Posted on 20/10/23 01:32 pm
Since teams are increasingly opting to work remotely, businesses are quickly switching to virtual phone numbers. For example, many customer service teams now work from home instead of one central location. To keep processing calls effectively, you can use a virtual phone service (also known as VoIP phone) to send business calls to each employee’s computer or phone.
With a virtual phone system, you get all the features of traditional landline phones at a much more affordable cost — without the expense of additional equipment.
In this post, we go over how virtual phone systems work, how to set up a virtual phone system, and why your business may benefit from virtual numbers.
Get a virtual phone number in minutesGet a virtual phone numberYou can get a virtual phone number with SMSpinverify in three simple steps:
You now have a virtual phone number. If you run into any issues during the signup process, fill out this form to reach our support team.
What is a virtual phone number exactly?A virtual phone number is like a regular phone number hosted online instead of a specific phone or location. You can use it to make business calls, send texts, and receive them, too — without giving out your personal number.
Virtual phone numbers are a great way to keep your real number private while staying connected with customers. You can also use them to create shared numbers, which help everyone on your team split responsibility for incoming calls. Virtual phone numbers are enabled by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, which means your provider routes phone calls over the internet instead of physical phone lines. For this reason, VoIP phone systems are more scalable, portable, and affordable than traditional phone systems.
11 powerful benefits of getting a virtual phone numberVirtual phone numbers provide many benefits to the businesses using them. Lower costs, ease of use, and innovative features can help you scale without keeping you trapped in an office.
Let’s look at 11 benefits of using virtual phone numbers:
Virtual phone numbers make it easy to balance incoming calls as a team. Once you purchase a local or toll-free number for your business, you can create shared numbers with simultaneous rings so everyone on the number gets notified of incoming calls. You can also set up simultaneous ring (or even a hunt group) to establish specific ring orders for who should receive incoming calls first. This helps callers get what they need faster while helping team members balance out daily call volumes.
With many small businesses and startups embracing working from home, virtual phone numbers can help you save money while providing the features you need to manage your business. The numbers don’t lie: smaller businesses can save thousands of dollars with virtual phone systems over traditional phone services. You can use these savings to invest in more advanced features like call transfers, AI transcriptions, and analytics and reporting (more on these later).
Virtual numbers offer a level of convenience to your team that regular phone numbers can’t. Regular business phone numbers force team members to come into an office to make calls, which restricts where you can hire talent. In contrast, virtual phones use your existing mobile devices and computers to make calls and texts. This means team members can use virtual numbers from anywhere — from a home office, a field, or the beach — to get work done.
To access your phone service, you just need an internet connection along with an app for mobile devices or a web/desktop app for computers. Some virtual phone providers have additional hardware you can buy, but these are often proprietary and more of an upsell than a necessity.
Anyone with shared access to your business phone number can answer incoming calls and messages as a team. Shared numbers also come with access to a shared inbox, which means everyone on your team can review all the calls and messages that flow through the platform. Everyone on your team can get context quickly and stay on the same page regardless of where they work.
Need to delegate some tasks for your teams? Team members can use internal threads to bring colleagues into the conversation. They can also ask clarifying questions or get input on tricky situations, which helps to ensure better experiences for customers.
Traditional phone service providers offer bare-bones messaging features (if that). With a virtual business phone number, you can leverage modern features to automate your messaging capabilities and create less work for your teams. You can use:
Customers don’t like to repeat themselves on the phone. With the help of a virtual phone number, you can take better notes on each contact and personalize every call. Modern VoIP platforms offer contact management tools to save contact information with custom properties and contact notes. They also offer tagging systems so you can prioritize customers with more urgent needs. Let’s say you have a new business contact looking for pricing information. With a virtual phone number, you can add and update their personal phone number, sales stage, or follow-up date. You can also tag them under a custom property named ‘pricing’ so you can easily prioritize their place in your queue.
If you want your business to be more efficient, you need to automate routine tasks so your team can focus on more complex work. This means creating AI summaries and transcripts, which can help you keep an eye on call performance and efficiency. AI call summaries, for example, can help you get context with a written summary of each interaction. You can quickly review conversations at a glance and use AI-generated action items so you know what follow-ups you need to do. You can also lean on AI call transcripts to make your team more efficient with call reviews. Since managers can read line-by-line interactions, they can offer more personalized coaching to agents in training and other team members.
A virtual phone number can help you capture and store the insights that matter to your business. You likely want powerful analytics that show the number of calls made, who isn’t using their phone numbers, call times, and more. You may also need audit logs to track where calls are made, as well as data for general record-keeping purposes. With SMSpinverify, you can track handle times and unique conversations on a daily or weekly basis. You can also look at busy times during the week so you know which days