We know that a growing number of companies are choosing to offer remote working benefits to their employees, and some companies like Buffer even have a fully distributed team and have no office at all. In a recent survey, they found that the biggest challenge of working remotely was reported to be collaborating/communicating, which tied at #1 next to loneliness.
That's why in this article, we'll share 5 communication tools you get from a cloud phone system that can facilitate collaboration and boost productivity for remote workers.
1. Mobile App / Webphone for Calling from Anywhere
With a cloud phone system you can make calls via the internet, which means workers have more flexibility with the type of phone they use. In addition to the standard desk phone, or IP phone, remote workers can choose to use the mobile app or the webphone. With both the mobile app and webphone, people can use their extension / line anywhere there's internet. This means that not only can remote workers make calls from their work line, but they can also manage inbound calls for customer support or sales lines.
For a number of reasons, including security and quality control, it's important to have people use their work line and not their person line. Although it's easy for a person to pick up their mobile phone and just start calling, the mobile app makes it just as easy to use their work line.
The mobile app is easy-to-use, and keeps work calls separate from personal calls. In fact, the mobile app is powerful enough for most calling needs, and includes:
- conferencing,
- call recording,
- company directory,
- hold music, and
- do-not-disturb.
The webphone is built into the Telzio Dashboard, for people who prefer to stay working through their computer. You can talk through the webphone using your computer mic or a headset. No special kind of headset is needed - your standard Apple headphones will do.
There's nothing to download to use the webphone. All you need is a single username and password to log into the Telzio website where the webphone is located.
2. Live Reporting for Managing Remote Call Center Agents
Live Reporting is a feature in the Telzio Dashboard that enables you to see, in real time, all the current activity on your phone lines. This means you can things like see how many of your agents are busy, how many callers you have on hold on which support line, and the average hold time for callers. By having this information, you can manage agents accordingly and improve the customer service experience.
In addition to Live Reports, the Telzio Dashboard displays analytics to help you further analyze your call usage and patterns. Thus, you can be smart about your staffing and adequately handle peak call times.
3. Free Call Recordings
Included with Telzio at no additional cost is call recording. Call recording can be enabled:
- for inbound calls to specific departments,
- for all calls for specific users, and/or
- for specific calls only.
In the mobile app, you can press the Record Call button anytime to start or stop recording the current call.
Call Recordings are all stored on your Telzio Dashboard, and you can grant permissions to managers to access the recordings from their own User Dashboard. You can listen to and download call recordings from the Dashboard, as well as tag them with custom labels. By tagging them, you can identify the calls that can be used later as a good customer service or sales call example.
Call Recordings come in handy for managing remote workers when it comes to training and quality control. Listening back on Call Recordings can be an effective tool for providing feedback to remote workers in customer service roles, and ensuring accountability.
With remote workers it's crucial to have regular checkins for ongoing training, especially in an ever-changing landscape where new features are always being added to your product/platform. Going over a call recording together is a good exercise for managers and employees to discuss feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Related: Create a Voicemail PIN for Users
4. Collaboration Tools for Calls and Messages
Through the Telzio Dashboard, remote workers get access to easy-to-use collaboration tools that come in handy for managing company text messages, voicemail, fax, and call recordings.
Reassign
The reassign tool enables a user to reassign a text, voicemail, or fax to another user.
Comment
Commenting enables a user to make internal notes on a text, voicemail, or fax, which are only visible to other authorized users.
Tag
Tagging enables a user to add tags to a text, voicemail, or fax. You can create and edit custom tags such as "follow up", "new lead", or "sales training".
5. Virtual Fax
If you haven't read our blog post Send Fax by Email for Better Security, you should check it out. It essentially points out that analog fax is less secure than sending an email, but if you must fax, sending a virtual fax is more secure than using a landline fax machine.
Virtual faxing is easy to implement with Telzio, and all faxes are stored online where you can access them in the Dashboard.
Users can send fax in 2 ways:
- Send a fax by email as an attachment.
- Send a fax by uploading the document through the Telzio Dashboard.
Inbound faxes can be delivered by email to an individual or to a group.
Digitizing fax enables remote workers to manage fax from any location, by simply logging into the Telzio website or managing it from their email. Not only is virtual fax better for security, it's better for remote workers.
More Communication Equals Less Loneliness
By improving communication and collaboration capabilities between distributed teams, we can also hopefully minimize the other biggest challenge of remote working - loneliness. Being part of a team and feeling useful gives us purpose and motivation. Less loneliness and more teamwork can lead to happier and more productive employees. And this ultimately leads to a win-win for both employee and employer.