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Modern business does not tolerate waiting, and this applies not only to the fight for customers and making important business decisions. Customer expectations regarding customer service are also becoming higher! Today, it is difficult to consider a successful business in which customers are forced to call the company for a long time, wait for an answer from employees, or get nervous because their issue takes too long to resolve. If this happens, the chances are much higher that the client will simply go to a faster competitor than show loyalty and obediently wait to be served. The times of manual calls, requests to call back later, or dial the number of another employee have irrevocably sunk into oblivion. And thanks to digital telephony, you can forget about losing customers due to poor-quality telephone service. You just need to choose the right technology and its suppliers to get a reliable digital telephony tool for your needs. But let's take a closer look at how to do this in our article. Tools and Technologies: What IP Telephony Offers to Businesses Today Let's start with which technologies today help businesses maintain a high level of customer service in the telephony sector. Auto-dialing is a function provided by special equipment or software for automatically dialling customer numbers from a database. If you have a database with customer/lead phone numbers, you can automate the calling process with this technology. The tool dials the client and, at the moment of connection, transfers the call either to a free operator from among the employees, or to an IVR - an interactive voice response tool. Using the auto-dialing function, you can evenly distribute the load on operators, and increase the speed of dialing and the number of calls to customers. In this case, the auto-dialing tool can use different algorithms, i.e., predictive, progressive, or previewing client data before connecting. IVR or Interactive Voice Response is a tool for automating the delivery of information to clients. The voice assistant either responds to tone dialling according to a given algorithm or recognizes speech and reacts accordingly: transfers the call to the desired department, plays an information message, etc. At the same time, auto-dialing and IVR tools can be provided in several form factors. For example, in the format of software that works using VoIP. There is also a more convenient way to ensure the operation of auto-dialing by using not a software product installed on the company's computers, but SaaS solutions which provide software as a service remotely with access from any device. Benefits of Using Auto-Dialing for Businesses What makes an auto-dialing tool truly effective for running any business? Increasing the efficiency of the call center or sales department. Automating customer dialling reduces dialling and answering time, and you can reach many more customers in a given time frame compared to manual calling. Strengthening customer loyalty. The operator has the opportunity to learn more about the client even before starting a conversation with him, and this improves interaction and helps build strong connections between the client and the company, strengthening the client's loyalty, because he feels that the company is interested in him. Increased sales. Call automation frees up your time to work more effectively with each client. You can concentrate on improving the quality of service and with this, sales increase comes. Reduced downtime. Your call center operates without downtime, and there are no periods of excessive load, too. Auto-dialing allows you to effectively distribute time and calls between operators, and it calculates intervals to forward the call to a free employee. What to Consider: What Auto-Dialing Functions Do Businesses Need? Of course, the auto-dialing tool from different service providers may differ in its functionality. To get the most effective software for your purposes, please pay attention to the availability of the following useful functions in the selected software: Integration with your CRM. CRM as a system for managing relationships with clients is a must for business. If you use a specific CRM, it's worth paying attention to how telephony integration is implemented with your tool. By the way, at IPTel, we offer a ready-to-use CRM with built-in telephony, including auto-dialing. This is a convenient solution for business, especially if you just want to start using CRM and are looking for a suitable option. Answering machine detector. Why should you waste the operator's time on a call that was answered by an answering machine? The answering machine detection function will help to filter out such calls and not forward them to the operator. Similar functions can be used to filter calls to busy numbers and numbers that automatically turn on fax or voice mail. Call forwarding is a function that allows the client to either leave a message to the company after the signal or select the desired department and contact its employees. Remote access is an important function, especially if part of your team works remotely, and it is crucial for you that calls are forwarded on time and accurately not only within the office but also to remote operators. Do-not-call-me lists. If you have clients who do not want to receive calls from you, all you need to do is use this feature to have the auto-dialer skip numbers from such a list. Tools for collecting statistics and analytics. Built-in analytics tools allow you to quickly receive information about the work of the call center, call statistics and results in the form of clear reports. Voice messages are another feature worth adding to your must-have list. Most auto-dialing tools provide the ability to include various voice messages to inform customers without involving operators. Tools for managing your contact database. This is a function with which operators and responsible employees will be able to upload and download contact lists and change customer information to update it. Of course, your business may not need all of these features. But the more of them are included in the capabilities of the selected auto-dialing tool, the better. Tips for Choosing: What to Consider When Selecting Auto-Dialing Software from a Business Point of View Firstly, the search for suitable software and a digital telephony auto-dialing service provider should begin with an audit of your business and setting goals. What should you take into account in this aspect? Business size directly affects digital telephony needs. When selecting software, it is worth considering the size of the company, the number of operators who will work with calling customers, and their tasks. It-s one thing to look for a solution for a large call center that must handle hundreds of calls a day, and another thing is a small company that wants to improve and personalize customer service using digital telephony. Type of dialing algorithms. As we mentioned above, auto-dialling can use different algorithms. And the choice of software depends, among other things, on which algorithm will be effective specifically for your business. The specifics of your business and the purpose of using auto-dialer. This is a specification of what was discussed in the first paragraph. Do you want to increase the customer-oriented essence of the service using auto-dialing tools, or do you need to streamline the flow of calls, or, maybe, you are interested in both of them? Evaluation of Digital Telephony and Auto-Dialing Service Providers We have already mentioned what functions may be included in the auto-dialling service from a particular software provider. But they are not the only ones that play a role when you need to choose a tool to implement in your company. What else is worth considering? The price of the service. This is the cornerstone because no one wants to overpay! In this regard, it is worth considering the option of auto-dialer in the SaaS format. Then you will get the functions you need without additional costs for software maintenance, installation, and integration, and you will receive all the functionality based on a subscription according to a specific tariff plan. Key functions and their usability. A good option will work flawlessly, and at the same time, its use will be intuitive for your employees. Additional functions and the ability to enable/disable them. Time does not stand still, and you may need something more than the basic functionality of auto-dialing. It's better to anticipate this in advance and choose a service provider that can quickly add additional features and tools to scale your business. Reviews from other clients. This is generally the most important criterion for evaluation. The experiences of other users will tell you much more than all the advertisements. A good rating and positive reviews from other companies are a sign that the service can be trusted. Let's summarize. Auto-dialer is one of the most convenient and effective functions of modern digital telephony today. With its help, you can solve several problems at once, and optimize the work of your call center or departments responsible for communication with the client. Call automation is an opportunity to implement algorithms to work efficiently and improve customer service. At the same time, auto-dialling tools can be different both from a technical point of view and from the point of view of the set of functions available in them. To make the right choice, it is worth considering both the internal needs and capabilities of your company, as well as external factors like the availability of basic and additional functions, the software, or service delivery model, the supplier's pricing policy, and reviews of its work from other clients. It is this kind of multifactor analysis that allows you to make the right choice and get a truly productive, reliable, and, at the same time, profitable tool for working with customer calls for your business.

The main and the foremost thing each business owner needs to operate successfully is instant, relevant, and informative figures about the operation of their company. This refers to all processes in the company with call centers are predominantly in the focus. Are there ideas about getting this data from your call center staff? There are top-notch tech solutions to collect data and provide analytics in the form of evident reports. All you need to get it is special software for business which provides such opportunities instantly. Let's talk about which software for call center analytics may come in handy for businesses, which features are worth considering, and where to get such tools. Common Call Center Analytics: What is Crucial to Measure The first thing to consider is why you need analytics to manage a call center's work or departments which work with customers' calls. The fact is instant info about call activity is the basement for multiple decisions. Businesses can simply measure the following features when using it: How many calls were received by your staff in a certain period? How long an average call lasts. Who among your specialists works efficiently and who skimps on their duties? Who is worth praising, whom to motivate, and whom to punish? How call center's work impacts sales. These features are not ultimate and in each business, and each owner can add to their list a couple more measures they need for successful development and optimization. You can get data about these features using special call center solutions which often are implemented in the form of a call center metrics dashboard in your software or as a cloud phone system for call centers' part. What metrics and data are important to get from your call center software? Real-time call queue data. Information about each employee's efficiency in call center activity. Wait timelines with their maximum and minimum wait time. The number of missed calls or those which were abandoned due to long waiting. Business day analytics about peak call time. Average metrics about call time with an employee. All this can come in handy to manage the work in your sales department or customer support service to optimize the load on each employee and redirect calls to more effective reps or less loaded specialists. Besides, common call center analytics can help businesses to decide on improvements, new tools which can be implemented in cloud phone for small and medium businesses to boost sales and engage more clients, and some HR solutions to optimize the working process in your call center. Call Center Solutions for Getting Metrics and Reports As usual, call center solutions provide business owners or call center supervisors with several standard reports included in the software analytic tools. This means that your call center software, IP PBX phone system, or a CRM you use have pre-installed tools to process information about calls and reps' activity. Yet, not all of them are convenient to analyze and provide instant updates of the info in a comprehensive form. Typically you get results in the form of a report which can be uploaded to Excel files and then processed additionally to get accurate numbers you can evaluate and use in decision-making routines. The best software for call center provides expanded reports based on the main goals the business may pursue. What are these goals? Improving the efficiency of the call center; Assessing the current state to make quick decisions in call center management when the situation changes; More complete loading of employees; Planning and optimization of call center resources; Assessing customer service levels by call center operators and their improvement; Defining a strategy for growth and volume expansion. To achieve these goals, you are welcome to use various kinds of software for monitoring call center analytics. The best idea today is to use cloud solutions and SaaS products in the field of digital telephony. Analytics provided by these tools has the following features: You can get access to analytic tools from everywhere using a web browser. These tools can be custom-tailored to provide you with the reports you need. The tool works in real-time with instant changes detected. So, you can get relevant info momentarily and track the tiniest problems with your call center operation to solve them instantly. Precise Analytics Tools in IPTel's Software for Businesses The last thing to consider in this article is where find to analytics for call center. We have a win-win solution you may appreciate. Our SaaS products in the field of digital telephony for businesses already have pre-installed analytic tools and adjustable reporting functions you can use. You can get access to them when you apply for our IP PBX for small businesses, call center cloud products for medium-sized and big enterprises, and in our CRM with integrated telephony. All products we offer are already equipped with monitoring and analytic tools which can be easily used in favor of your business development.

The use of special call center software is a must for modern businesses due to the diversity of opportunities related to the contact with customers via phone. If you are referring to the principle of “Everything that could be automated should be automated”, you know that for sure. There are multiple ideas which you can pick up and implement in your workflow in the field of phone communication practices and tools. IVR system which is also known as interactive voice response refers to these ideas too. Even the classy form of that tool provides top-leveled efficiency for businesses, yet there is still something which can be improved to make its efficiency sky-high. What is it? We'll share some thoughts about it in our blog article. The Essence of IVR: What Is It and How IVR Helps Businesses There is one big question we should start with. What is IVR? This is a new-gen tool used in cloud phone systems for call centers. Probably, you often face auto attendants or virtual call center consultants when you call some companies. They offer you to use their touch-tone menu to get the information you need or to contact the specialist you need. That was the previous generation of virtual helpers, yet time doesn't stand still and today, IVR provides higher efficiency than these tools due to an additional feature - speech recognition. This means that you can use the keypad or simply speak your query and the system will recognize it and respond subsequently. If you ask what function have IVR systems, they may be listed as follows: Informational. IVR provides customers with the basic information they are interested in. If your customers typically call you with some specific queries, that's up to you to use IVR to give them answers to these queries automatically instead of responding to each call manually. Redirecting calls. That's in fact the role of an administrator or a secretary delegated to the automation. Your clients call you and with the help of an interactive helper, they can get in touch with a department or a specialist they need (just develop scenarios of redirection to sales reps, support team, billing department, etc.). Mitigating human factors and reducing the load on employees. With the help of IVR, you can reduce the load on call center employees as the system will perform its functions for informing customers seamlessly. Improving loyalty. If customers get required information or don't stay on hold for a long time, they understand that you value their time, and you are interested in them.   According to these functions, you may comprehend with ease how IVR helps businesses attract customers and retain them and what is a cloud phone system with IVR. The Main Tech Solutions to Implement in Your IVR System As the basic principle of how does IVR call flow work is maintaining scripts and scenarios and recognizing both client's speech and touch-tone actions, it provides a streamlined process of receiving customers calls. But there is no limit to perfection, and you can also use a couple of other tools from the toolset of the cloud phone system for call centers to make the efficiency sky-high and go ahead of competitors. A Full-Fledged Call-Center Using Cloud Solutions In IPTel, we recommend our clients apply call center solutions even in terms of small or medium-sized businesses. This is a prospective idea because you can reduce costs on your staff salaries, optimize the workflow, and improve customer service with them. Besides, the best software for call centers is scalable, it can be implemented quickly, and when it is a SaaS solution, it is cost-effective. Using Auto-Dialer System for Your Customer Service Improvement Auto dialer system is one more idea to use. It refers to the opportunity to inform your clients simultaneously about something. This can be alert messages or personal proposals which are made using the combo of auto dialer phone service and IVR. Instead of calling your customers manually, you use auto dialer software for business and IVR scripts which save you time and provide excellent efficiency. The Idea of IVR Scenarios to Make Your Customers Sure You Are Interested in Them Scenarios for IVR may also be diverse. You can apply some of them for business hours to redirect calls and manage communication with customers. And you can use special ones for informing and supporting customers in off hours. This helps to increase loyalty and improve customer retention results. IVR Best Practice: Enjoy the Solutions by IPTel As you can see, IVR software for business is a beneficial idea because of its features which make clients sure that you do care about them and provide them with the help and information they require. Besides its benefits, IVR can become even better! As practice makes perfect, IPTel offers you the most innovative solutions in the field of Interactive Voice Response. You can improve the reputation of your company, work with customers loyalty, and get a higher response from the clientele with our SaaS solutions. We work individually and create a full-fledged ecosystem for each business where the most effective tools are combined to get the highest results. You can evaluate our call center solutions which include IVR scenarios, call-center cloud services, digital telephony tools for remote work, auto-dialing tools, and lots of other ideas customly selected for your business. Your IVR best practices are at your fingertips with us.

We know for a fact that every business is unique and needs a unique solution to achieve its goals. Therefore, we have provided the possibility of fine-tuning our CRM to the needs of customers. Customization of CRM will allow you to integrate the necessary functions and adjust them to your niche, number of employees, and features of interaction with customers. At the same time, you can disable unnecessary functions or re-enable them later if the need arises. We are ready to help you to customize your CRM. IPTel's technical support team will advise you on the use of each feature, help you configure it for your business, and ensure smooth and accurate operation. Our CRM with built-in telephony enables businesses to use all the main functions of a software solution for customer relations and additionally to use the main options of IP telephony directly in the CRM. And all this with setup, support, and instant help from our technical support. We help not only to set up CRM but also to integrate it with other software solutions and automated processes so that you can optimize business processes and automate them with maximum efficiency.

Effective telephone negotiations are the basis of success. Win the loyalty of your customers with precise, effective, and personalized phone call scripts. Besides, you can configure scripts right in your CRM! Thanks to the built-in function of compiling and saving sales scripts for telephony in CRM from IPTel, your employees will be able to negotiate with maximum effectiveness. What are sales scripts, and how do they help businesses? These are customized scenarios of telephone negotiations that enable a manager or a call-center operator to conduct a conversation with a client according to a given scenario, manage it and obtain the desired result in the form of a sale, motivating the client to go to the site, effective work with objections or increasing customer loyalty, etc. Scripts for telephone conversations allow: To reduce the conversation time and, at the same time, invest in a maximum of useful information for the client. To enable the operator to speak freely, without pauses, or interruptions, confidently and professionally. To mitigate operator communication risks. You can develop any number of phone conversation scripts to work with different groups of customers, promote different products and offers, and deal with suggestions, comments, objections, and customer complaints. At the same time, you do not need to install a separate software product to work with sales script calls! You get access to the sales script functionality right in your CRM! Make communication with the client accurate and error-free!

Email remains one of the most important communication channels for businesses. Conducting electronic correspondence allows you to exchange documents and proposals, save key moments of communication with clients and counterparties, and ensure the security of data exchange. Every day in every company there is a need to write emails and send them to hundreds or even thousands of customers. At the same time, drafting emails can take up a lot of employees' time that could be spent more effectively. To reduce the time spent on email communication, we propose the function of the e-mail designer built into CRM from IPTel. What possibilities does it open? Conducting correspondence according to uniform templates that allow for forming a corporate style of communication; Saving the history of correspondence and integrating the function of electronic correspondence with the client database for quick uploading of contacts; Drafting typical emails with offers, answers, or important information for the organization of mass mailing; Saving the necessary templates and access to them for all employees who work with CRM. Email templates built into your CRM help you organize any type of mailing, from welcome messages to client holidays to sending important documents. And all this is completely automated. Customize the template for the task you need, download mailing lists, and send as many emails as you want every day. The e-mail designer built into your CRM is an opportunity to organize a corporate style of e-mail communication, reduce the burden on employees associated with email mailings, and keep track of the effectiveness of this communication channel.

Document flow can complicate the work of any company. At the same time, the accuracy of drafting documents is mandatory. Contracts, invoices, or bills of lading - each of these documents requires time and skill to draw up. What if the company needs to create hundreds or even thousands of standard documents every day? This causes difficulties of the following types: The responsible staff spends time not on working with clients, but on drafting documents; Manually created documents are more prone to errors, especially if the document flow is very intensive. Don't waste your employees' time on paperwork! CRM from IPTel offers to automate the entire process of creating standard documents. Upload your document templates and insert dynamic fields that you can automatically populate with customer data as you pull it from your customer card database. Additionally, you will be able to perform the following actions with downloaded templates: Customize them if necessary with a simple editing function; Pull information about products from your catalog into the document template; Pull customer payment data to the template. Using libraries to load your documentation templates into our CRM is your opportunity to: create necessary documents in a matter of minutes; reduce the time spent by the staff on working with documentation; reduce the risk of errors in documents; increase customer loyalty, because they will receive the necessary documents almost instantly! Don't waste time working with documents. Optimize your company's work and reduce the burden on your staff by using the simple, convenient and customizable automatic document generation function in CRM.

Businesses talk by figures. Thus, reporting for any department of the company is mandatory, because based on this data, the owner or CEOs can evaluate performance, correct work deficiencies, and plan further strategies. Such analytical tools for evaluating work with clients and the level of customer service of the company are offered by our CRM with built-in telephony. The CRM interface provides a convenient monitoring panel for managers and business owners. It already has integrated all the main tools for creating reports, and the data of work with clients is downloaded in real-time. It is simple and convenient for all company’s levels of responsibility: Managers get the opportunity to form reports on their work based on the entered data and avoid errors that are possible when compiling reports manually. Heads of departments can evaluate the work with customers of each employee and receive up-to-date information about who needs more work, who performs their duties ineffectively, and who deserves incentives for conscientious work. For senior management, the ability to report and see the full picture of customer service is the key to developing future strategies. You receive information about the company's work with clients in an organized, accurate and detailed form. CRM analytical tools with built-in telephony include: Statistics of growth of customers and leads; Statistics of interaction of managers with clients on the website or in telephone communication; Sales data; Analytics of customer requests and customer cards to form a portrait of the target audience. All this will allow you to quickly and accurately react to the performance of departments and employees, build strategies, make decisions about the workload and encourage/punish employees. All this is implemented in a single interface, without the need to use separate software products for generating reports and downloading statistics.

The presence of feedback forms on the site helps companies to establish fast contact with customers who are interested in their goods or services. But manual processing of requests that are made using web forms on the site can lead to several problems at once as follows: Communication delays due to heavy workload on managers responsible for feedback. Mistakes caused by the "human factor", when the manager manually makes mistakes in the customer's contact information and, as a result, cannot contact him quickly. The function of uploading your site's web forms to CRM from IPTel will help you avoid these mistakes. Thanks to carefully thought-out loading mechanisms, your website, landing page, or online store on the marketplace platform will be able to work even more efficiently! You get an automated solution for the prompt transfer of information about client requests, which will allow: Quickly process applications, Increase customer loyalty, Avoid mistakes in the manual upload of web forms. We offer you to take advantage of the possibility of integrating all web forms from the site into CRM including callback forms, comments, and order forms. And the built-in CRM telephony from IPTel will allow you to immediately set up communication with customers in a single interface. You can create callback forms that, when filled out, will be processed by the system, and then CRM will automatically dial the number of the responsible employee or department and connect the customer with them. Working with web forms will be even more efficient if you use the function of their integration into your CRM.

CRM with built-in telephony from IPTel allows you not only to maintain a customer database with complete information about customers, their contact details, and additional notes but also to store the entire history of interaction with each customer. The customer interaction history library enables company management and employees responsible for communication to quickly access: Information about customer applications; Data on the interaction of customers with the company (contacts using the site, calls, e-mails, etc.); Interaction results (for example, a purchase was made); Notes and comments made by managers; All documents related to the client and his history: invoices, acts, contracts, sent commercial offers. All of this works in favor of personalizing the customer experience. You and your employees get a convenient tool for further communication, the development of individual offers for customers, and the increase of customer loyalty and motivation. The history of customer interaction allows you to reduce the risk of errors in communication with customers, helps managers to improve customer service and increases the reputation of the company in the eyes of customers. You no longer have to collect information about each client piece by piece from notes, chat history in messengers, e-mails, or comments from managers. Everything is collected in one place, and responsible employees get access to information about the client exactly at the moment when they need it. The history of interaction with customers integrated into CRM is an opportunity to improve the level of customer service and increase sales by working with each customer in a personalized way.

Creating an effective sales funnel and consistently managing it along the client's paths is the key to success. With IPTel's CRM sales funnel visualization tool with built-in telephony, it's real! The built-in function of visualization and customization of sales funnels provides you with the following features: A simple tool for creating sales funnels that will reduce the burden on your managers. Ability to customize funnels for a specific audience, product, or niche. Visualization that makes the process of guiding customers through the funnel logical and understandable. Integration with telephony. It offers the ability to involve customer databases, call scripts, and customer cards to work with funnels in a single CRM space. Advantages of building sales funnels in CRM from IPTel: Expanding the target audience and increasing coverage. Highest sales efficiency. Customization of sales funnels by products and leads. Reducing the time spent by the company's personnel on developing funnels and working with them. Performance analytics built into CRM to monitor and optimize sales funnels. With our tools for building and visualizing sales funnels, you can improve the quality of customer service, offer customers exactly the products they need, and increase the effectiveness of sales managers with thoughtful and customized customer acquisition and retention strategies.