While most small and midsize businesses aim for smooth, efficient operations, the reality looks a little more like this: disconnected tools, siloed teams, coworkers that don’t communicate with one another (and the inevitable, frustrated customers that surface as a result), back-to-back meetings with no time to take notes, and increasing financial pressure.
Sound familiar?
If you think back to the reason you’re in business in the first place – to help your customers and maintain positive interactions with them – it follows that you prioritize a business phone system that can help you achieve that aim. As your company’s direct connection to your customers and prospects, and your team’s central point of truth, an efficient business phone system is the answer to the smooth business operations of your dreams.
In this post, we’ll walk through the five most common signs your business phone system needs an overhaul — along with solutions that support your team’s most pressing daily challenges.
You’re missing leads left and right.
If finding, qualifying, and working leads feels like a game of chance… that sounds pretty painful. Games should stay in the arcade, not in the workplace.
It’s not ideal to close a fantastic deal and then realize you’ve missed three other leads in the process. Why settle for closing one deal when you could close four?
So, how are you currently tracking your leads? Perhaps with different spreadsheets on each person’s computer? Multiple tools that don’t integrate with one another? Sticky notes?
It will be difficult to grow revenue year over year if you keep missing out on leads, no matter how small. Consider implementing a central hub for all of your leads and a complete record of who’s been contacted and who needs a call back.
The Solution
With Lead Center by CallRail, you get a unified inbox with every detail you could dream of: all calls, texts, forms, and chat messages from any lead or customer that reaches out to you and when. For each customer, you can view and take action on any incoming, active, and recent interactions — and it’s easier to swoop in and help your coworker if they’re a bit too busy or unexpectedly out of office.
When you click in to any one customer, you can see a complete log of the interactions that customer has had, along with who they had that interaction with at your company. You’ll finally have visibility into missed calls and callbacks.
It’s basically impossible to miss any leads with this unified inbox. Work those leads to your heart’s content — they’re waiting on you.
Context? Never heard of it.
The ideal scenario for your customer-facing teams involves going into calls completely blind, asking customers to repeat information they had already shared, and providing no context for the next coworker to interact with this customer, even if that person is you. Right?
If you agree, it’s possible you might need a little more help than this blog can provide. But if that idea made you recoil in horror, you’re in good company — welcome.
Obviously, that scenario is fraught with problems. It’s best to provide as much context as possible for the next call, even if the next person interacting with the customer is you — because if you’re anything like us, you can’t remember what you had for lunch today, much less what was discussed on your last call with a customer.
Plus, your goal is to create pleasant experiences for your customers, right? Asking them to repeat information over and over makes them feel unheard and annoyed, which is far from pleasant. It might even make them feel like you don’t care. (Gasp.)
Context is key, and there’s no such thing as too much context.
The Solution
Remember that unified inbox with all those incredible details in Lead Center? There are even more details.
Lead Center tracks every employee’s interaction history, too. Which means any notes, flags, call transcriptions and recordings, and more are all at your fingertips. Everything you need to know about each customer, you’ll find in Lead Center. That’s the dream!
Plus, having all of that context means you’ll make even more delightful experiences with your customers, too. You’ll know who they are, where they called from, which channels they found your business through, and any specific things they’ve mentioned in previous communications. You’ll be able to create truly personalized interactions, which makes them feel heard and appreciated — and impressed.
You’ve lost your keyboard under the pile of sticky notes about people you need to call back.
You wouldn’t expect your doctor or your accountant to keep all of your information on sticky notes, strewn about their desks, would you? So why do you think the same is okay for your business?
If you’ve figured out a way to keep all of these separate notes from different types of communications along with reminders to call people back, we’re impressed. But we both know that’s not sustainable in the long run. Something will get missed — or worse, you mix up some information and call someone about the wrong thing or share information to the wrong customer.
Your business desperately needs a single, unified place to not only keep record of your own calls and interactions, but the calls and interactions of your entire team.
The Solution
Remember, business communication is all about context. Providing that context requires centralizing all of the information you have so anyone can access it as they need.
Within Lead Center, you gain visibility into every single inbound and outbound communication — which means you can record any relevant notes from recent communications. You can see who you need to get in touch with personally and who needs to be called back in general. Plus, you can add notes and tags to each customer, too, to make things really clear.
Most importantly, you can get rid of all those sticky notes… but transfer that information into Lead Center, first.
“Did you ever call that customer back?” often echoes the halls of the office
“Did you ever call that customer back?”
“No, did you?”
“... If I said yes, would you believe me?”
Raise your hand if you’ve had a similar conversation in the last year. Keep it up if you had it in the last week. Not a good feeling.
It’s not a good feeling for your customers either. Failing to call them back will likely result in one of two scenarios. One, they call you back again (and again) and get increasingly frustrated each time, which is a harder call for you to have. Two, they figure if you’ve ghosted them, they’ll ghost you right back — so even if you finally do call them back, they’ll ignore you. They’ve already moved on.
Occasionally, things work out, and they’ll have either forgotten as well or are very understanding — but it’s best to not rely on the possibility of that outcome.
We bet your business would really benefit from a log of calls, where anyone on the team can see who’s been contacted or needs a call.
The Solution
Having something slip your mind, like calling a customer back, happens to the best of us. That’s why you should have a digital backup of that information that you can look to when your brain fails you. Lead Center is that exact sidekick you’re looking for!
At any time, you can take a look at your personal history for every one of the leads you’re working or customers you’re talking to. Lead Center is your all-in-one interface for everything customer-related. With a complete customer interaction history, you’ll also know how a customer has interacted with your business, and in what order.
Taking personal appointments? Not during business hours you’re not.
We’ve all lived through not being able to take personal appointments during the work day — or better yet, scheduling that “meeting” in your calendar when in reality, you’re at the doctor or taking your kids to the pediatrician. We’ve all done it.
But then you might get the dreaded “urgent” call or text from a coworker and suddenly you find yourself away from your desk, away from your laptop, and completely helpless. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could do some of this work on-the-go?
Just having your cellphone alone won’t cut it, though. You need that extra context and historical record to do your job right.
The Solution: Step away confidently with the Lead Center mobile app
With your cellphone alone, you can take calls and send text messages from wherever you are. But without that connection to your business’ communications technology, that interaction won’t get logged. Plus, you won’t be tied to your business phone number, so the customer might not recognize you when you call them anyway.
With the Lead Center mobile app, it’s almost like you’re still at your desk with your business number. You can make phone calls and send texts — but better. Like you’ve unlocked a cheat code.
Access to full context and interaction history
Just like you can on the desktop app, with the Lead Center mobile app you have access to a list of recent phone calls and texts between your business and the customer in question.
Record and transcribe your calls on-the-go
Just because you’re not at your desk doesn’t mean you lose the ability to record your calls. With the mobile app, you can record and transcribe your calls, which you can reflect on when you’re back in the office and able to take notes based on that interaction.
Make warm and cold transfers to coworkers in the office
While you can take calls when you’re not at your desk, sometimes you’re just not the right person to help that customer. That’s okay — you can call a friend on the mobile app, too! Make a warm transfer or a cold transfer to any available coworker and get that customer the help they need.
And, if you want to make sure you don’t get any calls transferred to you while you’re at your appointment, you can set yourself as offline or unavailable, so no one routes a call to you.
It’s past time for that overhaul.
Take your business phone system and processes from frantic to smooth and efficient.
No more guessing, no more hoping, no more questions — instead, a tool and a central point of truth you and your team can rely on completely.
Try Lead Center for free today.