbound, outbound, and internal calls made within the organization.
Having an efficient and fast phone system is important in a small business, for both reaching out and keeping in touch with potential clients and also for communication within the employees in the company.
By not picking the right system for your business (even if it’s a small startup), you’re actually going to end up wasting money, valuable time, and manual effort. In this blog, we’re going to give you 4 of the most common frustrations that you’ll be running into if you don’t make the right choice now and go with a phone system that’s going to be beneficial for all the parties involved - let’s get started!
1. Some systems can be too complicated
Your employees have enough work to manage on a day-to-day basis, and taking a course to figure out how the phone system functions isn’t fair to them, nor is it an efficient way to run a business.
Unfortunately, many phone systems can be extremely complicated and tiresome to use - you wouldn’t be able to manage one without a manual in hand. We live in an age where both hardware and software are meant to be intuitive, familiar, and easy to use.
That’s why it’s important to find one that’s easy to use by anyone, and doesn’t have much of a learning curve.
2. Limited features and inflexibility
When buying a phone system for your company, you’re going to want to get one that covers all your needs when it comes down to communication. However, some systems only give you the bare minimum, which means that you’ll still need to depend on other applications to take care of other forms of communication.
That’s why it’s important to choose a fairly flexible system that easily integrates with other tools that you currently use within the company for collaboration - such as Slack. This includes doing a lot of research to find the best phone for small business.
This way, you’ll be able to easily call, text, and even assign tasks using the same system. What makes it better is that you’ll also be able to communicate with external and internal users (clients and teammates, respectively) since you’d essentially want to simplify the process for your employees by reducing the number of apps and hardware they need to switch between.
When using a product that not only simplifies your processes but also gives you the flexibility to integrate with other apps, it reduces the strain of multi-tasking and keeping track of several conversations spread across varied tools. That’s why it’s important to make sure you’re using a platform that will help you manage all the communication related to the business.
3. Regular outages
A problem that many companies will be able to tell you when it comes to using company phone systems is that down time can completely eat away a day’s work and set you back so much, especially if you’re a startup where everyday counts. Outages happen everywhere - even the largest tech companies face them every once in a while.
However, if the outages happen frequently, you may need to reconsider your choice - since all the time you spend working to fix the problem can be spent in finding new leads or turning leads into customers.
It’s understandable that you’ll never be able to completely eliminate outages from happening, but you need to be able to route the calls you get during that time to avoid losing out on customers who reach out to you, since missing calls can negatively impact the business.
Finding a phone system that lets you re-route calls when there’s an outage will help you continue to work as before even if there’s a prolonged outage - thereby reducing the risk of missing out on potential clients.
This is something you’ll need to have an eye out for when finding phone systems for the company, especially if you communicate with clients on a regular basis.
4. They aren’t cost effective
Very often, you may feel like you’ve found the perfect phone system until you purchase it and then see how the soft costs slowly add up to a huge monthly bill. Many phone systems may look cost effective at the start, and then add in hidden costs via extra features that you need to pay more for in order to access.
This can be extremely bad for the business, especially if you’re a startup. That’s why it’s important to go with a company and a plan that seems to give you all the features you need at a good price, with no hidden charges that will later spring up.
The best way to do this is to find a system that offers all the solutions to the problems we highlighted above and then go for it if the price seems to work for your company.