Customer service is now expanding into the digital realm and it may be good or bad for your business. it may lead you to ignore the other spectrum of your customer-base or even your market. for example, ignoring the fact that your telephone system needs changing or upgrading will leave you out of the market because your customers will be going for companies that have better phone receptions. After all, people will not have the patience to deal with cracks and hisses in the phone line. Even when companies are trying their best to increase their business presence online, the facet of communication still becomes ignored and even thrown out the window. Without good communication, customer service goes out of the window too.

What business owners don’t know or even realize is that customer service is an important facet of survival. With good customer service comes customer satisfaction, which refers to a quantitative measurement of how a customer perceives the product or service he or she availed of from the company. positive customer satisfaction means the customer enjoyed the product and has exceeded their expectations. Negative customer satisfaction means that the business has failed in delivering what the customer wants.

But why is it so important? Customer satisfaction gives marketers and business owners their own metric system that can be used to gauge their customer service so they can improve. It’s like a report card but for businesses.

Good customer service can guarantee good customer satisfaction and it will determine as to whether or not your customer will come back to avail of your products or service again in the future. Usually a score within a scale of 1 to 10 is used to gauge how good your customer service is. Scoring a 7 means that the customer is satisfied. While a score of 9 or 10 indicate returning customers who will become potential advocates for your business and thereby spread the good word about your business. Scoring a 6 and below will indicate that a customer is unhappy of your service or product and may no longer think about going back to your business. but why do businesses even get these low scores?

The answer is that it could be anything. A rude cashier or a bad phone reception may be the factors but there are a lot of other possibilities. That’s why using a scale like this will allow you to pinpoint your flaws in customer service.

We take the telephone for granted, and this can be of no fault for us on a personal level but when we ignore the telephone on a business perspective, it can mean the difference between success and failure. Telecommunications have always been around for businesses for more than a century, and even before its advent people still found ways to communicate with one another. Today, business phone systems have evolved and have gone beyond dealing with just calling people.

But why should business owners invest in new telephone systems? The only reason is FUNCTIONALITY. Majority of the companies in the UK and other countries require the assistance or the utilization of phone systems to do their jobs. Banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and even schools use the telephone despite the advancement of technology and with the advent of mobile devices. Common features of telephone systems include call transfer, call conferencing, intercom, hold, voice mail, multiple lines, paging, music-on-hold, etc. but today’s business telephone systems can do so much more than that.

The latest in business systems use cloud-hosted technology which allow business owners to use phone line hosted over the Internet that lead to cheaper costs, better call qualities, and more secure call connections. Features like SIP trunking allow you to save a lot of money. HD voice quality, clarity, email features, voice-mails, mobile phone connectivity, and even time management are also included in these cloud-hosted phones.

Companies that are reliant on these features are reliant on the overall functionality of these business telephone systems. Upgrading your system means to enjoy these features a lot longer and even give you access to better features that will be useful within the next few years.

The cost for mobile and phone communications continue to rise, but business owners are still looking for that one system that will allow them to cut and control costs. The next question is DO YOU NEED THE UPGRADE? Justifying why you need the upgrade doesn’t necessarily mean that you just need the upgrade. You need to be able to justify the need by being able to maximize the features associated with business telephone systems.

Being unable to maximize a phone system is the equivalent of throwing money out of the window. It’s an expensive system and you don’t know what you’re dealing with, or your people are not able to deal with the new system. It’s like buying a gun but not knowing how to shoot it.

Business owners will find themselves wanting to buy or invest in a newer business telephone system when their older system don’t function like they used to, or simply put, the older system is no longer able to match the needs of both the business owner and the clientele. Back then, business owners didn’t mind if personal calls were made using the business’ phone lines, but when money starts leaking out, the older systems won’t be able to figure out who has called who. The newer phone systems have a feature called a call tracking or call monitoring which is essential for those who’re particular about their phone expenses. It also allows them to review the performance of their customer service representatives or other employees who use the phones as part of their job.

Even if your business does not make use of the phones the same way a call center might, the other call features will be of use to your company. The newer business phone systems will allow you to improve your bandwidth, add more units, and even get more than what you’ve paid for.
Let’s take the VoIP phone systems. These features have caller ID and call conferencing, making it more impressive than the old systems. But why is it perfect for businesses with multiple locations, and even for your business?

1. VoIP is scalable and is capable of chaining together stores with multiple locations, so even if you have stores all across the UK, the set-up between them won’t take you up to weeks. It’ll be just like setting up within the office. In fact, setting up a traditional phone line in 10 rooms within a single location takes a lot longer than setting up VoIP networks in 10 different offices. This is due to the fact that everything can be done via the remote stand-alone system in each office, so the offices are linked between a data connection.
2. Increased call volumes is one reason why business owners choose VoIP systems. Imagine dealing with congested networks every time your phone lines are busy. This is prevalent in traditional phone lines, but with a VoIP system, you can get rid of all problems connected with large call volumes.
3. Growth is also accommodated in line with your VoIP system’s scaling capabilities. Phone lines are usually the first to be affected when there’s change in the infrastructure of your business, but with VoIP systems, the change can easily be mitigated and this will not force you to expand your phone lines either because the VoIP systems will scale and grow with the business.

I run a third generation insurance company with more than 30 employees per branch and I’ve got 3 branches all across the United Kingdom. I’ve got 90 people working for me, and some of them have been around since my grandfather started the business. there are also some leftovers from my dad’s generation and the newer additions to the business came when I inherited the company. To put a discrepancy between the generations, I’m going to put it in a ratio. For every three first generation employees (my grandfather’s employees), there are three second generation employees (my dad’s) and one third generation employee (mine).

The age gap between generations is noticeable, and the literacy is just as well. Our first and second generation employees are not so much into the newer technologies, so they have a hard time adjusting to the new systems. When I inherited the business, I noticed that we had a problem with our phone lines. As it turns out, our old system was older than I was and it costs us a lot of money in terms of maintenance and upkeep. I decided to kick things up a notch by purchasing a VoIP PABX system when I attended a convention for insurance managers.

The new system that I purchased was not as expensive as I thought it. In fact, my older system was more expensive than the new one. I purchased a trial system that was intended for 40 people and I installed it in the main branch. I was happy with what I saw and I purchased the actual systems for the 3 branches. The training of the new system was also covered with my purchase of the telephone system, so that was an added bonus. They sent over an instructor to teach us about the basics of the phone system and it only lasted for a day. The system was also very easy to use, even the first and second generation employees found it easy to learn, and these were people that didn’t embrace technology well.

Long story short, it was the best purchase that I made for the business because we were able to increase our customer satisfaction by a hundred fold and our reach increased. We were able to reach out to other cities in the UK without having to spend a lot of money in long distance charges.