Goodbye Traditional Phone Systems, Hello Softphone

Our new Ask an Expert undertaking is still in its infancy, but that hasn’t stopped us from checking in on some tough questions so far. In this latest edition of Ask an Expert, I sat down with Customer Support Engineer Matt Horstmann to talk specifically about the CallTrackingMetrics softphone, and how this computer-based phone technology can fit into business environments that are accustomed to using physical phone systems.

Matt is a veteran at taking on complex support questions that dive into connecting our software with all different kinds of phone systems, so there was no better place to turn.

In your experience dealing with all types of customers small and large, what are some of the benefits of utilizing our softphone over more traditional physical phone systems?

Our softphone offers many great benefits over traditional phone systems, including reduced costs, increased flexibility, and the centralized feature set we provide.

Other phone systems may require a myriad of hardware and software costs such as a physical PBX, servers, rackspace, cabling, power, cooling, security, and licensing. But with our softphone, none of this is necessary. All you need is a reliable internet connection, a computer, and a headset.

That sounds pretty simple.

Definitely! All things considered, making use of our softphone can provide greatly increased flexibility in work environments, allowing work-from-home, remote office, and BYOD (bring your own device) options for your team without any complex configurations or networking.

With our software-as-a-service platform, we take care of the redundancy, data backups, and maintenance for you. There’s no need to run lengthy patches, upgrades, or data backups that could otherwise cause downtime for your team or the dreaded weekends spent running these updates and processes.

In addition, if your office is down for any reason (such as weather events and power outages), your team can plug in from any other internet connection to use our softphone and continue working until the office is back in action without requiring any routing changes. This also eliminates the risk of your PBX or servers being offline and unable to even allow those emergency routing adjustments as needed in these scenarios.

But is that the only upside – the flexibility of accessing the phone system from anywhere?

Not at all. Our system also provides agent scripts, live-listen, and coaching features to help guide your agents through calls. We also have call recording options so you can review previous conversations for historical, training, and quality assurance review purposes. Supervisors can easily review call performance with agents to provide feedback.

In addition, we can transcribe the recorded calls to provide even more call review options, including keyword spotting to help recognize trends and opportunities.

Another great benefit is our robust routing options. You can utilize traditional voice menus (IVRs) and call queues, or intelligent routing through smart routers, GeoRouters, and triggers so you can connect the callers with the appropriate team.

A few additional features not typically found in traditional phone systems include our smart dialer for automated outbound calls, adaptive outbound dialing to show local numbers to the contacts you’re trying to reach, managing text messages from the same platform, and FormReactors where our system can initiate a call to form submissions on your website so you can catch that lead while it’s hot.

We also provide direct integrations, API, and Webhook options to connect call activity to your CRM system so you can track this history in your contact database.

What’s the learning curve for our softphone? Are resources available for new users?

Absolutely! Our solution includes training and support options that are a cut above the rest.

Upon signup, you will be assigned an Onboarding Manager to review your objectives, train you on the system, and provide guidance and recommendations based on your goals. If you run into any issues or questions, our Support Team can be reached by phone, chat, or email and we’re always happy to help!

We also provide a free Help Center with an extensive knowledge base, blogs, recorded webinars, and API documents. It doesn’t end there! We also provide free API Office Hours to discuss API challenges or questions with our Developers, and also free Power Hours to help you achieve your unique goals.