During the lockdown, how can you make sure your clients can reach you as if you were in the office full-time?
At Dstny we communicate via a softphone solution: telephony software that allows us to call, chat and hold virtual meetings online from any PC, smartphone or tablet, within our own, closed cloud network. And that is a blessing when it comes to teleworking.
Our fixed lines and our colleagues’ mobile phones are connected seamlessly via a telephone switchboard in the cloud. That lets us transfer calls easily to each other – wherever we are and whichever device we are using to communicate. We manage that switchboard simply and remotely via an online portal. We set up an options menu for the incoming caller and determine the colleague for which the incoming call is intended. If they don’t answer their phone, then a cascade function will ensure that the caller is automatically put through to another member of staff, depending on the question that the client gives via the options menu. It is, therefore, very important that the options for the menu are set up correctly, so that clients can get help from the right person as quickly as possible.
Furthermore, each of us can monitor colleagues, clients and projects via our PC screens. Connecting a call to a colleague at home? On the portal we can immediately see who can answer the phone. Does our client have a question about an ongoing project? In the integrated CRM we can consult the status update, immediately see which of our colleagues is responsible for the contract and connect the call. That is reassuring for our clients: they know that they can get the right person on the line immediately.
And then there are the softphone’s collaborative tools. If we use those, then during meetings it will seem as if we are sitting in the same room: we will be able to see each other, share screens and memos or give feedback via chat. This is not just convenient, it’s also secure because we are not working with open systems.
Specifically for our clients, we have shared a manual so that the softphone software can also be integrated into their cloud solution. They can chat to all home-working employees securely from a central portal, set up conference and video calls, check the availability of a colleague and, most of all, transfer calls to each other easily. What if our clients want to reduce the number of users at a later stage? That can be done in an instant.