7 features of a virtual PBX that you haven’t considered yet: case studies

Any phone can simply make and receive calls, meanwhile, a virtual PBX is a tool with dozens of useful functions. However, unfortunately, not everyone remembers its additional features that take work with leads to a brand new level. We set our clients’ case studies as an example to show all the opportunities of the Ringostat virtual PBX.

Convenient menu for customers speaking different languages

International companies can be contacted by customers who speak various languages. And here you have only two options: a secretary who speaks all the possible languages or setting up a voice menu. The first option is not easy to provide. But at Ringostat there will be no issues with the second one.

This is clearly shown by the case study of our client — a logistics company from Kazakhstan. They had a number of difficulties when they reached out to Ringostat for the first time:

• customers who speak different languages;
• not all sales reps know these languages, thus, calls must be directed to a specific employee, based on the customer’s language;
• the manager needs to understand the customer’s language before answering the call in order to correctly introduce himself and say hello.

To solve these issues, we set up a branched voice menu for the company. This is exactly the “voice” that usually suggests: “To contact the sales department, press 1, for service issues, press 2, to contact the operator, stay on the line.”

However, here the voice menu scheme is built in two stages:

• we find out the client’s language;
• we find out the necessary department: cargo transportation, customs or courier delivery.

Before a call is transferred to the selected department, an audio recording will alert the answering sales rep about the language that the customer is speaking:

As you can see from the chart, there is a reserve at the end of each chain. This can be a city or mobile number of the company that does not depend on the presence of the Internet and light in the office. For example, the phone number of a sales rep from a related department for a safety net.

As a result, the company increases customer loyalty by answering them in their native language and allows them to contact the right department right away. And the business immediately creates an image of a contractor who takes care of its customers at the early beginning.

A solution for departments that compete with each other

This situation can take place in companies where several sales departments sell different goods/services. And it is important for them that competing colleagues do not take their leads who are still in the work.

This is exactly the case for our client, a large developer who has more than 15 residential complexes. Each of them has its own sales department. And to keep the competition clean, none of the departments should know about each other’s calls. It was also necessary to divide the missed calls between them so that the company could count them considering different residential complexes.

To solve this issue, we partially used call tracking with its principle of number substitution. But the further communication took place using a virtual PBX.

1. We have divided the substituted project numbers of the developer between all the sites of the residential complexes.
2. When a visitor opens the site of a specific residential complex, Ringostat shows him the substituted number of the required sales department. Therefore, the virtual PBX immediately directs the call to the right place.
3. When there is a missed call, notifications are sent not to all employees, but only to the sales department associated with the called number.
4. Notifications about missed calls are sent to the email as well as to Google Sheets where sales reps can view the statistics of their department.

Control of sales reps who work outside the office

There are many work areas where employees work outside the office part of the time. For example, logisticians escort cargo, real estate agents show houses, builders visit buildings, etc. There they communicate with customers via their smartphones but it becomes not clear as you can’t control the conversation.

An employee may miss calls, be impolite, try to steal a customer, and provide his own services directly. And the manager will never know this as it is impossible to listen to the conversation made by phone. Or is it possible?

If you are a Ringostat and lifecell client, then it is possible for you. We have a solution available for everyone who is connected to the “Joint FMC Network” service from this operator. It works by the following principle:

Such a solution is described in the case study of one of our clients, a network of car dealerships. The main thing that they appreciated by connecting Ringostat is the ability to control calls from/to mobile. Salon sales reps are often outside the office. Thus, customers call them on their smartphones. Thanks to our cooperation with the lifecell operator and the FMC service, all such calls are recorded in the virtual PBX, like any other calls.

Read more in the article “FMC — control all calls of your sales reps”.   

Calls tagging

Virtual PBX allows you to mark each call after the end of the conversation. It can be assigned different categories, depending on your communication with the customer. For example:

• a new customer or an existing one called, or it was generally spam;
• what product the buyer wanted to buy or what service he was interested in;
• customers called the sales department or technical support, etc.

You can set any categories depending on your needs. You can also assign value to them. There are several ways to tag calls.

1. Manually. After the conversation, the sales reps enter the call log, find the desired request and assign it a category and value. You can also do this on the card of a call.
2. In semi-automatic mode. When the client hangs up, an audio message is played to the sales rep. It offers to select the desired category of the call by entering the appropriate number.

One of the clients that actively use this functionality is an insurance company. Its founder said in a case study that the specifics of their business do not automatically assess whether a potential customer has called. This is usually understandable due to the essence of the target call — a rather long conversation with the customer.

But for the client, everything is not so simple, so the company uses call tagging. After the end of the conversation, the sales rep chooses which category the call can be classified into. So it becomes clear whether the message came from a new customer or whether the calls are made by existing customers or even junk leads.

Example of call categories

 

Uploading recordings for the answering machine and a greeting

There is one more function that relates to the voice menu in the list of important features. And this is not surprising as it is the face of the company. The first thing that a customer hears when calling you is a greeting, and the last, if he doesn’t reach you, an answering machine.

Therefore, they have to be done as informative and memorable as possible. This is exactly what our client did. The company is a branch of stores selling auto goods. The client wanted to emphasize its theme in the audio greeting, so a corresponding song is played during it.

We also set up two answering machines for non-business hours. This is necessary because the client has both offline and online stores and the schedules differ there. The first answering machine says that the information center is not working at the moment, but you can contact the offline store. The second informs that all branches have non-working hours. These calls are then necessarily processed by sales reps.

For more details check the case study “How to set analytics and phone system for the automotive shops”. 

Audio recordings of calls to fight the fraud

Everyone already knows that audio recordings of calls allow you to control the sales department and improve the quality of service. But they can also be used to track fraudsters. For example, there are companies that buy traffic and pay for calls that come from it. An unscrupulous “provider” can imitate phone calls from potential buyers.

Our partner told about such a situation in the story of successful cooperation with Ringostat. According to him, fraud is a serious issue in arbitrage. Bots can now not only click on ads but also call. Fortunately, they have not yet learned to speak. Therefore, our partner easily checks the quality of traffic. He does it the following way:

• generates a report only for inbound calls that lasted a few seconds;
• listens to them;
• it was a call from a bot if there was silence after picking up the phone;
• the company refuses to cooperate with sites that bring such calls.

Bonus: flexible outbound connection settings

We have not yet written a case on these settings but we use them every day in our own work. We are sure that they will be useful to you too. The thing is that you can:

• set up a single number for outbound calls to a specific direction: country or country + provider;
• set up a single number for outbound calls from a specific SIP account;
• block outbound calls from a specific SIP account.

You can choose how your number will be displayed when you call a customer. For example, if we call a new user, we show him the number of his region. A resident of Kyiv will see a Kyiv phone, etc. If the customer has already communicated with us, we show him the number that he has already seen on the site and which he dialed. And here again, we are talking about the replacement call tracking numbers, which are used in the further work of the PBX.

So a person sees either an already familiar number or the phone of his region. This increases the chances that he will pick up the phone. After all, many people do not even answer if they are called by an unfamiliar number, especially one belonging to another city or region.

Also, you can always show the phone number of your company, from whatever SIP account your sales rep calls. This is especially useful for companies with a well-known number, for example, pizza delivery services, taxis, etc.

Summary: 7 features of Ringostat virtual PBX that are worth using

1. Convenient menu for customers speaking different languages. If customers from several countries call you, set up a voice menu that prompts them to select a language. After that, they will be taken to a branch where they can select the desired department. When the sales rep picks up the phone he will be warned about customers’ language.
2. A solution for departments that compete with each other. If you also use call tracking, assign different pools of numbers for different product/service pages. The virtual PBX will forward the call directly to the desired department, depending on the number that the customer is reaching. And colleagues won’t see the calls that are coming to competing departments.
3. Control of sales reps who work outside the office. Activate the FMC service from lifecell, after that calls from/to mobiles of sales reps will be recorded in the Ringostat virtual PBX. This way you can monitor employees who work outside the office.
4. Call tagging. Assign different categories to calls, depending on the specifics of the call. For example, an old client or a new one, what kind of product he wanted to buy, whether the number was wrong, etc. This will help to assess how valuable requests are received by your company.
5. Uploading records for an answering machine and a greeting. Record professional audio recordings and upload them to the voice menu. Or put a song in the background that relates to your niche business. And for the answering machine, you can download your company’s working hours notice.
6. Audio recordings of calls to fight the fraud. If you buy traffic and expect calls from it, it is better to check its quality. To do so, periodically listen to the shortest calls. If there is silence when picking up the handset, then most likely that the bot is calling you.
7. Bonus: flexible outgoing communication settings. Decide which numbers to show to customers during an outbound call. For example, the phones of their region. Or the phone numbers they’ve already called. This will increase customer loyalty and the chance that they will pick up the phone.