Zendesk VoIP for business for more affordable customer calls

How do you turn a customer into a fan? Ironically, one of the best ways to trigger word of mouth is to use your own voice and speak one-to-one with customers.

Speaking directly to a customer enables you to better understand their needs, which means you can tailor solutions and offer additional services as they become more receptive to cross selling and upselling.

Voice interactions can make a customer feel more appreciated as they experience being ‘seen’ and ‘heard’. This can increase a customer’s satisfaction and your chances of securing a referral.

But in today’s digital, always on communication, how does a business integrate voice into their customer support?

What is VoIP?

VoIP is an acronym that stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. Put simply, it’s a phone system that uses the internet to make and receive calls. And a way for you to seamlessly integrate voice into your customer support.

There are dedicated VoIP phones that look just like traditional office desk phones but VoIP works using your smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer using a softphone app. The difference is behind the scenes. Instead of transmitting through a network of copper wires on the Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN for short, VoIP utilises the internet to transmit calls in the form of data packets.

Voice over Internet Protocol is incredibly versatile for businesses. An employee can make and receive VoIP calls wherever they are, as long as they have an Internet connection. Calls can be seamlessly transferred from device to device. While conversations can evolve from text message to voice call to video call, all within the same application.

In short, VoIP is a brilliant way to incorporate the benefits of calling customers in today’s digital landscape.

Sounds great, so what’s an example of VoIP?

You’ll be familiar with the most popular VoIP services—you probably use them for messaging. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger both deliver free voice and video calls using VoIP.

Given the global pandemic, the need to work from home, and the subsequent prevalence for hybrid working, VoIP services such as Skype and Zoom have become everyday practice. Last April, Zoom drew 300 million participants a day—30 times the number of users compared to four months earlier.

Remote working, at least on a hybrid basis, is here to stay and as a result, more businesses than ever are investing in VoIP systems.

The benefits of VoIP for business

In the pre-pandemic era, when employees travelled to offices and sat at a desk, businesses faced large, upfront costs and considerable ongoing maintenance fees to provide everyone with a landline telephone. With VoIP, all you need is an internet connection.

Lower costs

The first and most obvious benefit of a VoIP phone system is that it is less expensive. Because VoIP works across multiple devices, businesses can cut the cost of hardware dramatically. Plus, there’s no need to design, install, and maintain a separate telephone network. VoIP uses your existing internet connection. What’s more, VoIP treats long-distance calls similarly to local calls, which is another way VoIP can save businesses money.

Higher quality

The early days of VoIP were characterised by annoying call drop-outs and lags. Today, with fibre optic, super-fast broadband, voice quality has improved considerably. VoIP calls are crisp and clear, with no latency issues, lag, or call dropouts. Plus, innovations such as noise-cancelling microphones and advanced audio compression enable VoIP to achieve superior sound quality.

Greater flexibility

With VoIP, your business phone is no longer tied to the office. You can make calls from anywhere. And when you’re unable to answer the call, you can direct calls to another person or get voicemails emailed to you. In an increasingly mobile workforce, remote accessibility allows your business to be flexible. Mobile employees can stay productive regardless of their location.

Zendesk Talk—our VoIP for business solution

Our integrated voice software is called Zendesk Talk. It enables you to speak directly to customers, deal with their questions and queries, and quickly and efficiently personalise solutions for them.

Zendesk Talk works with our CRM solutions so you can see all your customer’s information as you speak with them. Talk also enables you to handle calls, voicemail, and texts where you manage emails, chat, and social media messaging.

You also have the option of a call button to embed into your mobile app or website and provide customers with one click call access to your customer support teams.

Zendesk Talk is packed with features allowing you to manage calls and improve the customer experience. For example, Talk provides call routing features for overflow and after-hours occasions, and lets you set maximum queue size and wait times so that calls are answered and managed as quickly and efficiently as possible.

As is typical for a Zendesk solution, Talk comes with monitoring and reporting built in. Real-time dashboards record call details highlighting areas of satisfaction and areas where improvements are needed. You can see at a glance how voice support is performing—how many calls are in a queue, how many agents are online, and how long each caller has waited.

Harry’s, the New York-based men’s grooming company, manages 50 per cent of their customer service over calls. They integrated Zendesk Talk into their customer support systems and within the past year, the team has reduced their abandonment rate by over 50 per cent and are answering 80 per cent of all calls in 60 seconds or less.

If affordability, quality, and flexibility are at the forefront of your business technology decisions, then you should consider VoIP and services such as Zendesk Talk.