Business Phone Systems

The business phone is arguably the most important channel of communication for any business. It's the universal weapon of choice for initiating, negotiating and closing deals. An indispensable tool for communicating with customers, suppliers and partners.

There's a clear connection between how well a business manages its phone system and its score on key performance indicators including: sales, customer retention, customer satisfaction, new customer acquisition and Profit!

Our objective is to shed light on the subject of managing phone systems and introduce tools that will significantly improve overall business profitability by using phone systems to their full potential.

Business Phone Management

To many managers and business owners the management of a phone system is something that should be left to technicians.

• "If the phone system doesn't work, fix it."
• "Managing a phone system?"
• "What 's to manage?"
• "A phone is a phone!"
• Phones are an expense, not an asset!"

Business telephone systems are one of the most neglected business assets and it shows.

In fact, phone systems are commonly regarded as a necessary evil.

What Are Business Phone Tools?

Phone tools are management tools. It's impossible to effectively manage a phone system without them. Even in a relatively small business there's too much going on to make good management decisions based on the information available from a phone bill or walking around the office.

Take one example of a phone tool: call accounting software. It's not unusual for a return on investment to be achieved in just 3-4 months. In some cases a payback can be achieved in 3-4 weeks.

Reducing the cost of phone services is only one side of the equation."

Increased productivity also needs to be considered. A phone system can either be a conduit for new business or a bottleneck.

Without reliable metrics it's all guess work and hunches. Call accounting software can pinpoint the bottlenecks and identify the causes based on how a phone system is used.

Without phone tools it's impossible to manage a phone system.

It's like sailing a ship on the open ocean without a compass, sextant or map.

By monitoring and measuring how phone systems are used, phone tools provide essential information for effective management of a critical communication channel. They can be used to expose opportunities for increasing revenue, better utilization of resources, improved customer service and dramatically improved customer communication.

Businesses that efficiently manage their phone systems have a competitive edge that customers notice and appreciate. Businesses that don't manage their phone systems have the worst kind of problem. It's the problem that everyone knows about except the management of the business.