$3M companies - what do you use for a phone system?

Question

For those running larger home service companies, what phone system are you using, and how are you balancing responsiveness with still feeling like a local business?

One of our biggest priorities is making sure customers can actually reach someone. We have enough call volume that having every call ring directly to one person isn’t realistic anymore. We have a dedicated person managing new inquiries and general calls, with different departments handling more specific existing-customer needs.

We’ve used an IVR/phone menu for years. We were on Google Voice for a while, but it gave us almost no useful reporting, metrics, or call recording, so we switched to Dialpad this year.

Dialpad gives us much better visibility, but I’m questioning whether we’ve gone too far in the other direction.

The feedback we’re getting is that the experience feels too much like a call center. A customer may call our local family-owned company and:

Go through a phone menu
• Hear the required call-recording announcement
• Potentially reach our remote virtual assistant in the Philippines

Individually, all of those things help us manage volume and stay responsive. Collectively, though, I worry we’re creating a customer experience that feels disconnected from who we actually are.

At the same time, we’re well beyond the point where cell phones or a traditional landline setup would work, and we have remote employees who need to be part of the phone system.

For those of you with multiple departments and meaningful inbound call volume, what are you using?

What phone system and call-routing setup has worked best for you? And have you found a good way to maintain call recording, reporting, accountability, and responsiveness without making the customer experience feel overly automated?

amantiadigital · Answer

The call center feel is usually decided in the first ten seconds, not by Dialpad itself. I'd keep the recording and reporting, but change the order. New callers should ring the new inquiries person first, then overflow to another person, with the menu used only as the fallback. Existing customers can be routed by caller ID straight to the right department in Dialpad, so they never hear a menu. The recording notice can be one short line in a familiar voice instead of the default. If the VA answers, she should use the company name, follow the same local script, and make a warm transfer, never a cold handoff. I'd track answered by a person within 20 seconds and callback within one hour. What share of your calls are existing customers versus new inquiries?

homeownership · Answer

I think the automation itself isn’t the problem. It’s when the customer has to fight through it to reach a person. A short menu and an easy option to speak with someone could keep the efficiency without losing the local business feel.

dpungitore · Answer

Thank you! &nbsp;Existing customers can be routed by caller ID straight to the right department in Dialpad, so they never hear a menu.&nbsp; --interesting, how would i set this up? There are so many different areas to set things in Dialpad. It gets lost. And I have found the customer service to be pretty awful.&nbsp;The rest are things we do, or at least they are instructed to do. Likely about 70% existing to 30% new inquiries.&nbsp;

amantiadigital · Answer

Two ways, one with no build and one with.

No build: give existing customers a different number. Put it on invoices, job confirmations and the techs' cards, and route that number straight to the service department with no menu. At 70/30 that takes the menu away from most of your calls this week.

With a build: Dialpad Workflows have an External API node, the data dip. On an inbound call it sends the caller's number out to an endpoint you control, the endpoint answers with which contact center to send them to, and they land there without hearing the menu. It's in Admin Settings under Workflows. The endpoint is the actual work. it checks the number against your customer list, Jobber or wherever it lives, and returns the department.

Neither one needs their support, which given what you said is probably the point.

With 70% existing I'd put the second number in first and do the lookup after.

Forum Discussion

>$3M companies - what do you use for a phone system?

4 Replies