VoiceShot Announces Calendar Integrations to Automate Voice and Text Message Reminders and Notifications

June 29, 2020, Bingham Farms, Michigan – VoiceShot, the industry's most trusted provider for outbound calling and voice broadcasting today announced an integration to enable businesses and organizations to connect their calendar applications to automate voice and text message appointment reminders and notifications to customers.

VoiceShot’s voice broadcasting & text messaging appointment reminder and notification solutions enable businesses to easily send voice & text messages to customers and employees. This is typically done through manual sending or scheduling of messages by uploading a spreadsheet that contains appointment dates.

By connecting VoiceShot with a calendar application, businesses can remove the manual process involved in sending voice broadcast and text message appointment reminders and notifications by connecting with calendar services such as Google G-Suite and Microsoft Outlook. The entire integration process is handled by the VoiceShot team to eliminate any coding or development work for its customers.

The VoiceShot calendar integration dramatically speeds up communication with customers and employees. For example, if businesses need to send voice broadcast and text message appointment reminders on a daily basis, the integration will eliminate the need to look up appointment times and manually send messages to each customer. This frees up staff time to perform more important tasks and boosts productivity.

The integration aims to improve operational efficiency for large and small businesses and has a wide variety of use cases that can support different business objectives to better reach and engage customers and employees when it matters most.

About VoiceShot

VoiceShot provides the highest quality virtual phone systems and voice broadcasting solutions for enterprise and small businesses. With 1000's of customers and now 20 years in business, we help teams communicate clearly and efficiently by providing voice broadcasting, virtual phone systems, emergency notifications, outbound calling, text messaging, appointment reminders, and a Voice + Text API for software developers. To learn more about VoiceShot, speak with a specialist at (800) 962-0126 or sales@voiceshot.com.

How to Choose the Right Virtual Phone System for Your Business

Efficient communication is a crucial part of business success. Having a reliable phone system that enables businesses to communicate anywhere is essential for mobility, scalability, and creates a unified communication experience.

The introduction of virtual cloud phone systems has allowed businesses to be in control of communication. With virtual phone systems, businesses no longer need to rely on local phone companies. They have more options for enhancing their communication to grow their business globally by hiring more remote employees.

There are hundreds of virtual phone system providers which makes it difficult for businesses to choose the right solution for their needs. Many factors come into play when deciding the right system to use including connection type, important features, how it works with remote employees and cost.

Here are some tips on choosing the right virtual phone system for your business:

Full VoIP System vs. Virtual Auto Attendant

The first thing you should consider when choosing a virtual phone system is whether to go with a full VoIP phone system that requires hardware installation or go with a virtual auto attendant which requires no hardware to set up. There are pros and cons to each. A knowledgeable provider will help you understand your needs and recommend the best fit.

VoIP (Voice Over IP Phone) is a complete phone solution where calls are transmitted over the internet by converting analog audio into a digital format. These services require a broadband internet connection along with specialized hardware and phones. A reliable high-speed internet connection is required as loss in voice quality as well as dropped calls may occur in areas where the internet is unstable.

A Virtual Auto Attendant is a fully hosted PBX system that requires no additional hardware. Virtual Auto Attendant systems allow users to set up their own custom greeting with extensions to route calls to another landline number or to a separate phone number on a smartphone or mobile device. It Includes many if not all the features offered by a full VoIP phone system but is less expensive to set up and expand.

These systems are mainly used by businesses that want the features of a full phone system but would like to use existing landlines or cell phones for remote employees. They also enable businesses to keep a professional tone while using a personal phone. VPBX systems are easier to set up without IT help while full VoIP phone systems require lengthier setup times.

Essential Virtual Phone System Features

Utilizing a virtual phone system creates a consistent and branded communication experience for everyone in the company. Understanding which essential features your business needs can guide you towards the right solution. 

Here are some critical features that a virtual phone system must have.

Quick and Easy Set-Up: The first thing you should consider when choosing a virtual phone system is the level of effort that is required to set up. Choosing a solution that requires little or no involvement from your IT team (if you have one) enables you to set up in hours, not days. No hardware should be necessary to set up your virtual phone system.

Leverage Your Existing Business Number: The virtual phone provider you choose should be able to connect your existing business number to a virtual number for routing to personal smartphones or mobile devices. This will enable remote or frequent traveling employees to stay connected anywhere.

Auto-attendant Voice Menu: Having an auto-attendant greet and direct callers provide businesses with a professional voice and streamlines the routing process with menu options that enable callers to reach the right contact effortlessly. The best systems have unlimited extensions and allow remote employees to have the same experience when calls are routed to their personal phones.

Customization Capabilities: It’s important to have a virtual phone solution that enables you to customize every aspect of your system. From greetings, on-hold messages, phone numbers, voicemail-to-email, and unlimited extensions & menus, select a provider that enables full customization to fit your business needs and match your brand voice.

Mobile App: For remote employees and those who travel, it’s important to have access to their business phone on their smartphones, tablet or laptop. Make sure the solution you choose has a downloadable app that allows two lines on one smartphone to separate business calls from personal calls.

Caller ID and Screening: When remote employees use their personal phones for business, it’s important that they can see who is calling so they can either answer it or send it directly to voicemail or another extension. Also, being able to block callers can help eliminate potential spam as efficiency is crucial when it comes to business communication.

Bonus Tip: Taking your business phone virtual means you need it to be reliable everywhere it's accessed. Asking providers their annual service uptime percentage will let you know if the system is reliable. No company is perfect, but ideally you want to partner with a provider that has at least a 99% uptime.

Virtual Phone System Pricing

It takes some diligence to find the right virtual phone system. Businesses who do not research options often pay too much for a solution that doesn’t fit their needs.

Pricing for virtual phone systems can vary depending on the solution and package that you need. Look at how many minutes you are currently using so you can let the provider guide you to a package that fits your current needs but can also scale with your business. Depending on how many minutes you are planning on using, you can expect to pay anywhere from $12 per month up to a few hundred dollars per month for larger businesses.

Do not sign a long-term contract with a provider in the beginning even if they provide a discount. Yes, an upfront discount may seem enticing, but it may cause more issues and money down the line if the solution or service is not as expected.

If you sign that contract, you are stuck with a poor system or have to pay an early termination penalty to get out of it. Look for a solution that allows month-to-month or pay-as-you-go options as it is a great way to test out the system without a big commitment. A well-established virtual phone system provider like VoiceShot offers a free trial of their solution to establish trust and allow businesses to experience the product before they purchase. 

Summary

For businesses serious about growth, utilizing a virtual phone system enables unified and professional communication for mobile workforces while reducing phone costs. Before you start looking into virtual phone vendors, make sure you understand your goals for upgrading your phone system so you can work with a vendor that can meet your needs now, but can also scale with your business.

For 20 years, VoiceShot’s virtual phone system has been trusted by thousands of businesses. If you are looking for a cost-effective virtual phone solution for your business, get a FREE TRIAL of VoiceShot. 

Benefits of a Virtual Phone System for Businesses and Remote Employees

As companies continue to look for ways to reduce business costs and improve productivity, many are starting to deploy more remote employees in various departments like sales and customer service. Even before the current COVID-19 pandemic, the US has seen 91% growth in remote workers in the last 10 years, and that number is expected to increase dramatically as more companies respond to the current situation with remote work environments. Fortunately, remote workforce communication technology is available, easy to use and affordable.

There are many benefits for enabling remote work such as eliminating the need to commute, more flexible work schedules, less distractions as well as reduced costs for both businesses and employees.

To operate an efficient remote workforce, businesses must to utilize a cloud-based virtual phone system. Advanced virtual phone solutions enable remote employees to operate in the same manner as if they were in the office.

Virtual phone systems enable remote employees to keep work calls separate from personal calls by adding a business line and all the business phone features to a personal smartphone. Remote employees can have a professional business greeting and menu-driven business phone features enabled on their personal smartphones. It also allows companies to separate the costs for the business line from the remote employee’s personal line and avoid pushing increased costs to their employee’s personal phone bill.  

Advanced virtual phone systems provide features such as auto-attendant, call routing, professional greetings, interactive voice response, call forwarding, voicemail-to-email and many other important features to allow remote employees to increase productivity while maintaining professionalism.

Here are some top benefits of using a virtual phone system for businesses and remote employees.

Increase Workforce Mobility

Virtual phone systems enable remote employees to work as if they were in an office setting. By routing an existing business phone number to a remote employee’s personal smartphone, it ensures business can be conducted anywhere and no important calls are missed.

A cloud-based virtual phone system removes communication obstacles for onsite and remote employees by having one phone system that can be accessed by everyone within an organization regardless of their location. When remote employees leave their homes or remote offices, they have access to the company phone system through a mobile app to make and receive calls as well as access voicemail on the go.

Enhance Employee Productivity

By increasing mobility, virtual phone systems can improve the productivity of remote employees. Remote workers can enjoy the same benefits as onsite workers with a virtual auto-attendant to greet callers as well as call forwarding, voicemail-to-email and many other features. 

Custom phone number extensions can be set up for each remote employee, making it easy to reach them without having to remember their personal mobile numbers. Remote employees can quickly connect with onsite employees through extensions just as if they were in the same building without losing audio quality.

A virtual phone system enables businesses to quickly hire new remote employees as new phone extensions can be easily added in minutes, allowing new remote workers to get up and running quickly on their own personal smartphone with dedicated extensions, greetings and call forwarding.

Reduce Business Costs

Cloud-based virtual phone systems reduce business costs. They eliminate the need to purchase multiple phones/landline numbers and simplify the billing process by eliminating the need to have multiple phone bills. Second, it reduces long distance call charges so businesses can hire more remote employees and eliminate additional relocation costs for hiring onsite employees.

Virtual phone systems also reduce customer service call center costs by allowing businesses to employ more remote support agents rather than having them all in-house. IT costs can also be reduced as virtual phone systems are easier and quicker to deploy and support than traditional landline phone systems.

Summary

As more businesses start to expand and hire more remote employees, utilizing a cloud-based virtual phone system allows employees, both remote and onsite to be more collaborative and productive while reducing costs.

If you are looking for a virtual phone solution for your business, give VoiceShot a try. Now in our 20^th year in business, we serve thousands of customers with the industry’s number one remote phone system. We can quickly port your existing business numbers or assign new business phone numbers to your remote employees. Plans start at only $12 per month. Get a Free Trial Today.