What Is Voicemail And Why It’s Essential For Business
What is voicemail for business, and how can this feature help you handle missed calls, save time and increase customer satisfaction?
What is Voicemail?
Voicemail is a digitally recorded voice message that a caller can leave if the person they are trying to reach isn’t available. In a business, this message will be stored in a centralized system, and the recipient of the call can retrieve the voice message.
Picture the analog answering machine, which would play a greeting and record callers' messages. Voicemail is essentially the better, more advanced version of this.
Because of its digital nature, you can check your voice messages from anywhere. It also has greater capabilities, like storing and archiving messages.
How Does Voicemail Work?
In a business phone system, each extension can have its own voice mailbox.
You will set up a pre-recorded voice message that will play when you aren’t available to answer your phone. Your voicemail greeting should include details on when you’ll return the call and what information you want the caller to leave. This includes name, phone number and reason for calling.
Your caller will hear your pre-recorded message and then leave you a message you can retrieve and respond to later.
Modern Phone Systems and Visual Voicemail
With a landline phone system, you’d have to dial a phone number, enter a pin, listen to the message, write down the phone number and place a return call. This is inconvenient, time-consuming, and not appealing to most people.
By using a modern phone system such as business VoIP and UcaaS, you can skip this cumbersome process and quickly get through your messages.
Like a traditional phone system, you can listen to voice messages with a desk phone, but you can also access your recorded messages on screen.
With visual voicemail, you can view all your phone messages with information about who called, when, and how long the recording is. Right at your fingertips, you have the option to manage all your voice messages in an easy, streamlined way.
An even more efficient capability is that you can check your voicemail messages on multiple devices like your desktop, tablet, laptop and mobile.
Benefits of Using Voicemail
Attend to callers at all times:
Whether it's after hours or when you can't take calls, you can still take care of your customers. Your voicemail box is a way to assure your callers that you have received their inquiry and will follow up with them. They will certainly appreciate not having to call you again.
Screen Calls and Save Time:
If you are working on a high-priority task, the last thing you need is a non-urgent or robocall interrupting you. In this instance, you can screen for urgent or priority calls and let the rest go to your voicemail box. In this way, you can return the call at a more convenient time.
Keep Better Records:
Because your voice messages can be saved and stored in a VoIP phone system, it is a valuable tool for record keeping. You can archive messages within the system and retrieve them if you need to reference them in the future.
Save Time and Provide a Better Customer Experience:
No one likes to spend their precious time waiting on hold. So when you give your callers the option to leave a message, they can detail their issue or inquiry. You can then better prepare for the return call by pulling up their account information or looking into answers to their questions. By taking this extra step, you'll be able to resolve the issue in fewer steps and provide a better customer experience when returning calls.
Cut Overhead Costs:
The cost of having enough customer service agents or a receptionist on hand may be prohibitive. Having your callers leave a voice message can help you save money on hiring a receptionist or paying overtime. Using a VoIP business phone system, you can also use the auto-attendant feature to automatically route incoming calls to extensions or voicemails. This automation eliminates the need for a receptionist or frees up their time.
Business Voicemail Features
You will get many more features in a modern business phone system, which will make internal and external communication more efficient.
1. Voicemail Greetings: With VoIP phone systems, it's easy to record, upload
and change your current voicemail greeting through your user portal. You can use a default greeting or record a personalized greeting.
2. Schedule Greetings with Expiration: You can record a custom voicemail greeting that expires at a specified date and time. This is useful if you are going to be out of the office.
3. Voice-to-Email Transcription: You can have all your voicemails sent to your email. Instead of listening to countless long voicemails, you can read your voicemails in a fraction of the time.
4. Multiple Ways to Check Voicemail: With a traditional landline, you need to dial in to check your messages. But with an advanced phone system, you can check your voicemail on your desktop, laptop, or mobile device in addition to your desk phone.
5. Forward Voicemails: If the voicemail you received is meant for someone else, you can quickly and easily forward voicemails. It is also a useful feature if you need to provide extra context to a colleague.
6. View Missed Calls at a Glance: With visual voicemail, you can view all your messages at once on-screen with caller ID information. This is a big improvement over having to listen to all voicemails to know who left you a message.
7. Recieve voicemails from callers at the same time: When your office is experiencing high call volume, it may not be possible to take all phone calls. Caller messages can be recorded simultaneously in your voicemail inbox, so no one goes unanswered.
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