Voice and phone services still play an integral role in the marketing, customer service and sales mix for Irish medium to large enterprises (MLE) in the digital era.
In the age of email, instant messaging and improved onscreen live chat support services, it would be fair to assume that consumer-to-business and business-to-business phone calls would go the way of the telegram or align with the current trajectory of the fax machine.
Advancements and improved convenience in communication technology available to consumers may lead one to believe that the role of voice services is becoming less relevant to businesses.
Furthermore, the decision by some organisations to point customers to a contact form on their website or sometimes to the ‘frequently asked questions’ page would aid the belief that organisations do not wish to speak to their customers on the phone.
Public facing services that are in their very nature built on person-to-person communication have reduced their voice services and instead invested in automated self-service options. The most notable example of this is Revenue, the Irish Tax office. The department reduced the window of hours per day that PAYE workers and the self-employed could talk to a customer service staff member on the phone, while simultaneously launching its self-service system PAYE Anytime, (now Revenue Online Services). Whereas, these decisions were made by established organisations or state bodies in the name of ‘cost cutting’ or ‘streamlining’, the next generation of MLEs will miss a trick if they bypass voice services from their business altogether.
‘Carrier-grade’ phone services & the transition from SME to MLE
Owners of SMEs that are transitioning to MLEs as a result of business growth have no doubt considered the previously mentioned multichannel business-to-customer communication options without factoring in the important role that voice services play in medium and large business.
The only thing more challenging than starting a new business is making it successful. Voice services mightn’t be a priority in a start-up scenario; in fact in the early days of a venture some businesses rely solely on staff members’ mobile phones as the exclusive method for voice contact before eventually graduating to a single phone line.
As businesses exit this phase of the growth cycle, the first investment in voice services it should make is a dedicated business phone line. The biggest incentive for an MLE to acquire a business line is the benefits of having a ‘carrier-grade’ phone service. Carrier-grade refers to a standard of quality in service that provides ‘high availability’ to the customer.
One of the best ways of explaining carrier grade and high availability is “the rule of the five nines”, meaning that the phone line would be available 99.999% (5x9s) of the time. These days, providers of carrier-grade voice services are expected to be able to offer and maintain high quality services with extensive uptime for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of business customers at once. MLEs expect to never drop a call and their customers expect the business to always be contactable via phone during business hours.
Another reason to avail of a carrier-grade business line is purely for the protection it gives your business reputation. A dropped call to a business that forwards the caller to a voicemail message stating “The person at 086… Cannot take your call” is not behaviour befitting an MLE.
Give the people what they want
Although business growth and increased staff numbers will more than likely dictate the need for a more sophisticated voice and phone system in order for a business to maintain efficiencies, the customers’ demand to contact a company by phone is also a contributing factor that should not be overlooked.
In 2014, a report by ResponseTap examined the role of the phone call between businesses and consumers, surveying 4,000 people in the US. The age groups surveyed were 16-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65+.
The research revealed that 42% of consumers surveyed were far more likely to make a purchase after speaking to someone from the brand or business on the phone. In regards to sales conversions, 53% of respondents said that when considering high price items such as booking vacations, buying a car or taking out a mortgage, a phone call helps in making the sale.
The most fascinating finding of the survey is perhaps the biggest reason for MLEs to invest in voice services; although each age group interviewed believed phone calls to be important, each age group had a different motivation for putting value behind talking directly to a person over the phone.
For example the survey found that 39% of the 35-44 group are naturally quite wary of promotions and offers, so speaking to someone on the phone gives them the reassurance they want.
Meanwhile 16-24 year olds still value speaking to someone on the phone to verify facts and check if their information is correct. The slightly broader bracket of the 16-34 age group prefers to hear the human voice because they are often short of time and prefer to receive answers to questions immediately as opposed to researching online, or navigating through an automated phone menu.
The most important takeaway from the survey is as follows: not only do customers want and expect to be able to contact businesses by phone, they want to do so for a variety of reasons. Adequate voice and phone services help MLEs cast a wide net and serve multiple customer needs.
VOIP: Much more than phone calls
Voice services have not been surpassed by internet-based technologies – they have been enhanced by them. The technology that has possibly benefitted voice services the most in the digital era is voice over internet protocol (VOIP). VOIP describes the process in which voice or call ‘traffic’ is transported via an internet protocol instead of traditional analogue circuit switching. High quality voice calls carried over VOIP demands adequate bandwidth to maintain uninterrupted, high level service.
Following advancements in VOIP, SIP (session initiation protocol) arrived and became available to businesses. SIP is an application layer that allows data and call services to be delivered to a business over the same line. This helps businesses cut down on costs. On top of call and internet services popular applications of SIP includes screen sharing and web conferencing solutions. This technology can also generate multiple ‘virtual phone lines’ carried on the one line, allowing businesses to have separate phone numbers for different staff members without a costly bill for multiple dedicated business lines.
Attract customers nation-wide
Having already established that customers are willing to engage with brands on the phone and are more comfortable to go through with a sale when they trust they have connected with a person ‘in the know’ on the other end of the call, it’s logical to believe that the appearance of the phone number also carries some importance.
Non-geo (non-geographic) number services allow businesses to have a phone number that is not dictated by where their office is based. For example a business based in Dublin that has a large customer base in Galway, could have a phone number that starts with 91 instead of 01. If geography is not an issue, the service could be used by a business to ensure it has a catchy number that could even be relevant to its name.
The service expands beyond customisable numbers for business customers, also allowing for freephone numbers, 1850 call save numbers and 1890 local rate numbers. Top level providers are even able to offer business customers the option to setup the following charging structures for the number: the caller can pay all charges; the called party can pay all charges; or the charges can be shared.
Business SMS: benefit from the road most travelled
For businesses, one of the downsides of rapid communication technology advancement is knowing what service to choose. What if a business invests its budget in a marketing mail platform that becomes obsolete? In this situation businesses can learn from consumer behaviour. If a person who was a user of WhatsApp wanted to message a person who only used Viber they would revert to sending an SMS message.
The lesson of this scenario can be applied to a business contemplating a marketing campaign. Their customers are inundated with emails, instant messages and social media advertising. One of the most reliable forms of communication is the tried and tested SMS. With 98% of all SMS messages in Ireland opened by their recipients, SMS is still one of the most effective ways to connect with a customer base.
SMS marketing campaigns are far from ‘a thing of the past’. Businesses seeking to deploy SMS campaigns can get access to a web portal from their provider that can send multiple messages per second to a large contact database. On the higher end of the spectrum, top level providers offer a web based portal that allows for audience lists to be imputed via excel upload. Message deployment can be scheduled to suitable times and the system has two-factor security authentication.
Enhanced with increased flexibility and reliability of service as a result of the advancements in digital communication, it would seem that voice services are destined to remain an integral asset to MLEs for some time to come.