Building and running a remote team is one of the most exciting ways to grow a modern business. It allows you to find amazing people no matter where they’re located, saves you money on expensive office space and offers your employees the flexibility they crave.
However, one of the big challenges with managing a remote workforce is communications. Getting everyone on the same page can be tricky when your team is spread across different cities, time zones or countries — like a game of telephone. The key to keeping a remote team together is a technology called VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
Ditch The Desk Phones And Embrace Softphones
In a traditional office setting, growing your team means acquiring more physical plastic desk phones, plugging them into the wall and having a tech come out to run new phone lines. For a remote team, this is absolutely unfeasible.
There is no need to buy physical hardware with a VoIP system. VoIP providers utilise softphones, which are software applications. These are simple apps that your staff download to the devices they already own – such as a laptop, tablet or personal smartphone.
Once installed on an employee’s phone, the app makes the employee’s device become their business phone instantly. They can take and make professional calls on the company’s main phone number from their home office, a quiet library or a local coffee shop. This makes bringing new remote hires on-board super fast and completely free of hardware costs.
Traditional Land Line vs. Remote VoIP Comparison
The contrasts between traditional office phone infrastructure and cloud-based VoIP are very clear when it comes to choosing a communication setup for a scaling remote workforce. Traditional landlines are hard wired to a specific desk in an office building, so adding new users is a slow and costly process requiring hardware purchases and complex wiring installation.
Furthermore, landlines offer only basic features (such as basic voice calling and voicemail) and they involve a large initial outlay for equipment and installation charges. Cloud based VoIP works anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. Companies can activate new users instantly with a digital software license. It is a low, predictable monthly subscription cost per user and is loaded with an advanced feature set including video conferencing, text chat, file sharing and smart call routing.
Simplify Communication Tools For Your Team
When employees are working remotely, they are susceptible to “app fatigue” – hopping from five different programs just to talk to their colleagues. One app to text. One app to video call. One app to share files. And one app to make plain old phone calls. Recipe for confusion.
This is addressed by modern VoIP systems that combine all of these features into a single central application. Your remote workers can:
- Start a quick text chat and ask a question to a teammate.
- That text chat will be upgraded to a face-to-face video meeting with the click of a button.
- Securely share project documents and images.
- Listen to corporate voicemails
All communication is consolidated into one clean, simple tool, cutting down on digital clutter and making it much easier for your remote workers to collaborate.
Utilise Smart Call Routing To Prevent Burnout
One of the hidden dangers of remote work is that the boundaries between our personal and professional lives can easily blur. His or her office is now in his or her home and he or she feels pressure to answer client phone calls late at night or on the weekend. This can lead to employee burnout.
Smart Call Routing
VoIP keeps your team’s work-life balance intact. You can set up your central business phone system to automatically route incoming client calls according to a set of rules:
Business Hours
You can set the system so that calls will only go to an employee’s app between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. After hours, calls are automatically transferred to a professional company voice mail box.
Time Zone Routing
If you have a customer support team all over the world, VoIP can automatically know a caller’s time and route the call to a remote employee who is working their normal daylight hours.
Leverage Advanced Training Features For Remote Onboarding
When a new employee is in a physical office they learn by osmosis. They can hear how experienced team members talk to clients and deal with difficult situations. This type of natural learning is hard to reproduce in a virtual environment. VoIP bridges this training gap with advanced, remote-friendly features.
Call Recorder App
Easily record high-quality customer service or sales calls. “Such examples can be added to a digital training library for new remote hires to listen to real-world examples of great client communication during their onboarding week.
Whispering Call
This feature allows a manager to join a call between a new remote intern and a client while it is in progress. The manager can “whisper” advice and answers directly into the employee’s headset to assist them through the call, but the client on the other end can’t hear the manager at all. It’s like having a digital coach sitting with them.
Secure Corporate Data
When employees work from home, they might text or call clients from their personal phone numbers. This is a huge security and privacy problem for your business. When that employee leaves the company, they take that client relationship and conversation history on their personal device.
Your company has complete control of its data with a corporate VoIP app routing all business communications. All client phone numbers, text logs and call recordings are securely stored in your corporate cloud network so your business remains compliant, organised and secure.
