8 Things You Didn’t Know Your Business Phone System Could Do

You’re not alone if your business phone system is something you begrudgingly put up with. Perhaps you’re locked into a regretfully long contract that you’d rather not think too much about, or just let phones sit in the background because you’d rather not endure the faff of troubleshooting and navigating clunky interfaces. Poor call quality and limited reporting have almost become accepted as part of everyday working life, and you’d be forgiven for assuming that’s just how business phone systems work. What’s the point in trying to change things?

The reality, however, could be very different. Business phone systems have evolved beyond recognition over the past decade or so, with intelligent, cloud-based platforms replacing traditional desk phones and delivering capabilities far beyond simply connecting calls. For example, features powered by AI are turning some of the best cloud phone systems into one of the most valuable and insightful tools in any business. 

Unless you’ve actively explored modern business phone systems like 8×8 and CallSwitch One, it’s highly likely that you won’t even be aware that these features exist. With that in mind, we’ve put together this guide to the things you didn’t know your business phone system could do, encouraging you to think a bit differently about your communication capabilities moving forward. 

1. Write Your Call Notes For You

If your teams are spending several minutes after every call writing up notes or updating records in your chosen CRM, you’ll be well aware how quickly that admin can pile up over the course of any single working day. Fortunately, modern business phone systems mean that this process no longer has to be a manual one.

Take 8×8 as an example. It’s one of the most popular cloud phone systems among our clients, and the reasons why are endless, but its call summary features are a particular highlight. As part of 8×8’s Conversation IQ add-on, call summaries can be automatically generated from each conversation, not only providing a full transcript of the call but also extracting and highlighting key discussion points and agreed actions in just seconds.

This business phone system feature is a genuine time saver and also creates a genuinely consistent record of interactions both internally and externally. No guesswork is needed to pick up a colleague’s conversation where it was left off, and no time is taken scribbling down what you can remember from a detailed call as soon as you’re off the phone – the platform does it all for you.

2. Send Every Caller To The Right Person

There’s nothing more frustrating than calling a business, only to be passed from person to person before finally reaching someone who can actually help. If you’ve been on the receiving end of this yourself, you’ll be well aware of just how annoying it is, and probably realise how embarrassing it might be to be doing it to your own clients or customers. 

One of the most underappreciated features of today’s business phone systems is intelligent call routing. Both 8×8 and CallSwitch One allow you to entirely customise the queues your callers are placed into, ensuring that they reach an appropriate agent as quickly as possible.

The 8×8 Engage license takes this one step further by even allowing you to route returning customers to the last person they spoke with, creating a much more personal experience while reducing the need for customers to explain the same issue over and over again.

3. Let AI Find Out Why Someone Is Calling Before You Answer

One of the most repetitive parts of handling inbound calls is asking the same opening questions every single time. We’ve seen this cause significant problems among our clients, with those given the responsibility of answering the inbound phone shying away from doing so because they end up having to handle sales calls beyond their remit rather than actually doing their own job.

However, it’s now possible to use AI to gather information before a customer even reaches a member of your team. Rather than immediately placing the caller into a queue, the system can establish why they’re calling and pass useful context over to the person who will handle the call before the conversation even begins.

This is a great feature for two reasons. Firstly, it saves precious time screening calls and allows your teams to operate more efficiently. Even better, however, is the impact it has on the caller experience. With important facts gathered before they’ve even connected, they can be routed to the right person and have their problems or queries resolved more quickly. 

4. Turn A Phone Call Into A Video Call

We’re all pretty familiar and comfortable with video calling family and friends and taking part in video conferences for work, and it’s hard to deny that some problems are much easier to solve when you can actually see them. However, business phones have long been stuck within the audio-only world, particularly when it comes to legacy desk phone systems. 

Technical support teams in particular can benefit significantly from being able to hop on a video call with a caller, and this is now possible through modern cloud phone systems like 8×8. Certain licenses include the ability to send a secure SMS invitation that instantly upgrades a voice call into a live video session to provide the required support.

In 8×8, these video calls can then be recorded and automatically transcribed, with further options to request camera switching and, with the customer’s permission, even access location information when it’s relevant to resolving the issue. These phone system features are a real game changer, and ones we can see having practical applications across industries not even aware of them right now.

5. Quietly Support Employees During Live Calls

Supporting and monitoring calls has traditionally meant listening back to recordings and discussing what could have been handled differently. However, you could be saving yourself a lot of time and admin by using a cloud phone system that allows managers to provide support while the conversation is actually taking place.

Features like Monitor, Whisper and Barge (available on 8×8) allow supervisors to silently listen to calls, privately coach an employee without the customer hearing, or join the conversation directly if a situation escalates or requires additional expertise.

6. Understand How Every Conversation Really Went

Often, what a caller says only tells part of the story. How they say it is what actually provides the most valuable insight, but this can be hard to put into words.

It’s in this space that AI-powered sentiment analysis has become one of the most impressive developments in modern business phone systems. For example, with the tools of 8×8’s Conversation IQ, you can quickly and automatically assess the tone and sentiment of conversations, getting measurable insights into talk-time balance and customer satisfaction levels at different points in the call. 

It’s now possible to quickly identify examples of exceptional service and spot recurring frustrations without spending hours listening back to recordings or using instinct to make decisions.

7. Spot Trends Across Calls Automatically

Ever wished you could instantly know if teams are using the right compliance language or if customers are mentioning the same problems over and over again that you could quickly fix? Your phone system can. 

The AI-powered conversation analytics built into the platforms we’ve already discussed can be configured to identify recurring keywords across calls, automatically surfacing the issues and positive points that you might otherwise take days to uncover. Whether you’re regularly getting delivery complaints, discussing competitors, or using language that raises concerns, these trends can now be surfaced automatically. 

8. Show Managers What’s Happening In Real Time

Managing busy teams has always involved a fair amount of guesswork. Working out who is busiest and how long callers are waiting is often answered via assumptions, but today’s cloud phone systems can provide those answers instantly.

The reporting and wallboard capabilities of the best cloud business phone systems are nothing short of incredible. We’re talking real-time visibility of queues and agent availability, and alerts sent when problems are surfacing or resources are being squeezed, rather than having to wait until the end of the day. 

If your organisation relies heavily on inbound customer enquiries, the ability to see what’s happening in real-time is probably something you never even realised was possible, but can make a significant difference to customer satisfaction and productivity.

Get More From Your Phone System

Beyond highlighting the seriously impressive capabilities that are on offer with cloud phone systems, these features emphasise that relying on an ageing phone system is probably causing your business more harm than good. It’s easy to assume that you’ve got no choice but to put up with manual administration and poor call quality, but the reality is quite the opposite, and there’s never been a better time to rethink the way your business communicates.

As platforms like 8×8 continue to demonstrate just how intelligent your phone system could be, why not take the opportunity to finally invest in an upgrade?

At Agile Comms, we help organisations move away from outdated and poorly performing phone systems and discover how they could benefit from a cloud system. Whether you’re looking to reduce administrative burdens or have reporting capabilities as sophisticated as your service offering, we’re on hand to help you find a solution that works for you. 

Get in touch today to arrange a demo of any of these features or speak to a member of our expert team about your business phone system requirements.