While it may be ideal for all employees to have a company-provided smartphone for work-related communication, it is often not possible due to the significant cost of providing each employee with their own device.
Some employees prefer using a modern smartphone over an outdated one, as it is more appealing to them. With the large number of operating system variations and configurations, this can cause issues for your in-house IT department.
Many employees use their personal phones for work due to financial necessity and personal preference, particularly if they work remotely or in a hybrid environment.
For small or mid-size businesses (SMBs), it is highly likely that VoIP is necessary to complete the puzzle.
Here are the 10 reasons why adding VoIP is a MUST when your employees are using personal mobile devices:
1. Increased Privacy and Security
With VoIP, employees make work-related calls using an app on their phone, rather than the native dialer (which of course they would continue using for personal calls).
As a result of using the app, your business’s number appears on Caller ID — and NOT the employee’s personal number, even though they are using their personally-owned device, and not a corporately-supplied company phone. This is very important for privacy and security!
2. Text Messaging Built-In
Employees who use their phones for work have a variety of texting options, such as their phone’s native app, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and so on. This can create confusion (“Did I text Joe in shipping using WhatsApp or Skype?”), and it can also lead to compliance and governance problems since texts can “live” in different apps and be difficult to find later on.
VoIP eliminates this chaos and confusion. All employees simply use the built-in text messaging tool for all work-related texting. They can also send/receive files, images, and rich media. Everything is stored in the same tool, which makes finding texts fast and easy.
3. Live Call Transfer
With VoIP, employees can transfer live calls from their mobile phones to their digital desk phones (and vice versa). This makes life easier for employees and is far better for customer service. Consider these two scenarios: The first is when an employee is using their personal phone for work. The second is when that same employee has added VoIP to the mix:
Scenario 1
Employee: “Hi there, I’m glad that you’re interested in learning more about why our solution is significantly better than our competitors. I’m just walking to my desk now. Can I call you back or could you call me back?”
Customer: “You know, I just realized that it’s past 2 pm and I really need to take care of some things on my end. Maybe we can continue this later in the week or next week. I’ll let you know.”
Scenario 2
Employee: “Hi there, I’m glad that you’re interested in learning more about why our solution is significantly better than our competitors. [Seamlessly transfers call from personal phone to digital desk phone.] Let’s start with quality and reliability….”
As we can see from this simple example, without VoIP there is a break in the action — one that could derail momentum. But with VoIP, there is no need to pause. The employee can simply shift the call between their personal phone and digital desk phone.
4. Presence Icons
With VoIP, employees can log into the app and see at-a-glance whether their colleagues are available (green icon), busy (red icon), or away (grey icon).
This is helpful for internal communication, and it also significantly improves customer service. Instead of transferring a call to a colleague who may not be available, an employee can check first and act accordingly.
For example, if a colleague is busy (red icon), then the employee might send them a text asking when they’ll be free. If they say “a few seconds,” then they can ask the customer to stay on the line. If they say “I’ll be tied up for at least the next 15 minutes,” then they can ask the customer to call back or offer to call the customer back.
It may not seem like a big deal, but simply KNOWING whether a colleague is available or not, instead of GUESSING and HOPING they are around, can make the difference between an impressed loyal customer vs. a frustrated ex-customer!
5. Call History
With VoIP, employees can be told to use ONLY the VoIP app on their phone for making work-related calls. This will ensure that all call history is captured and available on-demand.
For example, an employee may believe — but not be 100% certain — that they spoke with a customer two weeks ago. With VoIP, they just head into their call history, scroll back two weeks, and verify not just WHEN the call took place, but HOW LONG the conversated lasted. Equipped with these facts, they can move forward confidently.
6. Shared Contacts
Employees who use VoIP can access a list of shared business contacts on their phones, such as customers, vendors, suppliers, etc. This makes things more efficient, plus if a contact’s number changes, then it simply needs to be updated once for everyone.
7. Voice Commands
Employees can use voice commands to make calls, search contacts, and more on their personal devices. This is more efficient, and it’s also safer when driving or carrying out any other tasks that require concentration.
8. Voicemail-to-Text
With VoIP, employees can “read” voicemails received on their personal devices with automatic text-to-voicemail transcriptions. Why would they want to do this? There are a few common use cases:
- They are in an environment where they cannot dial their voicemail on their mobile phones (e.g., sitting in a seminar).
- They want to store the contents of a voicemail for reference or archive purposes.
- They want to share the contents of a voicemail with a colleague.
9. Business Continuity
VoIP enables employees to make/receive calls on their personal cell phones in the event of a local power outage, or if the office internet goes offline (if this happens, then the Wi-Fi connection automatically shifts to a cellular data connection). This allows employees to remain productive and also means that customers will speak to a person vs. hear a “this number is not in service” recording — or perhaps nothing at all.
10. It’s FREE
Last but certainly not least, reaping all of these rewards of VoIP + employees using their personal cell phones is completely FREE! Employees simply download an iOS or Android app (as per their device), and they’re good to go!
If your employees are using a personal phone for work, then contact Carolina Digital Phone today to unlock ALL 10 of these rewards and benefits. Call us at (336) 544-4000 to schedule your free consultation and demo of our feature-rich, all-in-one VoIP phone system, and mobile app!
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