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Telephony Integration to Boost Your Business!

By CRM Systems, General News, Telephony

Telephony from Zoho CRM enables you to stay on top of leads and save money at the same time!

There are many ways you can get in touch with your customers, such as email, social media, live chats, etc. However, one old method to talk to people is still among the most effective, and that is  telephony. Implementing quality phone systems and telephony software will do wonders for your business.

70% of consumers interviewed in a survey said that they would rather speak to a human customer service representative than engage with a digital customer service rep or chatbot. This shows that your customers would rather hear from you in person, and they prefer telephone interaction to other types of communication, no matter how advanced and convenient they seem on paper.

Having a reliable phone system for closing sales and offering customer support is vital for the success of your business. If you see telephony as an outdated service that hasn’t evolved much, you are mistaken. VoIP phone systems are accessible to any small business and they come with huge benefits.  Here is why you should move to a VoIP phone system:

  1. Lowering cost per call

VoIP phone systems use Internet Protocol to make calls, which means that instead of using telephone lines, communication data is sent over an IP network. IP networks can be an Internet connection, a direct IP connection to your telephony service provider, or a combination of both. An advantage of IP is the guaranteed quality of service from the provider’s network to your office network. But the biggest advantage of using VoIP telephony is being able to make both domestic and long distance calls for free. With traditional phone lines a line is taken up when two callers are using it to communicate, which makes phone calls expensive, especially long-distance ones.  Switching to VoIP telephony will lower your phone bill by as much as 80%!

  1. Mobility

Gone are the days when a business was only managed from its headquarters. If you want to stay on top of your business operations you may need to be available outside the regular business hours. Mobile VoIP services also allow a more flexible schedule and if you need to go out of office during your working hours, you can still make a phone call from your CRM system using just your smartphone or another portable device.

The mobility of VoIP phone systems comes with another advantage: if you move your business headquarters, you don’t have to waste a lot of time reorganising and setting up phone number transfers to your new location. The reduced physical limitations of a VoIP phone system gives you the freedom to move as your business demands without any hassle.

  1. Solution in case the internet stops working

VoIP telephony software depend on your internet connection, but the internet not working at a given moment will not cancel your ability to make calls. One of the most valuable features of VoIP telephony software is call forwarding. This gives you the capability to choose where your calls are forwarded and your productivity will not be affected by power outages or weather-related issues. You can use your mobile device or laptop to answer instead of your office phone.

  1. Easy conference calls

Creating and participating in conference calls can be difficult when using traditional lines. In most cases, you will have to pay for an additional service to host multiple callers for a conference, while with VoIP phone systems these services are native and do not carry additional costs. Even video interaction with colleagues and clients when you are out of office is easier to manage with VoIP phone systems.

  1. Feature diversity

The features of VoIP systems are created to maximise your productivity as much as possible. An example of a situation that VoIP telephony software can help you handle easier is being on a call with other calls in queue; you can use this time to read voicemail-to-text transcriptions of missed calls, which are sent directly to your email inbox.

  1. Having your calls and sales in one place

When your calls and sales are separate, it’s difficult to measure the effectiveness of your calls and their impact on your sales. Integrating your phone system with Zoho CRM enables your team to make and attend calls directly from their sales software and compare call results against corresponding deals. You will also be able to keep track of previous conversations and contact details by accessing call histories under each record.

  1. Ease of use

VoIP telephony software applications such as Zoho CRM provide a variety of tools that make contacting your customers and prospects a lot easier, such as single-click dialing straight from Zoho, planning calls in advance to follow new leads while they’re fresh, setting reminders for upcoming calls, sending notifications for missed ones, automatic call logging to eliminate manual data entry, and call data analytics.

  1. Enjoying the benefits of the 3CX technology

    telephony

IP PBX from 3CX is a complete telephony software system offering phone calls over IP data networks. Conversations are sent as data packages over the network but IP PBX is also able to connect to traditional PSTN lines using an optional gateway. An IP PBX phone system consists of one or more SIP phones and optionally a VoIP gateway to connect to existing PSTN lines. The main benefits of IP PBX are:

  • Easy to install and configure compared to traditional phones – The processing power of the computer and the user interface are used by IP PBX, so a trained installer is not required to install the new phone system; someone who is proficient in networking and computers will be able to do the job.
  • Easy to use due to GUI-based configuration – An IP PBX can be managed via a web-based configuration interface or a GUI, enabling you to maintain and make changes to your phone system without being a phone technician.
  • Eliminating phone wiring – Hardware IP phones can be connected directly to a standard computer network port, while software phones can be installed directly to your PC with no telephony wiring required!
  • Scalability – If you outgrow your proprietary system, you will need expensive hardware modules to add more phone lines or extensions or you may need an entirely new phone system. With IP PBX a standard computer is enough to add more phones and expand your network.
  • Ease of use – Proprietary phone systems often have advanced phone features that employees struggle to use. With IP PBX you don’t need detailed instructions in order to set up a conference or transfer a call to an old PBX due to the user-friendly GUI.
  • Allowing hot desking and roaming –  Hot desking is the process of moving office or desks based on current tasks you need to complete. Extensions used to be required to re-patch to a new location, but with IP PBX the user can take his phone to his new desk and calls can be diverted anywhere in the world.

Telephony from Zoho CRM using 3CX technology represents the best solution for your business as it offers you the flexibility, financial savings, and ease of use you need in the modern business environment.

If you’re interested in boosting your business and sales, contact Visual Marketing Australia to find out how you can switch to VoIP phone system provided by Zoho CRM today!

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work remotely

Working Remotely Is the New Norm! 

By CRM Systems, General News

The Covid crisis has changed the world we live in, but many of these changes, such as working remotely, have not come as a surprise. The lock down has just accelerated trends we were already seeing in the last few years, with remote work being one of the most pertinent topics on the public agenda since March 2020. 

Working remotely has become the new norm as we were forced to implement it due to lock down restrictions and we’ve now seen that it actually works. This new way of working played a vital role in business and economic continuity during the original lock down period, and will provide stability during future emergencies, especially now that it’s proven to be successful. 

Working RemotelyEven amidst this Covid crisis, employees are reporting greater productivity and higher job satisfaction, which is translating into enormous profitability for their employers. Permitting off-site work allows businesses to reduce overheads  through reduced real estate, equipment, and supply costs. 

Australia remote working statistics 

Statistics confirm what we were already presuming, that remote work will play a major role in our economy and is here to stay:

– 47% of small business would like to work remotely more often; 

– 45% consider that remote work creates more free time; 

– 90% of small business owners in WA work remotely one or two days a week, followed by NSW (84%), QLD (82%), and ACT, NT, TAS combined (50%);

– 82% of business owners from areas that are not from metro areas work from home one or two days a week, compared to 75% of business owners from metro areas 

– even when reliable public transport is available, people prefer to save time and money by working remotely from home. 

Work is more about what you do than about where you go 

Even after restrictions were lifted, more than one million small businesses continued to operate remotely. Why? A possible explanation was provided by Vijay Sundaram, Zoho Chief Strategy Officer: “The nature of work will change forever as the number of businesses deciding to work remotely and from home will skyrocket, even after lock down and social distancing restrictions are lifted (…) If there’s one thing business owners and workers are understanding in the wake of COVID-19, it’s that a job is something you do rather than somewhere you go.” 

Sundaram also explained that remote work is not just a temporary solution to a problem, but a new way of doing business as it uncovers a range of opportunities never seen before: “This will upturn norms that have been accepted for generations. Relentless innovation in affordable technology will put remote work w

ithin the reach of every company, lowering costs and creating new agility.” 

Will remote work allow your staff to stay idle because you are not monitoring them? 

Not if they are motivated and the right people for the job. Remote work will require human resource specialists to focus even more on matching talent with open positions. There will be a shift from physical presence and close monitoring to using results as the main measure of performance. Remote work done properly means it will be even harder for employees to purposely waste time during their working hours. 

Saving time and money 

No longer needing to organise and maintain office space, as well as reducing commuting hours, are not the only ways that remote work helps us save time and money. The new paradigm will reduce the importance of events, meetings, and business travels, whose values were often overestimated. 

Remote work is excellent for Australia’s low population density 

James Dellow from the Digital Workplace Company, based in Australia, reveals that working remotely is an excellent solution for Australians, who are located around the main cities. 

Creating a hybrid between working remotely and commuting to work 

Not all jobs will be done exclusively from home or other remote space. On the one hand, some tasks can only be completed at the office or job site, in certain industries such as healthcare or construction, and on the other hand not all people have optimal home-working conditions. Those days when you cannot handle working from home or you miss drinking coffee with your colleagues, you will still go to the office the old-fashioned way. However, even work at the office could be different from what we used to know, with fewer employees present, less overtime completed at the office, and social distancing rules still imposed for as long as the Coronavirus represents a threat. 

Urban areas will be less crowded 

The growing acceptance of working remotely will enable people from rural areas to kee

p living in their communities, if desired, instead of moving to a more urban or city environment in order to advance their career. Many companies whose employees are working remotely are aware of the fact that employees may miss the social interactions from going to the office every day, so they have set up working hubs in spaces such as shopping centres, where staff can go if they want to come together as a group. Public social networks can enable social relations even if most of the work is completed through online meeting platforms.

Remote work challenges 

Some small businesses and their employees see remote work as an ordeal. 

The reason? 

They do not have the right tools to work from home in an efficient manner. James Dellow, cited earlier, observed that companies who had adopted and invested in digital tools such as intranet or online meeting platforms were delighted with the rewards of remote working, while companies which did not are st

ruggling to implement working from home due to unsuitable or outdated tools. 

The lack of adequate online meeting platforms does not only have a negative impact on productivity, but it also decreases employee engagement. Traditional online communication methods, such as email, do not work in today’s digital environment, so companies need to find new ways of engaging and ensuring high efficiency at work. 

When asked about their expectations from online meeting platforms, small business owners said they need a reliable way to access the resources of their workplace outside the office and communicate with employees at the same time. Sending documents via email while you are using a different device for a video call is common, but it is slowly becoming an outdated model as today’s software is dedicated to working remotely and manages to integrate all functions of remote work in one app or platform.

One of the tools that is already enabling Australians to work remotely with excellent results and minimal friction is Zoho’s Remotely online meeting platform.

Benefits of Zoho Remotely include:

o Communication from anywhere and everywhereWorking Remotely

All your business communication can be conducted online, whether it’s a team meeting or a sales presentation. 

o Seamless collaboration 

Zoho Remotely allows you to create team drives, share documents with members, and collaborate in real time to get the job done. 

o Solve issues from anywhere 

Integrated apps enable you to help staff and customers from everywhere by sharing help files, solving customer queries, and taking control of their system. 

o Affordability

Zoho Remotely will be offered for free until September 1st, 2020, and its pricing will be announced soon with the same commitment to good value for money that Zoho demonstrates with all its products. 

o Being able to use a variety of Zoho applications 

  • Remotely is a package of 11 applications from Zoho: 
    • Zoho ShowTime – Engagement and training tool 
    • Zoho Writer – Collaborative word processor 
    • Zoho Sheet – Collaborative spreadsheet application 
    • Zoho Cliq – Instant messaging/chat platform 
    • Zoho Show – Business presentation tool 
    • Zoho Meeting – Video conferencing tool 
    • Zoho Sprints – Agile project management software 
    • Zoho Lens* and Assist – Remote support software 
    • Zoho WorkDrive – Document management tool 
    • Zoho Projects – Comprehensive project management tool 

Contact us if you want to take remote working to a new level in your company by using Zoho Remotely. Visual Marketing Australia is an Authorised Consulting Partner for Zoho CRM since 2018. We have been using Zoho CRM for more than a decade, we know how to put its features to work to meet digital marketing needs and support working remotely

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Zoho CRM Social media

The Importance of CRM with Social Media

By CRM Systems, General News

In a recent post about Zoho CRM we were talking about the importance of customer retention and how critical it is for your company’s success to attract loyal customers. Research has shown that as little as 5% increase in customer retention can result in an increase in company revenue by 25-95%!

Cultivating loyalty is a very powerful tool that many businesses overlook while focusing on other, less effective ways of increasing profits. In the aforementioned article we were also showing how Zoho CRM can be used to attract and ease repeat business due to a series of features the world’s second favourite sales platform offers.

Relationship marketing

Looking at the bigger picture, what your business needs to learn is how to do relationship marketing, the best way to retain customers and stop wasting money on acquiring new customers that don’t stick. According to this Hubspot definition, relationship marketing is

“a type of marketing that focuses on cultivating deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers to ensure long-term satisfaction and brand loyalty. Relationship marketing is not focused on short-term wins or sales transactions — rather, it is focused on delighting an audience and your customers for the long-haul.”

Tactics used to implement relationship marketing in a company often look totally different from what traditional marketing had taught us to do in order to attract clients: messages that don’t resemble advertisements, admitting mistakes, creating content that takes more time and effort to digest, offering lifetime warranties, and being 100% transparent about products and services.

These are bold changes that may require some companies to completely change the way they do marketing, but before achieving this type of marketing that consists of fostering customer loyalty, interaction, and long-term engagement, you also need a tool to help you understand your audience. You need to become able to reach prospects where they are most likely to react in a positive manner. Zoho CRM Social media tools will enable you to determine what tactics work and what marketing activities are ineffective.

Relationship marketing today is not possible without the latest technologies that are used to manage customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifestyle. Insight from software like Zoho allows you to create more personalised and positive experiences. Here is how Zoho CRM can help with social media:

Measuring results

A recent study revealed that 3.2 billion people use social media. With over 42% of the human population on it, it’s vital business to get social. However, being on social media without measuring it is pointless. Analysing social media data will help you build a social strategy to grow your business; it will help you understand the crowd as this takes more than just a simple monitoring of your social media pages and reading what people are posting every day. Zoho CRM social media can assist by:

  • Monitoring customer feedback on social networking sites;
  • Keeping track of customer’s social media interactions inside CRM;
  • Getting notified on Zoho CRM whenever someone interacts with your brand;
  • Managing and posting to your brand’s social media accounts from CRM;
  • Adding leads from social media back to CRM.
  • Understanding your audience

This allows you to tailor content that resonates with your target market and helps to build an effective content strategy. For instance, you can create your own listening stream and follow what your prospects and competitors are saying about your brand on Twitter with keyword tracking in the Monitor Tab. It is also possible to listen to live updates from your prospects to understand what matters to them and find the right time to get in touch.

Understanding your ads

Social media ads are rather expensive, so you should measure them to see if they deliver successful ad performance and find out what you need to change about your social media campaigns. Zoho can integrate Facebook profiles so you can keep track of all your online conversations but also measure your online marketing activities as Zoho connects to your Facebook Ad manager.

You can easily manage Facebook ads inside CRM as Zoho CRM has extensions for Facebook Ad management and lets you bring your campaign information into CRM and compare the results from campaigns against sales. Some of the actions you can take are comparing the performance of your campaigns against each other to determine which are most effective at bringing in leads, importing your spending from these campaigns, comparing it with other expenses, managing your sales budget, and creating dashboards for your Facebook Ads.

Understanding your content

CRM software programs like Zoho will give you an overview of everything such as likes, shares, comments, what content does well, devices content is consumed on, reaches and impressions (views), profile views, clicks – all allowing you to reduce wasted time and focus on what works. Zoho CRM social media features consist of social dashboards that allow you to focus on the social media conversations important to your business. You can follow posts and conversations from your leads, contacts, or potentials, and thus stay ahead of the curve without needing to manually check all your social network accounts.

Managing your social media conversations in real time

The social tab in Zoho CRM allows you to take multiple actions from its social tab, such as closing deals and sharing content. If your company has multiple social media profiles for individual products or services, Zoho CRM makes it easy to manage them by adding the profiles under a Brand. The platform seamlessly synchronizes all your brand profiles and settings in real time. You don’t have to switch from one browser tab to another as it is all there – your only task is to react to customer interactions and seize the opportunity to sell.

Aside from managing conversations in real time, you have access to conversation history. Once a contact has been added to Zoho CRM, you can access their information, deal history, and activities from the Social Tab. You can see the most recent social conversations your business has had with your contacts, and with real-time information you’ll never miss out on the sales context in your responses to social media posts.

Automating social media tasks

You can add leads manually from the Social Tab, or you can automate your lead generation. Zoho CRM lets you set up triggers to automatically add leads and contacts from social media based on the type of customer interaction. You can also automatically assign leads and contacts to your sales reps with assignment rules, tasks, and reminders.

In the end, when considering implementing Zoho CRM social media tools, you simply want a good ROI from effort and money, so you can increase in brand awareness, website traffic, customer engagement, sales and conversions whilst reducing technical support issues.

If you want to enjoy all these advantages and sell more on social media with help from Zoho, contact Visual Marketing Australia for an obligation-free consultation. We are an Authorised Consulting Partner for Zoho since 2018 and we can help you obtain the various Zoho packages from just the CRM to also include Sales Automation and Marketing Automation, Finance, HR, Project Management, Social Media, and much more. Give us a call today and we will show you how to acquire and use CRM to increase your company’s sales through Zoho CRM social media!

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