It’s 8:30 Monday morning. Your phone system has three voicemails left late on Friday. A staff member’s cellphone has two texts from the weekend. And one of your customers tried contacting your business via a phone call and a text message.
Before your team helps a single customer, they have to hunt. They play voicemails on desk phones, scroll through text messages, and check the call log. Only then can they (finally) start calling people back.
A softphone app—part of hosted VoIP and UCaaS providers’ services—shortens and helps expedite that whole process. It puts work calls, texts, and voicemail in one dashboard, so the whole conversation is accessible from one place. Here’s what that saves your team, and how to get it.
How a Softphone App Combines Calls, Texts, and Voicemail—Side by Side
A softphone is a business phone that runs as an application on your computer, laptop, or smartphone. The good ones do more than just place calls. They give each business communication channel its own section in the same app:
- Calls—Make calls from a contact card, redial from call history, or click on a name instead of typing a number.
- Texts—Send and receive business SMS and MMS from your business phone number, with unread indicators on new messages.
- Voicemail—See every message in one list with the date, time, caller ID, and length. Play it, return the call, or download and forward it on to a colleague.
Softphones also have a contacts section that lists all of your coworkers (and external contacts that you add in, too) in one directory. Coworkers and customers live in the same place, so one search finds the person—and every way to reach them.
4 Ways a Unified Inbox Saves Your Team Time
1. The caller who uses every channel
Before: A customer leaves a voicemail, then texts a photo of the problem. Your rep checks voicemail in one place, hears about the text on a coworker's phone, and calls back without seeing either in full.
After: The voicemail and the business texting thread sit side by side in the same softphone app. Your rep hears the message, sees the photo, and taps to call the client back. The first call starts with the answer, not a question.
2. The Monday morning catch-up
Before: Voicemail first. Then the shared phone's call log. Then texts from the weekend. A half hour passes before callbacks begin and text messages are sent.
After: New message indicators flag new voicemail messages and unread texts. A quick search by name or number pulls up the person’s contact card with click-to-call buttons. Review takes minutes, and nothing sits unseen in a separate app.
3. The text that needs a call
Before: A text thread gets complicated. Your rep writes down the phone number, moves to their office desk phone, and dials the number. Meanwhile, the customer is waiting for a response.
After: The staff member clicks over to the softphone app’s Contacts list and finds the customer. They place a call to the person by clicking on the call button found there. They can seamlessly click back to the Messages section of the app and keep the text conversation open front and center on their screen while talking to the person on a phone call.
4. The rep on the road
Before: A field sales rep gets a customer text on their personal cell. The reply goes out from their cell number, and the customer saves it.
After: The customer texts your business phone number. Your VoIP provider’s mobile app displays the text message in the Messages section of the app, with a new message indicator alerting the rep to the new text. Voicemail and a phone keypad are only one tap away on the same dashboard.
The Real Savings: No Lost Context
Minutes matter. Context matters even more. In our recent post on business text templates, we made the case that saved templates free your team for the conversations that need a real person. Those conversations will go better when your rep has the whole picture: the missed call, the voicemail, the texted photo, etc.
When communication channels live in separate software applications, context fragments. When they live in one app, the voicemail, the text, and the call history are just a click away. That means:
- Fewer ‘sorry, can you repeat that?’ moments
- Faster first-call resolution
- Smoother handoffs between coworkers
- Less pressure to use personal phones for work
And customers will notice the difference. They don't know how many apps you use; but they will know whether they had to explain themselves over and over again.
Less Switching, Less Searching: The OnSIP App
The OnSIP app puts calls, texts, and voicemail in one dashboard, and on the device that you already use throughout your workday.
On your desktop or laptop, choose to log into our web browser app, or download our desktop app. There, you’ll find your voicemails organized by date, time, and caller ID. Search by name or number, play a message, and call back in one click.
Make a call to a phone number at the top left of the dashboard, where you’ll find a phone keypad to dial the number. In the Contacts list on the left-hand side, you’ll find your coworkers and any external people that you choose to add in, side by side.
And with business SMS enabled, the Messages section of the app handles SMS and MMS, flags new texts, and puts a call button inside the conversation.
On your mobile phone, our iOS and Android mobile apps turn that phone into an extension of your business line. The Voicemail tab displays your messages replacing PINs and phone menus with taps to listen and taps to call the contact back.
The Messages tab sends and receives texts made to and from your business number. A Keypad tab gives you access to a phone keypad to dial numbers. And the Contacts tab lists your organization's contacts. A Favorites subsection there puts your most-called contacts one tap away.
Ready to stop switching apps? Contact our sales team and we’ll show you how one app for calls, texts, and voicemail fits your team’s workflows!