Remember the bad old days when coming back to the office meant facing a mountain of telephone messages?

Mobile phones have come a long way to easing communication with customers while you’re on the road. However, as business owners feel increasing pressure to accommodate remote work in various formats, virtual phone systems have the potential to revolutionize communications, lower costs, promote employee flexibility and autonomy, enhance team collaboration, drastically improve the customer experience, and help your business grow by winning more customers.

What is a virtual phone system?

Traditional telephony uses a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to transmit conversations as electrical signals. In contrast, with a virtual phone system, text, video, and audio messages are converted to data and transmitted via the internet. This eliminates the need for miles of copper lines, costly fiber optic cables, and physical instruments.

Instead, armed only with specialized software, an internet connection, and their device of choice, virtual phone users can exchange multimedia files and make and receive high-quality calls at any time and regardless of where they’re located.

How does a virtual phone system work?

While traditional on-premises telephony relies on a continuous wire circuit between two telephones, a virtual phone uses voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to convert voice signals to digital data. The data is transmitted over the internet in discrete data packets and reconstituted as audio at the other end of the “call.”

Calls can be made to and accepted from a single business number on any internet-connected devices, including desk and laptop computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Depending how it’s set up, virtual phone systems may also allow incoming and outgoing calls to be routed through existing telephone networks.

With a virtual phone system in place, businesses can effectively substitute a range of free-standing communications methods and applications that staff might otherwise adopt to keep in touch with each other. Instead, business teams can have convenient access to audio and video calls, instant messaging, team chats, SMS texts, video conferencing and more—all on a single, online platform.

Benefits of a virtual phone system

Team collaboration

With communications consolidated on a single platform, all employees can view and respond to customer calls, texts, and chats more quickly than would be possible if they were navigating disparate systems. What’s more, having access to the complete interaction history for every caller means employees can respond efficiently to queries, even in the case of a repeat caller who was previously handled by a colleague.

Integrated analytics and reporting

Most virtual phone systems offer a toolkit enabling businesses to track and measure calls and report on call performance. Metrics may include inbound call volume, hold times, and time to answer among others.

This kind of information would be extremely difficult and often impossible to gather using a traditional landline. Yet, it’s crucial in evaluating the response to marketing or sales initiatives and understanding and seeking to improve the customer experience.

Importantly, when call performance information is combined with other data such as website and social media analytics, it becomes marketing intelligence which can be used to inform strategic business decisions.

For small and medium-sized businesses, data that ties your leads and customers to your marketing initiatives enables your team to: 1.) have better conversations that convert, and 2.) optimize your marketing campaigns accordingly. As you compare virtual phone systems, ensure you land on a product with this feature.

According to a recent CallRail study, 95% of SMB leaders reported wanting to improve their customer communications tools. Learn more about the reasons they cited, along with key solutions on the horizon by downloading the full report: Making the Dream Work with Team Work: How small businesses can keep leads from falling through the cracks with better communications.

Lower costs

Unlike traditional business phone networks which require costly on-site equipment and phone lines, virtual phone systems need little in the way of hardware.

Because they’re internet-based, they’re quick and easy to install and configure, and extensions can be added without additional capital outlay or assistance from highly trained, slow-to-arrive technicians. Also, upgrades may not always involve additional costs or time-consuming paperwork.

After implementing a virtual phone solution, one company was able to eliminate its Verizon desktop system. This resulted in an immediate saving of $400 per month.

Employee flexibility

When the office phone system is virtual, employees don’t need to be tied to their desk phones to work effectively. With a software client, or softphone, installed on a computer or mobile device (or both!), any employee can answer and place calls, texts, and chats from anywhere via the online, virtual phone platform.

Given the high value most employees place on autonomy and flexibility, offering this level of freedom is great for boosting workplace morale. Accommodating an employee’s need for flexibility in a particular moment might also ensure that customer service isn’t compromised.

Customized call routing

Customized call routing enables calls to a centralized business number to be diverted to the department or individual best equipped to deal with the incoming query. Call forwarding may happen after the pre-recorded greeting when callers choose from a menu of options. Alternatively, a caller may be automatically directed straight to the correct department or individual based on triggers such as their phone number or zip code.

Either way, callers are quickly and efficiently connected to the appropriate area of the business rather than customers experiencing the frustration of being shuttled from person to person and explaining themselves again and again. The result is a marked improvement in the customer experience.

Greater call quality

As long as it’s powered by a high-speed internet connection, a virtual call will be clearer than a call made over traditional phone lines. This is because voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology offers better voice compression and error correction than traditional systems—which by their nature may be subject to clicks and whirs. If you use tools like CallRail’s Call Intelligence to transcribe calls to quickly gather customer insights and important keywords customers use, having greater clarity also ensures more accuracy in your transcriptions.

Features to look for in the best virtual phone system

Advanced call management

Of the advanced call management features offered across the gamut of virtual phone systems on the market, the following are key features to consider:

• Call blocking: identifies and blocks spammers
• Call monitoring: allows supervisors to listen to and even join live calls in real time
• Do not disturb: automatically diverts callers to an available representative when the chosen one is unavailable
• Call hold and custom hold music: allows representatives to pause conversations temporarily
• Custom greetings & visual voicemail: allows businesses to engage callers with pre-recorded messages and links voicemail facility to a specific number
• Call transfer: allows for incoming calls to be transferred to other extensions
• Call screening and caller ID: identifies the source of incoming calls prior to call pick up

Business texting

Top virtual phone system candidates should enable businesses to document inbound text messages from both customers and prospects. The best virtual phone systems will also allow employees to use tracking numbers to mask their mobile numbers for calls and outbound texts, and will offer customizable text message templates to save time and ensure messaging is consistent regardless of who initiates the communication. Great virtual phone systems also let users send and receive multimedia messages with photos or video files.

3rd party integrations

To be worthwhile, a virtual phone system should integrate easily with the major applications used to measure and evaluate marketing performance. These applications might include Google Ads, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Google Analytics.

Integration with HubSpot, for example, would enable a company to discover which campaigns are driving incoming phone calls and text messages, and see how those leads convert to sales.

Analytics and reporting

Your chosen virtual phone system should produce comprehensive reports that show how call volumes change in response to specific marketing campaigns.

Call recording and queuing

The ability to record incoming and outgoing calls is essential as recordings can be used as training and coaching materials for team members.

Being able to queue calls is an important contributor to positive customer experience. To calm and reassure waiting customers, the best virtual phone systems will be able to deliver music, targeted messaging, and even product information.

How much does a virtual phone system cost?

The starting cost of CallRail's complete virtual phone system, Lead Center, ranges from $24-40 per user per month depending on the number of users.

The fee covers an easy-to-use inbox with call, text and chat capabilities as well as a full analytics suite with real-time visibility into which marketing initiatives are making your phone ring.

Learn more about Lead Center here.

How to set up a virtual phone system with CallRail

Lead Center is the virtual business phone system backed with lead intelligence that connects your marketing — from online business profiles and ads to keywords and social media — to the leads it drives, whether leads contact your business via call, text, or chat.

Featuring a unified team-focused inbox which gives users an unrestricted view of both inbound and outbound VoIP calls and text messages, and analytics suite with real-time visibility into the customer journey, Lead Center is a one-stop communications management solution designed to help small and medium-sized businesses enhance communication and convert more leads into better customers.

Setting up your virtual phone system with Lead Center by CallRail is as easy as starting a free, 14-day trial.

Sign up today