Using Your Phone System To Stay Ahead Of the Curve In 2023

As the new year brings reflection and refreshed business energies, we take a look at areas for consideration to give your business a head start in 2023 and how your business phone system can help you do it.

Focus on Customer Experience

Building and strengthening your customer relationships can make a real difference when it comes to growing your customer base.

Higher satisfaction can lead to greater customer retention through increased loyalty, trust in your brand, and positive word of mouth.

Business phone system features such as call monitoring, IVR call menus and smart call queuing will strengthen the service you offer your customers and provide actionable insights, either through speeding up resolution times or refining agent practices via real-time call listening or recordings.

Additionally, integrating existing CRM systems such as Intercom and HubSpot with a phone system can also help augment your customer offerings.

Access to contact logging data such as voicemail recordings, contact histories and caller touch points within your CRM will allow you to anticipate customer needs, easily scope potential opportunities and contextualise caller activity, all without additional expenditure or complicated development time.

Get Flexible

Leaving aside your daily 'desk-ercises' and gym related resolutions, flexibility can be key to navigating the challenges thrown at your business.

These challenges can range from situations such as snow days when it’s impossible to make it into the workplace, staff illness, office relocation, or even simply transport issues.

Business continuity can be supported by embracing practices such as hybrid working where employees can either work remotely or in the office, and flexible working where businesses benefit from agile staff working hours.

If making the step towards hybrid and flexible working, it's vital that you jump onboard with the right technology and software to underpin your move.

Cloud-based and hosted phone systems can easily nurture flexibility within the workspace as they allow employees to work across multiple locations and devices by default.

This will not only add resilience to your business but will also enable your business to attract the brightest and best prospective employees, no matter where they’re based.

Focus Your Funds

Introducing remote working to your business not only provides you with a level of workforce flexibility, but it can also provide you with increased options relating to your office premises too.

With a greater number of employees choosing to work remotely, you may find yourself questioning whether it makes sense to cut costs and downsize your office space.

A dedicated office space can be beneficial both for those who prefer to work in the office, and those who prefer to blend on-premises and remote working. However, with less bodies in the office at any one time, it could be viable to conduct operations from a smaller space or even a co-working hub of your choice.

You'll find that Cloud phone systems will reduce maintenance, hardware and call costs too, especially when compared to older ISDN phone systems. Without the extra expenditure, you're free to reallocate this newly available budget to other initiatives that could help you acquire new business, such as sales or marketing activities.

The Big PSTN Switch Off 2025

The Big Switch Off refers to PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network) and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) in the UK being switched off in 2025. If you're still communicating over copper lines, then this is really something that your business should be preparing for now.

Sales of PSTN phone lines and systems in the UK will cease by September 2023, with the PSTN shutdown happening in 2025.

Countries such as Germany, France and Japan are already winding down their PSTN services, while the Netherlands and Estonia have already switched theirs off.

Migrating to a VoIP solution before the PSTN shutdown will allow your business to both save on communication costs and enjoy a host of professional communication features, some of which may have otherwise been unobtainable.

Moving to our phone system is a hassle-free process. You can retain your existing business phone numbers and transition your workforce in no time with a seamless same day setup.

Get in touch with us to find out how you can start the PSTN migration process today, or alternatively sign up for a free trial and familiarise yourself with our scalable, flexible business phone solution.

Whatever direction you take your business in 2023, whether that's investing in marketing, customer service or your employees, ensure you have a plan and priorities you can work towards. As always, we’re here to continue supporting businesses, to continue adapting and to continue innovating our Cloud-based communication solution.