Very few of these hosted or web-based PBX phone systems meet your sales and/or marketing expectations. Sometimes these claims are stated directly and often simply stated, such as promotional, direct marketing and/or branding benefits.

Running a busy marketing consulting practice in New York City (Sadwith eMarketing & Communications), my colleagues and I were, of course, interested in discovering what insider marketing benefits lurk behind the façade of eMarketing & Communications. clever marketing and fluid advertising slogans.

Therefore, we embarked on a 3-month “Business-to-Business Online Telecommunications” part-time research project, largely dedicated to surveying corporate clients, listening to testimonials from their corporate subscribers; taking a closer look at the various programs offered by the most prominent “virtual phone system” and “hosted PBX” companies that advertise online and appear regularly in the organic listings of major search engines.

We found one of those Internet-based “virtual telecommunications” companies that actually delivers on all counts; plus the marketing support benefits and revenue enhancement features we were most interested in that are clearly stated in their promotional language.

The company we identified as having the most powerful set of such tools and features is called “Phone.com”, whose flagship set of phone features and communication tools for businesses and home offices is called “Virtual Office”.

Frankly, we were intrigued by the title and encouraged by its particularly interesting set of office communication tools, so we decided to investigate.

But how? How can you tell the difference between empty corporate slogans without any substance and the real deal? Especially at such low monthly rates ($10 to $15 per month, average rates).

First of all, we find the final result. [concerning inbound callers] of Phone.com’s telecommunications infrastructure and business tools to be a significant enhancement to its corporate subscribers’ direct customer communications and sales prospect engagement efforts; much lower cancellation rates, therefore decreased dropout; improved customer relationship management (CRM), based on customer feedback; and higher retention and loyalty numbers across the board, with higher sales “close rates.”

We found this telecommunications platform to be a genuine, high-end, up-to-date phone system that does much more than just log voicemail messages and forward calls to people in the field or in their car.

In fact, it’s a top-of-the-line communications system that also provides a cleverly designed marketing infrastructure, with promotional tools you’ve probably never thought of before, like voice-to-text functionality for voicemail messages, giving you an important record, or paper trail, of all incoming messages.

You also have the option to write messages and have those messages come out as a voice you choose to use (corporate, British, comedic, dramatic, whatever), which is obviously useful if you don’t always, perhaps, have the same confidence in your feet as you would like to leave critically important messages with people who make you nervous.

They also give you the first month free, a 30-day free trial to try out the system. They probably do this because most business owners get addicted to various of the features they provide and can’t let it go once they get used to using the system. I know we did. We also like the low price and the live tech and 24/7 customer support. We are not good with technical stuff, and we really need the support, which probably drives our tech reps crazy, but they are extremely patient and kind, and put up with us, in good spirits.

So here we have a “virtual hosted phone system” that doubles as a sort of “marketing solution assistant”, at really low rates. We found other flexible tools and features integrated into Phone.com’s Virtual Office suite, contributing to this promotional application.

Our favorite, in terms of making a lasting ‘good impression’ on first-time callers and sales prospects, as well as keeping existing customers happy (which qualify as “branding tools”) are the “Follow-Up” features. Me Calling” and Queue.

The queue feature puts incoming callers in line to continue dialing multiple numbers belonging to the party they are calling (a cell phone, numbers, an office landline, a home number, a PDA) until to locate the part. It greatly limits the wait time, which, as you know, allows a lot of potential customers to hang up. It’s not a good thing. And the Follow Me calling tool also achieves the same result of continuous calling, except while waiting for the connection that locates your group, hearing company updates and news about new awesome clients we’ve recently recruited, more marketing tools in use, tools brand if you want to be exact.

If the chosen person is never reached, the call goes to voicemail, but the unique aspect of all this is the fact that once the call reaches voicemail, we immediately receive an email alert, telling us who called. And all we have to do is click on the messages in the email to trigger the callback. Fast and easy; And we never lose potential customers to the competition, or anger impatient customers by returning their calls hours later or even the next day.

Another branding marketing tool we like is the fact that each person who works for our company has an extension, a voice mail with their own unique message. In addition to our own promotional messages that you hear when you are transferring to ext. They are searching.

Imagine how much business enterprises lose with a one-size-fits-all “general mailbox” (like some of our marketing agency competitors) offered to callers after business hours.

All of these tools increase or decrease your chances of selling when it comes to first-time callers, who are often sales prospects or leads. With them, as you know, you have 20 seconds, if that’s it, to make a good impression, which this system, luckily, helps you do.

Brand. If you create a negative impression with a first-time caller, he or she will likely never call you back, and you’ll never find out. They just won’t call you back. You can’t track that kind of thing. Just past. And you can do everything right for the next 20 years, but that caller will always remember that first call and the negative impression you got from it. You can never go back and change a first impression…

We also have the ability to leave special promotional offers and quotes from happy customers in the system that callers hear when they’re on hold, along with classical music, giving us a bit of class. I would say these are pretty neat marketing tools that could help drive more business. Besides the toll-free number you get from this particular company, at no additional charge every month for its use (unlike many of the other virtual telcos, by the way)…

A toll free number increases the number of incoming calls as it is free. A toll-free number creates a more professional brand image, no doubt. A toll-free number limits cancellations, since customers are statistically much more likely to call to resolve doubts or technical problems, clarify them and thus avoid canceling or unsubscribing.

Again, I would call these brand marketing benefits. If you make the most of it. It is up to us to execute effectively and creatively, regarding any of these high-tech communication tools and widgets.

Well, this shows some of the elements we think are necessary to make a virtual phone system an effective communication and marketing/sales tool… We hope you enjoyed listening to it. We’ll feature another article that addresses other areas of interest, in terms of helping small businesses get more out of their phone system.

When you add up all the features and benefits provided by an online hosted PBX virtual phone system, they should primarily exist to provide your sales prospects and existing customers with in-call experiences that are easier, faster, and less obstructed than they once were. previously. Most web-based “virtual telecommunications” companies do not, in fact, deliver all that they promise. We found some. But only after some serious digging.