How to Leverage VoIP for Your Call Centre Business

Call centres have been a part of the British service culture for decades now. Through businesses of various sizes, they’ve helped people access support and advice at speed – and they’re fantastic for helping to boost your firm’s bottom line.

And yet, the way you run a call centre is going to change pretty soon. By 2027, BT will be moving all homes and businesses from traditional PSTN and ISDN connectivity over to VoIP. In short, that means all the phone calls you make and take through your centre will run through your broadband, instead of legacy phone lines.

But beyond the necessity of VoIP that’s fast approaching, there are some fantastic advantages to adopting this comms standard sooner rather than later.

So, let’s take a close look at how your call centre could make the most of VoIP, and why it’s worth doing!

What is a call centre?

A call centre is a front-facing, agent-run service operation that answers and fields phone calls from customers. Think of it as your first line of care for people who want to use your products and services.

If they need to get in touch with your business to discuss subscriptions, cancellations, or to make payments, for example, they’d call your centre. They’ve become known as contact centres over the years, too, mainly because these operations handle texts, emails, and post, too!

Call centres come in various shapes and sizes. Larger businesses might outsource their operations to specific centre specialists or off site teams. Smaller firms, meanwhile, might have a basic back office team that answers phone calls and handles queries.

Essentially, call centres bridge the entire operation between the business owner and the customers. Instead of handling queries yourself, you’re delegating them to people you employ to manage phones and online messages.

As you can imagine, the more services you offer (and the bigger your business gets), the more complex managing and scaling up your call centre can get.

That’s where VoIP can come in handy.

How can call centres use VoIP?

It’s easier than ever for call centres to make use of VoIP technology. In many cases, it’s as simple as connecting centre devices to a central source of broadband and setting up a coverage plan with an appropriate provider.

Instead of using limited cabling and outdated telephony, call centres can add as many users and devices as they wish to a VoIP package. That means they can scale their services up and down as they require.

Ultimately, the flexibility of using the internet to handle calls helps call centres to process larger volumes and to attend to customer needs sooner rather than later. Centre managers can use VoIP to merge communications services together, too, so that agents have complete oversight of caller conversations and previous discussions.

The upscaling and feature potential on offer for call centres through VoIP simply isn’t achievable through legacy PSTN and ISDN. Therefore, competitive call centre operators will do best to consider taking advantage of the limitless potential now, before VoIP becomes the only option for British businesses.

Benefits of using VoIP

Let’s run through some of the further benefits of using VoIP to manage call centres and handle customer calls and requests.

• You get incredible uptime. The uptime you can expect through VoIP is immeasurable compared to the traditional PSTN standard. Connecting to customers via data means your phone calls are crisper, more stable, and less likely to drop. That’s great news for customers and agents.
• It’s more cost-effective than using traditional telephony. Setting up and running a call centre on traditional telephony and cabling requires significant investment. Through VoIP, you’re paying for cloud-based, managed services with cheaper monthly costs, and less chance of losing business thanks to higher uptime.
• It supports field agents. The home working revolution has led many call centre agents to start taking and making calls outside physical office locations. With VoIP, your agents can simply log into an app from their mobile phone and still log into your network – and you can scale up as many remote workers as you wish.
• You can offer a better standard of service to customers. Thanks to VoIP’s potential for call handling features, you can always make sure there’s someone available to take calls or messages, or at least to point people in the right direction. Customers hate having to wait – and they hate not getting straight answers even more!
• You can choose phone numbers for multiple locations – even where you have no physical presence. Small and large business using VoiP can have multiple phone numbers, from any location in the UK all connecting to your call centre, and give the impression of a local business when advertising outside of your immediate area.

Disadvantages of using VoIP (and how to bridge alternatives)

Of course, it’s important to note there might be a few reasons why VoIP isn’t the best solution for your call centre at present. Here are a few points to consider, and how we can help.

• You’ll need internet stability. You can’t make the most of VoIP without a stable internet connection, which means you’ll need to carefully partner with a reliable service provider. Don’t worry – we can advise you on what to look for so you can assuredly support VoIP in-house.
• You might need to invest in new hardware. To use VoIP, you’ll need to invest in IP phones and handsets. That means you might need to remove existing hardware as well as pay for new technology upfront. Again, the VoIPer team can help guide you in this regard! What’s more, the costs you’ll save switching to VoIP will quickly make up for hardware expenses.
• You might need to get used to a new set of systems. With new technology comes a bit of a learning curve – but don’t worry. We roll out simple software packages that we’ll give you the complete lowdown on, so it’s easy for you to then train your centre team.

Set up a flexible, scalable call centre with VoIPer

The time is now to set up or even move your call centre with VoIPer, one of the best VoIP providers in the UK.  Even ahead of the PSTN switch-off on the horizon, there are tons of great cost-saving and service delivery reasons to move over with a provider who can guide you every step of the way.

VoIPer’s competitive packages and supportive service will help you build a call centre that easily grows with your business. Get started by getting in touch with us today to learn more.