Starting a business, or running a start-up?
Effective communications are crucial to the success of most organisations and should be considered a priority if you are looking to build a credible, scalable business. The good news is that it doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive to organise a slick and flexible communications system for your small business.
We know first-hand how many competing priorities are juggled during the early stages of running a business. Getting the company set up and running requires a long to-do list! We started our own business just over a year ago and since then we’ve helped a number of start-ups deploy and setup their first business communications service. It can be easy to overlook and underestimate the positive impact and importance of professional communications. In this article we share some tips and considerations for your first communications services.
How to Communicate
How do you anticipate your target market to communicate with you? Chances are, they’ll call!
A huge amount of customer contact is still handled over the telephone. In fact, research suggests a whopping 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone. If a potential client is looking to speak to you, and requires more information or pricing, they will probably phone you. In our busy, competitive world, people are increasingly impatient though – which means it’s vital your calls can be answered promptly.
Professional unified communications services provide the opportunity for all staff to receive business calls whether they are in the office or not. Furthermore, flexible scheduling, call-routing and voicemail options mean inbound calls will rarely be missed or not returned.
As well as answering quickly and professionally, it can also be important to transfer a call to a colleague or 3rd party rather than arranging a call-back from them. This should be simple and quick, leaving the caller waiting for as little time as possible.
Perception
Building credibility as a start-up is important, and you’ll probably spend a fair amount of time and money getting the brand and marketing set up, but what does your communications provision say about you and your business?
Prospective clients who might contact or be contacted by your business will make snap judgements about your operation and unprofessional communications can impair that perception. Their experience communicating with your business is important.
Use a landline number. Either local or non-geographic, depending on your brand and target market. On your website. When you advertise your business. When you make calls from the business. This will look far more credible and established than advertising and communicating using your mobile number.
When considering how to provision a phone system, you should be able to make sure any greetings, auto-attendants and voicemail messages are consistent, professional and in line with your brand.
Flexibility
Our favorite word: flexibility!
Things can change and grow fast with a good start-up, and part of the joy of a new venture is the capability to adapt fast and respond to the needs of your clients without all the red tape. Communications services shouldn’t hold you back.
Whether you need to grow or change your team, create new numbers or reconfigure the system, it should be easy to create a scalable and flexible communications solution for your start-up. Modern cloud unified communications solutions are typically licensed per user and can be purchased on short term agreements, rather than the long, burdensome contracts of yesteryear.
Budgets
For most start-ups, it’s crucial that costs are kept to minimum. There can be an awful lot to spend money on and often an income stream isn’t fully established.
Cloud phone systems are surprisingly cost effective. Generally, cloud unified communications solutions are bundled as a per user license price and include calls, support and everything you need. They operate as applications on computers and smartphones, meaning there is no hefty investment in traditional telephone hardware unless it’s required. The systems are simple to deploy, manage and learn which means the professional services required to set them up is minimal and inexpensive too.
Keeping Track
Even small businesses can benefit from understanding how their phones are being used.
Monitoring and tracking staff performance, analysing ROI for marketing initiatives and helping callers receive the best experience are all tangible results of good call analytics, which come standard in most modern cloud systems.
Retrieving call recordings is useful too, for training and monitoring purposes. Perhaps a call with a lot of technical information, or a particularly successful sales call. When retrieving call recordings is easy, you can listen back and keep important calls on file.
Paul McClymont from Redmoor Property Consultants says: 
As our start up business began to grow, we needed a professional landline phone number, and I wanted to make sure I could use it on the go. With the brilliant CallSwitch solution from Agile, I can run my business communications from my smartphone. It’s enabled me to advertise a local number and never miss a call! It’s awesome!
What Next?
If you would like to understand more and perhaps have a demonstration of a simple, flexible cloud phone system, we’d be very happy to help. We have a range of services to suit every need and systems that can start and scale from just one user.
We keep contracts short for all our clients, which provides the opportunity to scale and change on demand. Get in touch to find out more.