Improve Your Productivity With 3 VoIP Hacks

What if you were able to reduce your admin time by 5 percent this week? While 5 percent might not seem like much, out of a 40-hour work week, 5 percent would be two hours.

Now, what would you do if you were given two free hours? How good would it feel to catch up on a project that you’re behind on? Or maybe you could use those two hours to help grow your business by networking and cultivating clients. But on the other hand, maybe you’d rather duck out of work early on Friday afternoon.

No matter how you’d spend it, that bonus time should be yours to do with as you choose. The great part is that it’s easy to add time to your week by making the smart choice of switching to voice over internet (VoIP) phone service.

Wait, Switching Phone Service Can Save Me Time?

An effective phone service can streamline your communications so that you’re working smarter, not harder.

Salesforce reports that 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone, so it’s important to get your phone service right.

Whether you’re a salesman making 150 cold calls per day or you’re closer to the U.S. average of six voice calls per day, the size of your productivity gains will differ. However, smart communications should not be limited to heavy users.

Here are the three ways that a business VoIP service like Ooma Office can improve your productivity:

Productivity Hack #1: Automate Incoming Calls

Ooma Office’s Virtual Receptionist is a customizable way to automate incoming phone calls. It provides callers with basic information such as hours and location, and directs callers to the right extension.

Additionally, it can be used in conjunction with the Ring Group feature to help you make sure that calls get answered. By setting a ring group for a department, such as sales, selected phones lines will ring concurrently or sequentially, depending on your preferred settings.

Productivity Hack #2: Integrated Desk Phone and Cell Phone

You need a hard-wired phone line in the office, but it’s likely that you’re using your cellphone for work too.

In this digitally connected time, it’s expected that you be accessible and available even when you’re not at your desk. But we know from experience that fielding work calls on both an office line and a personal line causes confusion for the customer, duplication of tasks by having to check multiple voicemails, and missed opportunities from the chaos of complicated communications.

But with VoIP, there’s a better way. The Ooma Office app creates a hybrid phone experience so that you can use your mobile device to make and receive calls on your work line as though you were in the office. Not only does this streamline how people get in touch with you, but it also streamlines your telephone experience by keeping all of your work calls in one place.

With the app you’ll also maintain full connectivity when you’d like to work from your home office, which has the added time savings of cutting out your commute.

Productivity Hack #3: A Better Voicemail

Receiving voicemail messages can be cumbersome and complicated.

With Ooma Office, you can access your voicemail remotely via the mobile app. But also, you can receive the voicemail audio as an email attachment. Having your voicemail within your email gives you endless opportunity to streamline your workflow. Instead of voicemail being a separate system that you manage, you can receive, listen to, share and archive your messages as you would your other emails, thus merging your voice and email messages into a single stream.

Additionally, when you receive voicemails as an email attachment, you can attach these files to your client records so that you can begin building a comprehensive archive of client messages to reference in the future.

Want to get even nerdier with your missed calls? Use Ooma’s call log feature to get a spreadsheet of call usage. So when you’re sitting down to return voicemails, your call sheet will already be prepared for you.

The Ooma Office phone system has been named the #1 VoIP service for the past nine years in the PCMag Business Choice Awards. Learn more about how Ooma is an affordable and feature-rich solution for your business telephone needs.