January 21, 2021
9 mins read
When offices were locked down last year, the benefits of cloud telephony came to light – small businesses and large enterprises alike started moving to cloud telephony to enable remote work.
However, that’s not the only benefit that cloud telephony offers. In this blog post, we will discuss what cloud telephony is, how it works, and 8 benefits of cloud telephony that go beyond enabling remote work. We’ll wrap this up with a closer look at how small businesses & enterprises use cloud telephony + some examples of how businesses across industries use cloud telephony to grow.
Feel free to jump directly to any of the following sections:
Cloud telephony is the technology that moves your business phone system to the cloud. Without the burden of building and managing the infrastructure, cloud telephony offers scalable and reliable communication services for businesses of all types and sizes.
Nearly the same way that regular business telephones work, except that your calls are routed through the internet. When you use a cloud telephony service:
Unlike a PBX system that comes with a tangle of wires, telephones, switches and routers, cloud telephony needs only an internet connection. You can use your existing landline or mobile devices to make calls. Set up takes less than an hour, where EPABX systems would take days.
Exotel maintains the cloud servers and takes responsibility for uninterrupted service. So, you spend less time running the infrastructure and more time using it.
If your teams are used to working from the dashboards within an existing CRM or ERP software, Exotel’s cloud telephony solution can simply be integrated into it using APIs. We also have custom integrations with popular helpdesk and CRM tools like Freshdesk, Zoho, and more. This way, an employee can also ‘click to call’ customers directly from the application, without dialling their number each time.
You can make changes like adding or removing agents instantly, reflecting changes on-the-go, with no downtime.
A significant part of work in various industries is done by field staff. Today, most field staff use their own mobile phones to make calls. Some of them maintain two mobile devices to separate work from personal calls. While this is not only inefficient, it is also unsecured and undocumented.
With cloud telephony, everyone in your organisation who needs to interact with customers can have access to the technology they need: Field sales agents, logistics and delivery personnel, pop-up shops and promotions teams, events teams etc. These calls too can be tracked, monitored and recorded with cloud telephony.
Cloud telephony can support marketing initiatives beyond calls. Exotel lets you set up missed call campaigns and SMS mareting, which have proved to be popular engagement tools in India. It also supports paid advertising with channel or campaign-specific virtual numbers, which you can use to measure performance.
Whether you’re a small business, startup or a global MNC, you can leverage cloud telephony to consistently deliver high voice quality and reduced latency. As your organisation scales, there is no need to buy ‘bigger’ infrastructure as the cloud platform can easily be scaled to accommodate any number of agents.
In fact, you can also easily upscale for seasonal needs — during sale times or festivals — and scale down when done, without investing heavily in infrastructure.
When the tools improve, employees invariably get more work done. Cloud telephony removes operational obstacles in a few ways.
Field agents no longer need to retrieve customer data and manually enter it into their mobile phones. With cloud telephony, the agent can make a one-click-call from within your ERP/CRM.
Triggered action notifications for leads or inbound calls help in overcoming the human tendencies of forgetting to follow up or getting overwhelmed by long to-call lists, which affect productivity.
Sales teams can reduce the delay in responding to leads by automating follow up, and improve pick-up rates with a dynamic caller ID.
A ‘virtual receptionist’ can greet customers and conduct a first-level screening of a customer’s problem, after which, the ‘automatic call distributor’ can route them to the right person.
If you’ve believed that the cloud is not secure, allow us to debunk that myth for you:
1. At Exotel, we make sure that our cloud telephony system follows best-in-class security practices across asset, network and infrastructure monitoring.
2. Exotel is ISO 27001:2013 certified.
3. Exotel complies with all the legal and regulatory requirements of the geographies we are operational in.
4. To comply with data protection laws that some of the sectors like BFSI mandates, we ensure that data in transit and at rest stays within the country.
5. When you use Exotel, all calls are made through a virtual number. Our number-masking system ensures that even your organisation’s own staff will not have access to your customer’s data, protecting their privacy.
Cloud telephony automatically captures operational data such as call volumes, channels of inbound calls, the timing of calls, response times of agents, duration of calls, the average number of calls each employee makes etc., in addition to recording all calls.
This enables operations leaders to monitor SLA compliance, make data-driven strategic decisions, monitor and train employees, as well as maintain records in case of customer disputes later.
Being an internet-based service, cloud telephony constantly upgrades itself. This means that you get best-in-class communication tech always and are never in the danger of infrastructure turning obsolete. Exotel also informs you of product updates in simple terms, so that you can make sure new features are put to good use.
Startups and small businesses often cannot afford to implement business communication infrastructure in their locations. In fact, several new businesses today are entirely online, do not have an office space to install an EPABX system. For such companies, cloud telephony is an efficient, cost-effective and scalable alternative.
Small businesses use cloud telephony to:
While large enterprises can install traditional phone systems, it affects their organisational agility. It does not allow them to scale dynamically, use them from anywhere or leverage value-added services like call recording, multi-level IVR etc. Cloud telephony is the technology they seek to become agile and adaptable.
Enterprises use cloud telephony to:
The pandemic was a watershed moment for the banking industry. Some of the country’s biggest banks that had large contact centres across the country needed to go entirely online at a moment’s notice. Cloud telephony came to their rescue. Exotel has onboarded leading banks such as ICICI, IDFC and HDFC, and other financial institutions such as CRED, Zerodha and Policy Bazaar since 2020.
The important benefits that banks have gained from cloud telephony are:
The supply chain and logistics process have multiple customer touchpoints. Across order placement, shipping and delivery, several calls are made and SMSes are sent. 3PL players use cloud telephony primarily for coordinating with the customer and scheduling/rescheduling deliveries.
The essential thing in the process is to protect the customer’s — as well as the delivery executive’s — privacy. Our 3PL clients leverage Exotel’s number masking solution for this.
We integrated Exotel’s number masking into the Ecom Express’ delivery app. From the app, the delivery associate clicks on the call button (assigned to a specific customer) to make a call. Then, a virtual number is dialled, and a call gets connected between the two parties. The same happens when a customer needs to connect with a delivery associate. Both parties will only see the virtual number, not each other’s personal phone numbers.
Broking might be a niche sector within the BFSI industry, but the applications of good communications cannot be underestimated. Keeping clients informed, encouraging them to invest thoughtfully, imparting information — there are several reasons why a broking company might use cloud telephony.
Zerodha grew the client base during the pandemic and went on to become the biggest stockbroking platform in India. They needed to revamp their on-prem setup to enable remote work, support high call volumes, scale rapidly and safeguard customer information.
Exotel enabled a cloud contact centre with call tracking and click-to-call features within three hours.
Read the entire case study here.
The foundations of fintech might be on a mobile app or a website, but conversations sometimes need to happen over the phone. Customers might have questions, need support in using the product, demand help making decisions etc. A robust cloud telephony solution can enable all that and more.
Rupeek scaled up by 4x within five months using Exotel
They implemented:
Even as D2C brands are on the rise throughout the country, their biggest challenge is often customer service. From sales and ordering to last-mile delivery, D2C brands need a flexible, scalable and easy-to-use communications solution to engage the customer effectively.
Epigamia set up a remote support centre for their D2C platform in 20 minutes
Epigamia, India’s first Greek yoghurt brand, retails across 12,000 touch points in 25 towns. As a scaling organisation, they needed a communications solution that is quick to set up, can manage high volume calls reliably and ensure that they never miss a call. They chose Exotel for that:
Since the pandemic, there has been a rapid growth in online gaming. However, not every user is tech-savvy, making the self-help models that are common in the online gaming industry ineffective. A strong cloud telephony solution can help gaming companies offer the right support.
GamesKraft uses Exotel to reduce their support queries by 20% with automated calling and IVR
With Exotel, they enabled:
One of the side-effects of the pandemic is that non-COVID healthcare was significantly affected. Whether it’s everyday ailments or chronic disorders, hospitals did not have the capacity to address them. This led to a growth in telemedicine. Successful delivery of telemedicine depends on a strong telecommunications system, which not only enables undisrupted calling, but also protection of customer privacy, and regulatory compliance. Exotel delivers precisely that.
Netmeds uses Exotel to protect the privacy of its customers
When the world began working from home, the stress on telecommunications infrastructure has grown. Telephone, mobile and broadband companies are seeing increased demands from their customers. An important way to address these were through a sound telephony system.
ACT uses Exotel to decrease their average customer response time by 60%
ACT, a broadband company with 1.7 million customers across 19 cities in India, was facing challenges of:
To address these challenges, they integrated Exotel’s click-to-call into their CRM. They leveraged Exotel’s analytics features to gain insights into the number of calls made, duration of these calls, call recordings, etc. Their average customer response time reduced from 8 hours to 3 hours, improving sales and customer experience outcomes.
The pandemic has expedited the adoption of cloud telephony among Indian businesses. At Exotel, we’ve enabled dozens of organisations to work remotely, leveraging cloud telephony. Yet, if there is one thing we notice often, it is that many organisations stop at using cloud telephony for calls.
Given how much more it can do, it’s time to see beyond the obvious. To find out how your business can use Exotel, set up a call with us today.
Additional Resources
15 Call Centre Metrics & KPIs to Measure your Call Centre’s Performance
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