More and more marketing agencies are relocating their offices and allowing their employees to work remotely. The recent pandemic has spurred a new way of working. This method has been on the horizon for years, but many companies have yet to leap.
Remote working has been an essential step for many companies in the marketing sector. Most of these companies have remote work without needing to travel to the office. As a result, many companies have managed to stabilise this exceptional situation and take advantage of it.
One of the disadvantages of remote working is communication. With the distance between employees, both internal and external communication has become more complex. It is now more challenging to communicate with your colleagues and companies interested in your products.
VoIP telephone services are a great tool that many marketing agencies are starting to implement. They are often difficult decisions to make, but they are easier to adopt than they seem.
Below, we will explain how vital a VoIP telephone service can be for your marketing agency and the benefits it can bring you.
From face-to-face to remote or hybrid work
The labour market is transforming over time, and more and more companies are opting for remote or hybrid working for their businesses.
According to the IT Labour Market Report 2022, 23 million people in Latin America will be working remotely by 2021. This number is high enough to consider the solutions companies can take to make it easier for employees to work and more profitable for their businesses.
Digital environments are becoming more and more common within companies. Working with technological equipment, having documents in the cloud and only relying on a good internet connection allows you to carry out your work from almost anywhere in the world.
Many companies are also choosing to mix both systems, thus allowing the best of both ways of working. Some, such as BBVA, have decided to do so with the hybrid working day. The model they propose is to work 40% of the working day remotely and the rest of the day in the office. In other words, two days out of every working week, you will be able to work in the area of your choice.
The hybrid work model is spreading, as it gives workers great flexibility. The hybrid work makes them feel more comfortable with their work and more satisfied and improves their commitment to the brand. These are some of the benefits that experts say hybrid working brings.
Improving work-life balance
The flexibility that hybrid working brings to people is a great advantage for the people within the company. Companies get to offer more room for movement to their employees and thus improve the company culture.
Providing your employees with a healthy work-life balance will make them happier. Flexibility can translate into increased productivity, as you will give them the flexibility to work more comfortably and at ease.
With hybrid work, you will get the worker to attend to their personal and professional tasks in the most comfortable way. A system that perhaps we were not used to has come to improve the lives of companies and employees.
Improving the working environment
Another positive characteristic of hybrid work is the improvement of the personal relationships of the people in the company. Having a working model that accommodates both remote and face-to-face work reduces both monotonies.
With this measure, you will get your employees to come to work much happier and more proactive in improving their working relationships. Moving from total remote working in the pandemic era, where you spend long hours at home with no social interaction, to this hybrid model will optimise the employee experience in the company.
Environmental commitment
Another advantage that companies can take advantage of is to create a stronger, more responsible brand committed to the environment in which they carry out their business activities.
Reducing the environmental impact when employees commute to work is an essential activity for companies. Making the spaces in which they live more sustainable and less polluted is a positive message to society.
Anticipating future health problems
The recent COVID explosion has notified all companies of possible problems requiring remote working. The pandemic has taught us to adapt to such situations, using valuable tools to work in different locations.
Companies that use the hybrid working system are more prepared for future health problems, medical emergencies or any other problem that may force us to be confined.
On the other hand, avoiding the spread of everyday diseases is also important. This method of working involves less personal or at least recurrent contact. Certain illnesses, such as colds or flu, will have less impact on society.
What are the advantages of remote working for marketing agencies?
Marketing agencies are one of the businesses that allow their leaders to adopt online tools to facilitate remote working. They are companies that must always look at new trends to adopt them; in this case, they can be at the cutting edge of technology.
Cost savings
Companies offering remote work can better allocate their assets to optimise their use. It is not uncommon to see companies moving their headquarters to smaller buildings or less central locations to save costs. All this is influenced by the freedom a digital, flexible and mobile environment gives you.
For workers, it is also a cost-saving not to have to commute to work every day. For example, in Spain, a study by Cisco estimates that ordinary Spanish people save €130 per week by teleworking. This figure is close to the world average of around €150 per week.
Digitisation of processes
Another benefit of remote work is that the company must digitise processes. In other words, when you decide to have your employees telework, you must assume the costs involved in changing the remote applications.
Usually, these costs are not very high, and the payback period is quite manageable. It is also a good option as more and more applications and tools are available on the market, so you can choose the best application that best suits you in terms of quality/price.
The well-being of your workforce
According to a study by Cisco called Hybrid Work 2022, people who telecommute improve their quality of life in many ways.
One of them is in terms of physical exercise and nutrition, two variables that are linked to the free time you have to do them. According to this study, each person gains an average of 4 hours per week by teleworking.
This improvement in employees’ quality of life directly affects their emotional, financial, mental, physical and social state. We manage to have more emotionally stable, happier workers in our company and a greater possibility of developing their work efficiently.
According to this same study, 82% of people worldwide consider teleworking has made them happier. This happiness lies in lower stress levels, greater relaxation and less pressure.
Miscellaneous equipment
For many companies operating in different countries, it is crucial to have workers with the native language level of their markets. Having a remote job is a great advantage for the recruitment departments of companies.
When you offer a remote job, you can open your search filter to practically everyone. You will be able to choose from a more significant number of people so you will have the possibility to find a much more suitable candidate for your company.
VoIP switchboard in a marketing agency
Many marketing agencies are very limited by their telephone systems and need more functionality for their business.
In a small marketing agency, it is common to have a telephone number to attend to clients. Whether the calls are incoming calls to serve potential new customers or if we want to make or receive calls from our current customers.
In the following, we will explain, as an example, a confirmed case of a marketing agency with its consequent contextualisation to know what the change to VoIP telephone can bring to a marketing agency.
What does a VoIP PBX bring to a marketing agency?
Many companies ask us about the service we offer, and how it can help them if it is difficult to use or expensive.
Well, for marketing agencies, it is a handy tool. In this case, we are talking about a small agency, with all its employees working remotely.
- Obsolete office telephone
With the new distribution of remote employees, due to COVID-19, the telephone in the office has become completely useless as there is usually no one there. Most incoming calls would be lost.
VoIP telephony allows employees to have their telephone from the computer, Tablet or mobile phone on which they work. Everyone will be able to receive calls on their devices.
With the conventional telephone, the reception of calls is unique, and you can’t do anything once you receive them. With the VoIP telephone system, you can organise calls so that the right person receives them by creating IVRs and call queues.
By creating these, you will be able to receive notifications of what information customers want to obtain before you pick up the phone. So you know which person in the company should pick up the phone.
On the other hand, you can also manage that if the call is not picked up from the softphone or application, you can forward it to another number. In this case, the forwarding was made to the personal phone of the person in charge of the company.
It is often a complicated time for any company to change basic systems internally and externally. That is why implementing a VoIP telephone system can be a complicated step.
We want to take this idea away from any marketing agency considering it. It is a straightforward process that will take very little time to set up. The operation of the application will not be tedious or time-consuming either.
If you need to configure anything else, the technical team will always help you.
In VoIPstudio, we can generate tickets, which puts you in direct contact with one of our assistants. They will help you through the installation process and set your system up the way you want it.
- Flexible prices and solutions for every company
In this case, being a small company with different needs, they decided to go for a more fundamental solution with lower prices.
They decided to create only one user, which has a lower price than if they developed more users with the same phone number.
With this, they lose some features such as the internal chat, which, in this case, they already had covered by their management application.
- Multi-line and three-way calling
While with conventional telephony, you can only handle one call at a time, VoIP telephony allows you to receive several calls on the same number or make as many outgoing calls as you need.
In other words, you can talk to two clients simultaneously from the same number. You can also receive a call at the same time another colleague calls a customer.
On the other hand, VoIP telephony allows you to easily add a third party to the call in progress, facilitating the resolution of doubts or conflicts in a quick and agile way. It also has a conference service for calls between as many participants as needed.
Problem solutions for a small marketing agency
When you are a small agency, you will want unique features that suit your business. Here are some of the problems we’ve managed to solve with a small marketing agency:
In the case of this agency, they are a company with low inbound/outbound calls. So they need a simple application that adapts to their needs. In this case, it was decided to have one account for everyone. In which they can all log in at the same time and take all calls but do without communicating via chat.
At this point, all employees log into the application with the same username and password. When someone calls the agency, everyone’s phone will ring, and whoever is most capable of answering the call will be able to answer it.
If the call is not answered, they can always transfer it back to a queue to be picked up by other staff or park the call to resolve the query and return it to the customer.
- Several lines of business
In this case, we came across a marketing agency with two business lines. One focused on the national market and the other on the international market.
Therefore, they needed to know who was calling them to be able to answer in Spanish or English. How do we achieve this?
The notification will reach them two ways before they take the call. Thanks to the use of call queues, they will be notified of which queue the call is coming from. That is, if it comes from customer dialling number 1, it will be national, but if it comes from customer dialling number 2, it will be international.
The following prompt is when you pick up the phone. The system will play a locution. In this case, when you pick up the phone and pick it up, it will ring National or International.
With this, we have optimised the customer service process, making it much more personalised.
In addition to the previous issue of serving an international audience, some calls may come in when no one is working and, therefore, cannot be answered.
For this reason, a new IVR line was created within the system, which only worked outside the company’s business hours. In other words, a new voice message was played when calls were made outside the hours of 9.00 to 16.00.
This voice message told the customer that the company was currently closed, to try to call during business hours and, if not, to leave a voicemail message. With the voice message, they could communicate what they wanted.
The voice message could be listened to from the application itself or with an email that would be sent to the company’s email address.
Reasons to implement a telephony service in your marketing agency
With the possibility above for marketing companies to enable their employees to work remotely, implementing a telephony service is one of the most exciting options for them to adopt.
The modern office has left behind many tools that were commonplace in companies. The obligation of going to one place to work for 8 hours and five days a week is coming to an end. Employees can now work from anywhere in the world without needing to be at home. It is becoming increasingly common to see people working in coffee shops, airports, outdoor locations and more.
But what advantages can this bring to marketing agencies, and what should lead them to adopt a VoIP communication system in their companies?
The following will explain some of the improvements that marketing companies will have when implementing a telephony service:
Business profitability
One of the first thoughts companies have when they decide to adopt a new tool is how long it will take to recover the investment and how different the monthly cost will be in the long run compared to the old solution.
A VoIP system will cut a company’s regular phone bill by almost 50%. The difference is even more significant if we talk about international calls, as a VoIP telephone service only needs your data package to connect to someone abroad.
VoIP telephone is location-independent. It will have no impact on your bill depending on the country you are calling. So, if you are an international company, you should consider implementing a telephony service to improve your business.
Unified communications
We refer to unified communications (UC) as those tools that allow the interaction and digital collaboration of all the people in the company. In other words, a telephony service is a tool that will enable us to unify telephone calls, conferences, SMS, emails or voicemail in the same application.
It is a feature that will take your business to another level. With this management of all company communications, both external and internal, from a single tool, you can significantly improve your day-to-day. It will be much easier for employees to communicate with a co-worker and for the company to control everything that happens with their communications.
In addition, all internal communications between users of the tool are free of charge. Whether they are calls, video calls or messages, they are all included in the telephony service free of charge.
Finally, you will have the advantage of using your application from any device (computer, mobile, Tablet.). You will have the benefit of using it from its dedicated application or other tools such as Google Chrome extensions.
Increased productivity
Looking at the above leads us to conclude that your employees will be better equipped technologically to carry out their work. This change translates into increased productivity.
Every company has in mind how to do better with its assets, or in other words, how to do more (be more productive) with the same support. Well, a telephone service is one of those tools that help to increase productivity.
Communication is essential within the company to carry out thousands of day-to-day processes. Therefore, making this communication (internal and external) more uncomplicated, more fluid and faster means less time wasted in management.
Optimising the use of a telephony service within the company can bring many benefits to the company. We will have to teach our employees how to use the tool to get the most out of it. This process will not be lengthy as the VoIP telephone is very similar in use to existing technology.
Increased competitiveness
In today’s highly competitive market, it is essential to adapt to new situations to remain competitive. That is why many companies are already opting for the ability to hire the best candidates in their area, and this is only possible with remote work.
Any company’s ability to attract and retain the best talent is a differential element. For this reason, offering remote, flexible work with working conditions that improve the employee’s quality of life will be a very positive point in their choice.
Introducing a telephony service in your company will give you the hiring capacity you want in terms of the candidate’s geographical choice. You will not need to have a strict fixed timetable; you will not have to set an area where they will work, and you will not oblige them to spend 8 hours for five days in a row in the same place.
Do you need a telephone service for your marketing agency?
You might think that a telephony service is a service that only serves to sell to external customers or to answer calls, but this is a far cry from reality.
A telephony service will make your company go further in communications. Have everything under control so that no information is lost along the way and optimise processes.
An increasing number of marketing agencies have a telephony service within their business, so it is no longer a competitive advantage but a business necessity.
We do not doubt that your marketing agency needs to acquire a telephony service, so don’t hesitate and contact us so we can help you in your adoption process.
VoIPstudio is a well-known international VoIP telephone provider that offers a great guarantee for your communications due to its extensive experience. We offer a 30-day free trial, so you can see how a telephony service suits your business.
