With working from home becoming more common, everyone within the business needs to be well connected throughout the day. There is also the need to maintain seamless communication with clients and business partners to provide them with continued confidence in your business’ operations.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the business world, companies need to embrace digital transformation to mitigate challenges and prepare for the recovery ahead effectively.

On the communications front, telephony solutions such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or a hosted PBX are perfect for businesses to connect effectively – be it amongst co-workers or externally with customers, clients, and business partners.

VoIP provides businesses with a strong foundation for a fully unified communications platforms that allow companies to communicate and collaborate more effectively, even when employees are on the go.

During this pandemic, where businesses are feeling the financial crunch that is expected to continue at least up until next year, it is crucial to cut costs wherever possible. There is a common misunderstanding that significant investment has to made to switch from a traditional telephone system to a cloud-based phone set up. 

Instead, as the service is delivered over an existing data network, there are cost savings to be enjoyed from making the switch such as through expensive telephone bills. It’s estimated that SMBs who move to a VoIP system enjoy savings of around 30% to 50% - a complete cloud-based system offers the biggest savings.

Having a VoIP or cloud-hosted PBX setup also allows businesses to better engage with their customers. During such challenging times, it is more important than ever before to provide customer with the best possible service in a bid to hold on to existing customers and attract new ones.

Moving to a cloud-based telephone system means answering calls is no longer restricted by on-premise limitations. Your business number will remain the same but the calls can be answered on the employee’s smartphone no matter where they are. You can also nominate the numbers that will ring when someone calls the office line. Customer’s questions can be answered almost immediately, maintaining a professional image for your business.

Even if your employee can’t take the call the voicemail to email function allows for the retrieval of customer messages from the email inbox. With multiple contact points customer’s need are met quickly.

Going a step further beyond VoIP solutions, Singtel’s BizVoice offers businesses the ability to adopt Unified Communications (UC), which seamlessly integrates real-time communications such as VoIP calls and instant messaging.

Through Singtel’s BizVoice, businesses can enjoy seamless business-grade IP PBX telephony, which ranges from basic PBX functionality to Unified Communications (UC) capabilities.

UC is the seamless integration of enterprise communications services such as internet telephony, instant messaging, point-to-point video or call conferencing. Through the UC functionality, employees are easily able to use BizVoice via their desk and mobile phones, and through their desktop applications, anywhere and at any time without the need for additional hardware. All that is required is internet connectivity or mobile data.

Consumer-facing businesses will enjoy the auto-attendant feature, which provides your customer with a positive experience by reducing the time and effort required on their end to connect with a relevant employee from your company to address their needs. With the auto-attendant feature, every customer’s call can be easily routed to the appropriate departments, without the need for a receptionist. The single number on all touch-points means staff can be connected quickly.

Through Singtel BizVoice, businesses can enjoy the extensive benefits of a cloud-based PBX, where digital collaboration such as desktop file sharing and more are housed under one comprehensive system.