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Tag: customer service

4 Benefits of Using a Web Phone

Posted on by Luke Genoyer

Source: DepositPhotos.com - Lic#49344875 ID#27446420

Web phones are becoming an increasingly popular outbound calling tool to support sales and customer success teams. If your company strives on improving customer relations by being proactive and engaging with customers, then a web dialer may be a good fit for you. Here we will go over web phone benefits and why your business should consider using a web phone for business communication.

Web Phone: Definition and Benefits

A web phone or web dialer is an application that enables users to make and answer calls from a web browser via the internet. Such dialers are mostly compatible with Windows PC, macOS, Linux, and Android devices. Similar to a softphone, a web dialer presents users with a dial pad and allows users to:

  • Store contact information and history
  • Access voicemail
  • Record calls or customize the outgoing caller ID, and more

You can place calls locally and internationally through high-speed internet and an easy-to-use interface. All you need is a good internet connection, a headset, and a few virtual phone numbers.

So, what are the top benefits of using a web phone?

1. Generate New Sales

A web phone can speed up your sales team’s outbound calling efforts by making it easy to place calls from anywhere. You can use this dialer within your office’s sales team or with remote agents. Save customers’ contact information, past interactions, and other important call notes. This way, the next time you or another agent needs to contact the customer, all relevant information is readily available and the customer can be dialed quickly.

2. Save on International Calling Costs

Virtual phone service providers like United World Telecom offer web dialers along with their outbound calling service. An outbound calling service enables inexpensive local and international calling. Plus, you can even customize the outgoing caller ID to display that area’s toll free or local number. Together, the combination of these tools makes it cheaper and easier to connect with international customers and drive up global sales.

3. Implement Customer Retention Strategies

Customer retention is important for any business as customers are what drives a company to success. And so, you must do everything you can to satisfy your current customers such as:

  • Welcoming new customers
  • Scheduling appointments
  • Reminding them of upcoming payments, appointments, etc
  • Following up on recent purchases or inquiries
  • Reaching out to customers who abandoned their carts
  • Collecting feedback to improve your services and products

A web phone can help you quickly reach out to customers within your list. You can add notes about the interaction, feedback, and more.

4. Offer Excellent Customer Success and Support

Lastly, a web dialer can help you carry out excellent customer success and support services. Customer success includes taking a proactive approach to creating strong customer relations and assisting them in achieving their goals. Support, on the other hand, is a reactive approach where you provide assistance after customers reach out to you. Customer success and support both positively impact customer satisfaction and retention rates. And therefore, both need to be given equal importance, if applicable to your business.

Where Can You Get a Web Phone?

United World Telecom provides virtual business phone numbers for more than 160 countries across the world. This includes toll free, international, and local numbers. You can set up your web dialer by adding our outbound calling service to your virtual number plan and use any of your purchased numbers as outgoing caller IDs when placing calls. To learn more, contact us today!

10 Benefits of Using an IVR System

Posted on by Meryl D'Sa-Wilson

Source: DepositPhotos.com - Lic#355937164 #27446420

Almost every business now has an IVR system that answers calls on its behalf and then routes callers to the appropriate department. So, why are more and more companies using this automated communication tool?

IVR System: Top 10 Benefits

An interactive voice response, or IVR system, is an automated voice response system that answers incoming calls, identifies the purpose of the calls, and assists the caller. It transfers calls to the appropriate department or provides self-serving options that customers can complete themselves. IVR phone systems cut down on time and money while improving the way a caller interacts with a company. Here are 10 ways a business can benefit from IVR service.

1. Prioritizes Calls Based on Value

IVR systems can be predetermined with rules to prioritize and route calls based on the caller and their needs. This way, you can route high-value customer calls to the most appropriate or qualified agent. If agents are unavailable, the caller will be first in the queue. Doing so ensures that your team does not lose an important caller’s business due to long wait times.

2. Reduces Costs

An effective and well-designed IVR service can run without the need of an agent. It can help callers by providing self-serving options and only when these options fail, is an agent required. Therefore, an IVR system can help businesses save on the costs of hiring large customer service teams by allowing the automated system to do more. Your team can then focus on more important issues and interacting with high-profile clients.

3. Reduces Time Spent on Mundane Tasks

Customers calling a business need answers fast. Customer service teams are constantly on the phone resolving issues. An interactive voice response system saves time for everyone by interacting with the customer, identifying their needs, and offering support either through pre-recorded messages or by transferring them to the right department. They can expedite calls, accurately transfer callers, help them complete certain actions, and schedule callbacks. These calls never go unanswered. Callers receive support in some form or the other, without time wasted.

4. Supports and Improves Lead Conversion

Recent advancements in IVR technology have made it possible to use this tool for sales and lead generation. IVR systems, depending on the provider, are capable of reaching out to prospects on predetermined lists to check if they pre-qualify. They will ask prospects a few questions, after which qualified prospects will be routed to live representatives.

5. Enhances Caller Experience

Most providers offer IVR phone systems that can be customized on your end. Customize to improve caller experience through custom greetings, easy-to-understand prompts, and so on. This interaction should reflect an ideal interaction with your company. Callers who can easily navigate the system and get their concerns resolved quickly will only appreciate your brand even more.

6. A Marketing and Feedback Tool

Marketing teams have used IVR to study customer behavior and preferences using phone surveys and conducting marketing research. You can gain insights into your audience’s likes and dislikes, their demographics, communication preferences, and more. This information can be used to serve them better.

7. Scalability

IVR systems can adapt to an organization and its customers’ changing needs and expectations. Cloud-based systems are highly customizable and have virtual communication features such as intelligent routing, multilingual capabilities, and more. As your business grows, you can add more to your IVR phone system to support your needs.

8. Provide 24/7 Customer Support

IVR technology makes it possible to provide 24/7 customer support as it answers calls even during off or after hours. During these times, calls can be routed to a different office (in a different time zone), remote agents, or even your mobile phone. It can also provide answers to simple questions, provide company and product information, verify accounts, process payments, schedule callbacks, route to voicemail, and more. This way, even if caller concerns are not resolved, they know that they will receive a callback.

9. Personalized Self-Service

Automation is the future of customer service. An advanced IVR system can help callers verify new accounts, check account information, make payments, request renewals, and much more. You can even program the system to provide trouble-shooting support. This is helpful during high traffic periods when agents are busy, during off-hours, or for customers who prefer to solve the problem themselves.

10. Improve the Business’ Image

A business that provides 24/7 service and is able to resolve issues on the first call itself is a company that can be trusted and relied upon. And an IVR service can build that image for your company by making it more accessible and helping customers resolve their concerns quickly and efficiently.

Ready to Get IVR for Your Business?

United World Telecom offers an IVR system that can be easily customized and designed to meet your needs and requirements. Our IVR service comes along with each of our virtual number plans. To get the service, simply sign up for a new number or port your existing number on our homepage. Have more questions? Speak to an expert today!

Use Outbound Calling and Call Recording to Improve Customer Relations

Posted on by Meryl D'Sa-Wilson

Source: DepositPhotos.com - Lic#25189551 ID#27446420

As a business owner, you know how important it is to build and maintain customer relations. Thankfully, there are telecom solutions that can boost interactions between a business and its customers. An outbound calling service and call recording software are two such solutions. Here, we will discuss how these services can benefit your business.

Customer Relations: A Necessity

Customer relations refers to the relationship between a business and its customers. Good customer relations leads to customer satisfaction which increases retention rates. If your business fails to keep customers satisfied, then you will find them leaving your business for a competitor. So, what can you do to help your employees create strong customer relations?

Outbound Calling: Connect with More Prospects

Outbound calling is one of United World Telecom’s premium services that allows businesses to call local and international clients at reasonable calling rates. Most companies think of outbound calling as a way of generating new leads where the sales team calls potential customers and tries to sell products to them. While outbound calling does accomplish this, it also can do more.

You can also follow up with existing clients to practice customer success and help them achieve their goals. Customer success is when you work closely with consumers and clients to chart a course of action that helps them complete a goal. In this case, interaction is more long term than a customer support interaction.

How can your business improve customer relations with outbound calling? You can:

  • Welcome new customers
  • Follow-up with recent purchases or older customers
  • Generate leads
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Study different markets and customer preferences
  • Research the market
  • Set appointments
  • Make reservations
  • Track customer success efforts
  • Send reminders
  • Collect feedback, and more

Call Recording: Improve Quality and Accountability

Call recording software, also offered by United World Telecom, lets you record up to 100% of incoming and outgoing calls. You can store these recordings as MP3 files for up to 6 years within your account’s control panel.

Recording business calls gives your business the opportunity to go back in time and review important interactions. As a result, you can determine areas of improvement and sales tactics that worked. Additionally, recordings can be studied to find better ways to communicate with clients and learn what it is that they prefer or appreciate. With call recording, you get a better understanding of your target audience and learn how to serve them better.

How can call recording help your business maintain customer relations? You can:

  • Study recordings to identify strengths and weaknesses
  • Use recordings to train new employees
  • Collect and track customer information
  • Conduct performance evaluations
  • Maintain compliance with regulations
  • Keep customer information safe
  • Gather feedback
  • Protect against liabilities, and more

Customer Success and Customer Relations

As a business owner, you must strive to provide your employees with the right tools that can support their jobs. An outbound calling service can help them connect with a wider range of potential customers. This will, in turn, bring a more diversified customer base for the company. On the other hand, call recording will help them learn from their mistakes and accomplishments. You can further incentivize appropriate behavior by rewarding employees who do well in the recordings.

When employees are given the right tools, they are able to focus more on customer interaction and customer relations. Services and software that are easy to use will ensure that less time is spent working the systems and more time is spent on winning customers over.

Win Customers Over and Grow Your Business

United World Telecom strives to give you top-notch features and tools that can support your business’ communication needs. We want to help you expand your reach and increase customer retention rates. Outbound calling and call recording are two popular services we offer for this reason. To learn more about how these services can benefit you, call us at 1 (877) 898 8646.

SaaS Startup Solutions for Every Niche

Posted on by Tom Senkus

Source: Depositphotos.com Lic#158415286 ID#109613038

Are you looking for SaaS startup solutions for your business? It seems that Software as a Service is becoming the go-to for budding entrepreneurs across all industries and niches. Every day, new companies emerge, boasting a lean, agile business model built on delivering scalable services for every purpose. However, there are many commonalities across SaaS startups giving new companies a competitive edge right out the gate. Similarly, one of these common elements is virtual phone numbers offered by service providers like United World Telecom.

Solutions for a Multitude of Businesses

It’s important to remember that SaaS is a very broad term that encompasses nearly every conceivable niche. Therefore, in this article, we will take a look at how United World Telecom can enhance your startup’s efforts with:

  • Virtual Offices/Locations
  • Social Media-Based Sales Conversions
  • Providing Customer Support

Virtual Offices/Locations for a SaaS Startup Business

One of the advantages of SaaS businesses is that they are predominantly operated over the Internet to deliver their services, as well as offer customer support. This is where virtual phone numbers bridge the digital divide, offering a humanizing element that doesn’t necessarily need face-to-face communication. Instead of using traditional methods of expansion via branch offices, “virtual offices” and “virtual locations” manage this for SaaS startups. Customers can reach your company by way of virtual phone numbers, which reroute calls instantly anywhere around the world. Consequently, with this functionality, you can customize your virtual office/location to fit your startup’s unique niche and business model.

SaaS Startup
Source: Depositphotos.com Lic#158415490 ID#6702124

Using the Right Software

Similarly, online collaboration tools like Teamwork, Slack, and Trello have made it easier to execute tasks in remote locations for you SaaS business as needed. For instance, you can hire a subcontractor to provide in-house services to implement your software. So, at the same time, they can act as an agent of your startup. This is perfect for companies that regularly outsource this type of labor or those with agents scattered across the globe. Keeping in touch by phone ensures that everyone can manage and perform the details of each project with constant communication.

Social Media-Based Sales Conversions

Social media is a part of every business type imaginable. And Saas-based startups are using social media more and more to demonstrate how their software can revolutionize their customer’s lives. By including media on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, you appeal to a wide base of interested customers that can jumpstart your SaaS startup in no time.

Of course, you need to convert these potential leads into actual customers. Virtual phone numbers fulfill this role perfectly, particularly with United World Telecom’s add-on known as “CallMe Click.” As the name implies, when a user clicks on a link for phone number or contact info, a call is instantly initiated to your virtual phone number. This instant connection helps move things along quickly, taking advantage of the moment customers demonstrate interest. After all, in the distraction-heavy world of social media, creating an instantaneous connection to your SaaS company is ideal.

Providing Customer Support for your SaaS Startup

While running a startup often requires juggling many day-to-day tasks, its very easy to lose track of keeping the human element in your SaaS startup. This is why it’s important to have virtual phone numbers for each target market you’re looking to connect with. Building long-term relationships with customers is essential to the longevity of your company. No wants a business treating them as just another number.

For example, by using nationwide toll free numbers, your SaaS startup can circumvent problems with intra-regional and international calls. These problems typically manifest as:

  • Long-distance fees,
  • Service blockages,
  • Or simply the preferences of your customer base to deal with a startup that they perceive as a domestic entity.

Virtual Numbers for Your SaaS Business

Luckily, United World Telecom offers countless phone numbers to add to your arsenal. With an inventory of over 140+ countries and countless cities/regions, you can accommodate your customers’ needs impeccably. This, in turn, leads to more sales conversions for your SaaS startup – no matter which industry you specialize in.

Starting Your First Virtual Call Center Business

Posted on by Becki Meerbeek

Source: Stockphoto.com O#100057623455 ID#100200144052

Looking for a way to reach more potential customers? Or, wanting a better way to offer customer service to the customers you already have? A virtual call center allows you to operate a call center from anywhere in the world. And, this gives you the opportunity to create and run your own business affordably without having to take high risks.

What is a Call Center that is Virtual?

Basically, a virtual call center works to perform the same call center duties you imagine, but uses virtual phone numbers. This means they use phone lines that connect with the internet, so they can be used anywhere in the world an internet connection is found. The benefit to this is that you can establish a call center to reach individuals across the world from the comfort of your own home.

Whether you’re looking to start an outbound or inbound call center, a virtual phone allows you to contract with other companies to form a business relationship. Many companies don’t have the room or overhead to develop call centers for themselves. Instead, they rely on virtual phone centers run by individuals in all areas of the world to help better serve their customers and increase lead closure levels.

Benefits of a Virtual Call Center

Because virtual call centers provide such flexibility with location, they offer a number of business benefits that are hard to ignore. Some of these advantages include:

Flexibility: This allows a call center’s company employees to work from home: While virtual phone centers can certainly be housed in a number of settings, many choose to let their virtual call employees work from home. This allows for reduced turnaround as employees are usually much happier when working from home.

The Right Setting: No outgrowing or undergrowing a workspace. When a call center leases a building, there may be a concern for how to house employees for work when business grows. On the other hand, if business dies down, the owner may still have to cover the cost of building leases, insurance, and other fees. However, virtual phone centers allow for a business not to be one size fits all. For example, during busy months, virtual phone centers can easily add and subtract service representatives to their employment team without having to worry about physical space for employees.

Expand Business Hours: Many businesses want to offer customers 24/7 support with a customer service call center. Better customer service often relates to better customer-business relationships. Virtual call centers allow for this ongoing support with local numbers from a specific geographical location.

Call center people
Source: Stockphoto.com O# 100174296076 ID#100200144052

Some Niches of Virtual Call Centers to Consider

Once you understand the cost-saving benefits of owning a call center business, you can decide on the type of virtual call center you want to invest in. Since phones are still one of the best ways to reach consumers, there are a number of industry niches to consider for a virtual call business including:

  • Telephone answering and forwarding services for other companies
  • Contract telemarketing with third parties
  • Wake up calls
  • Voicemail forwarding services
  • Mobile solicitation
  • Message receiving services
  • Customer service lines
  • Technical support services
  • Debt collection

Starting a Virtual Call Center Yourself

No matter what type of service you want to offer, call centers are a great way to provide support and maintain connections with consumers on a daily basis. And, virtual phone centers are the way to do so without high starting costs, overhead fees, and increased employee turnaround. Once you’ve chosen your niche, you can start looking for companies who invest in virtual call centers for yourself.

Need Virtual Phone Numbers for Your Call Center Business?

Because virtual call centers require the use of internet phone connections so they can do business from anywhere in the world, they require virtual phone numbers. These numbers can be customized by prefix and area code so they’re more trustworthy to potential phone customers. And, they can be forwarded to any type of phone line. To learn more about getting virtual phone numbers for your call center business, contact United World Telecom today.