For any business, all interactions with prospective customers are worth their weight in gold. When you’re starting out, you won’t need much in the way of infrastructure to handle your trickle of inbound calls. As you grow, however, and that trickle turns into a stream, you’ll find that a single phone line isn’t enough.
That’s why you’ll need a multi-line phone system to help you scale while still providing a great customer experience. Here’s what you should be looking out for when considering a multi-line phone system.
What is a Multi-Line Phone System and Why Does it Matter?
A multi-line phone system allows you to handle two or more calls simultaneously, rather than being limited to one phone call per line at a time. So, as a small business, you can give out a single phone number as a point of contact, yet still handle calls at scale. This is a game-changer when it comes to consolidating your brand and crafting a single point of entry for new customer interactions to be handled.
It’s also worth noting that while many people think of multi-line phone systems as physical, on-premises systems, that isn’t necessarily the case. It’s often more beneficial to use a virtual multi-line phone system. With a virtual, hosted VoIP system like this, you can scale your number of phone lines up and down at will. Plus, you won’t need any space on-site or need to foot the bill for installation.
Multi-line VoIP systems are great for large and small businesses alike because they offer a flexible, scalable phone system that can be managed centrally. Any member of staff with an internet connection can update or edit the system so long as they have the right permissions.
What Features Are Essential in a Multi-Line Phone System?
Multi-line phone systems are not all made equal and some features are more beneficial than others for small businesses. Here are some of the key things you should be looking for:
Hardware Agnostic
You want a system that can work with any VoIP hardware, rather than one that locks you to a particular brand. Companies that do enforce such restrictions often bundle expensive phones as part of the package which can cause costs to skyrocket. Being able to use your new service with your existing hardware is both more cost-effective and more convenient for growing businesses.
IVR Call Menus and Call Monitoring
To provide a great experience for your customers, you want your phone system to offer multi-level IVR call menus and call monitoring. The IVR encourages customer-driven navigation to the right department and call monitoring gives supervisors oversight. These features allow for a more efficient team and a better experience for customers and clients.
Voicemail Transcription
Gone are the days when you need to sit and listen through all your voicemails to get the information contained in each one. The best VoIP phone systems can automatically transcribe your voicemails and send them to one or more email addresses. This increases the speed with which stakeholders can filter through messages and take necessary action steps.
CRM Integrations
Ideally, your multi-line phone system will integrate with CRM solutions to enhance their effectiveness. This allows for more oversight into how your sales leads are developing and the history of your relationships with customers. This ultimately empowers businesses to make decisions backed by data.
Yay.com Multi-Line Phone Service
Yay.com’s platform offers the best multi-line phone system for small businesses. We’ve worked tirelessly over the years to adapt our platform to the modern business landscape. All of our features are designed to help you get more out of your communications, boosting efficiency and improving your caller experience.
Our system is hardware-agnostic, fully-featured, and hosted in the cloud meaning no space requirements or installation costs. We give your business everything it needs to take its communications to the next level. Add to this our ongoing, five-star rated after-sales support and you have yourself one of the best multi-line phone systems for small businesses.
Get in touch with us today to see how we can help, or get started right away by comparing our VoIP plans.