Can a Cloud Phone System Eliminate the Barriers Preventing Conversations?

With proliferating digital communication channels and ubiquitous mobile phones, you would think that we would be having more conversations than ever before, but in fact the opposite is true.

Three forces conspire to prevent direct, personal conversations:

1) Web Presence

Most companies need a website. But for some businesses a web presence can be a double-edged sword: without it they may struggle to find customers, but many people may simply browse the web content, digest information, and conclude that they don’t need to speak with the company. Browsing a website is a way to connect with a company while remaining disconnected from its staff members. This can spell trouble for “conversation-driven businesses” where results depend on actually talking with people.

2) Self-Service

While it is true that today’s customers prefer to buy things and handle simple service problems via online tools, there are many times when a direct conversation is the best (and maybe only) way to resolve an issue.

Many companies do not provide a good way to escalate from self-service into direct, personal contact. In fact, some companies deploy self-service technology in an effort to keep costs down, and they purposely prevent customers from easily reaching a human agent.

Interestingly, some technologies such as chat bots actually mimic real human interaction – perhaps a tacit admission that what people really want is a conversation.

3) The Calling Experience

The telephone is supposed to facilitate direct, personal conversations. But the calling experience is, in reality, a gauntlet of obnoxious delays that rob the caller’s time.

We’ve all experienced it. Traditional phone calls force us to enter a black hole of uncertainty: we dial a ten digit number, listen to prompts, press buttons, hear music (or even crass advertising), maybe learn our expected hold time, get interrupted by a voice saying “your call is very important to us” – only to finally speak with someone who might not be able to help.

Modern cloud phone systems (known as UCaaS – Unified Communications as a Service) don’t solve this problem, they just move the phone system to the cloud; callers still have the same odious experience they’ve been enduring since the 1980s when computerized PBX systems, which make the dreaded “phone tree” possible, began to proliferate.

Question: So for conversation-driven businesses, how can we drive more personal conversations?

Answer: Use a modern cloud phone system that is designed to drive site visitors to Voice Chat right from our websites themselves.

Want to see how Voice Chat could work for your business? Get started today and start driving more personal, meaningful, and direct two-way conversations right off of your website!