Utilizing a UCaaS platform for your communication is a valuable business piece when it comes to multi-site companies. If your business has offices or locations in different cities, you need technology that unites your dispersed staff. UCaaS can make your teams more cohesive and keep locations connected. You don’t have to worry about complicated transfers, jumbled reporting, or lengthy auto attendants. Let’s take a look at 5 specific ways that a UCaaS platform unifies a multi-site business.
1. Bridge Gaps Between Locations with Multiple Communication Channels
One of the challenges that multi-site businesses face is keeping all the locations connected. It is important to create a sense of unity among staff members who are separated by distance. Especially if your business locations all function pretty closely, or do a lot of back and forth business, collaboration is KEY. By setting up a VoIP business phone system, and taking advantage of our UCaaS platform, your employees will be able to connect and communicate in a few ways.
- View the presence of coworkers on the CallHarbor web softphone. Employees can use the customer portal, the web softphone, and their mobile app to see which of their co-workers are available for a phone call. You can view full presence, so you can also see who is currently occupied on a call or offline.
- Easy extension to extension dialing. Rather than having to dial exact phone numbers or extensions, an employee can one-click voice or video call a colleague right from the softphone or mobile app.
- Chat with coworkers. In addition to phone calling, employees can also use the app to send chat messages to other coworkers. This can be especially helpful for a customer service agent who is on the phone with a customer but doesn’t know the answer to a question; the agent can quickly ask for help.
2. Utilize Video Calling and Video Conferencing for Multi-Site Business
Having a multi-site team can cause a riff in communications. Many companies turn to video conferencing as an easy and efficient way to “meet.” Even when working from different offices, video conferencing is a great way to keep the conversation on track and stay focused. There are a few reasons why video conferencing is superior to regular conferencing calling.
- Non-Verbal communication increases understanding of messages. Especially in the workplace, a message’s success depends on how effectively you are able to get it through. Facial expressions, gestures, body postures and eye contact all can affect the way your message comes across. According to research, between 65% and 80% of our communication with others is non-verbal.
- Increased productivity by being held accountable. Everyone has been on a conference call that was all but exciting. You can set the phone on speaker, and continue doing what you were doing without being engaged. In a video meeting, it holds people accountable since you can see each other. It encourages you to stay engaged and stay productive.
- Quality of call is superior. Early versions of video conferencing had uneven clarity of audio and video. Today, state-of-the-art systems including our CallHarbor Video platform deliver clear, reliable audio and video quality. When on group phone calls, audio can get choppy, or people can go in and out if they lose service. With video calls, as long as you are on reliable internet, your connection will be stable and reliable.
- Visual aids can help the meeting flow. Being able to use visual aids, as you would in an in-person meeting, is a great perk of video conferencing. Sharing your screen and being able to point out specific areas of a document or project is highly effective. Many video conferencing systems also have a whiteboard feature where you can write, type, and draw and it will show up on the screens of your fellow callers in real time.
- A sense of connection happens between teams when on a video call. Connection is important when it comes to project/team success. When working from different offices or locations, teams can feel far apart. Hopping on a video call with employees from each location can make everyone feel much closer! Being able to see your coworkers reminds you that you are talking to an actual person. Check out another one of our blog posts on video conferencing here.
3. Manage Multi-Site Business from Our Customer Portal
CallHarbor has an easy to use customer portal that allows you to oversee all of your sites. Our customer-centric, easy-to-use web dashboard is easy for all customers to utilize. You can access, configure, and maintain your entire system from one place. Everything from editing users, seeing analytics, and making changes to an auto attendant is just one click away. Your users can be assigns to specific sites, and organized with ease. You can also appoint “site managers” that can make phone system changes for one site, but not the others.
You can do things like:
– Edit users, locations, and phone buttons
– View call records and detailed reports & analytics
– View call recordings and download or share them
– Enable or disable features for individuals & groups
– Change auto attendant buttons
– Add or edit call queues
– Turn on voicemail transcriptions & toggle preferences
– Add a new voicemail or greeting
From within the portal you can also access our knowledge base. There you’ll find articles which lay out how to make changes within the portal, and how to access specific information. Our articles include screenshots from the portal so you can see specific buttons and wording, and make it easy to follow along. Some of the articles include How do I send and view SMS in the portal? How Do I set Hold music? and many more.
4. Direct Your Sales or Support Queue to Ring Specific Phones from Wherever
If you have sales or customer service teams scattered in a multi-site organization, you can unify those reps under one queues. By doing this, you’ll ensure that callers always reach an available rep when they call your business.
In the VoIP service’s admin portal, simply create a call queue and add all of your sales or support reps to the group. Then, set this group as the destination of your sales or support phone number or extension. Whenever someone calls that phone number, all of the designated reps’ phones that are in the group will ring in your predefined way, no matter where they’re located.
5. Configure Your Business Hour Rules/Auto Attendants
Another option you have to ensure that callers don’t reach a voicemail box is to send incoming calls to your open offices. For example, let’s say that your business has a New York City office and a San Francisco office. You can configure business hour rules so that incoming calls during morning hours (when the San Francisco office is closed) are only sent to employees in the NYC office, and incoming calls during evening hours (when the NYC office is closed) are only sent to employees in the California office.
By doing this, your business will be able to provide customers with phone support throughout the entire day. Another great way to link different sites together is the give callers the option to call other locations right from the auto attendant. Here an example of part of an auto attendant script with that option:
Hi! Thank you for calling Company A in Dearborn, Michigan. If you were trying to reach our Jacksonville, Florida location, please press 1.
The Many Benefits of Using a Cloud Phone System
If your business is multi-site or has remote/traveling workers, utilizing a UCaaS platform is the best plan for you. You’ll gain features that encourage communication, streamline business operations, and improve customer service.