The previous year was a struggle for many businesses because of the need to switch to work-from-home policies. Even many businesses deemed “essential” considered their options to allow employees to work remotely. What this showed phone system providers like ours is that VoIP calling features for 2021 need to revolve around a remote-first attitude.
In short, we want to help businesses work from any location – whether all their employees work in the pajamas (from home, of course) or in more formal wear (at an office) or change their workspace from day to day.
What are the top VoIP features for 2021 that help make work more effective? Voice, video, and texting all have a role to play.
Top 2021 VoIP Voice Feature
We feel like Multiple Auto Attendants should take the top spot in this category. What makes Multiple Auto Attendants special is that every phone number on your plan can have its own call routing scheme.
Our regular Auto Attendant comes with every VirtualPBX Plan and can route calls to individuals and groups on their desk phones and personal smartphones. You can think of Multiple Auto Attendants as a duplication of the base-level attendant: any phone number can accepts calls through its own phone tree, and you can nest attendants, for instance, to handle multiple languages or distinct departments.
Multiple Auto Attendants in Remote Work
One use case for Multiple Auto Attendants in a remote work setting is to give all your sales persons their own direct (DID) phone numbers. Each person can record their own personal greeting, state their own working hours, and make it clear how to reach them either through continuing the phone call, perhaps stating their email address, or routing callers to their voicemail box.
Multiple Auto Attendants can also be used to bolster customer support, especially if part of your 2021 roadmap is to expand or better manage multi-lingual support tiers. With this feature you can have your primary phone number route normally to your main auto attendant and have its greeting simply ask callers to pick an option based on their language preference – maybe one option for English and a second for Spanish.
The choice here would route callers smoothly to a secondary attendant with its own greeting spoken in the customer’s chosen language. Furthermore, the routing scheme of each secondary attendant could be programmed to reach your employees’ phones at an office or at home so no employee will have trouble receiving the calls they mean to field.
Top 2021 Video Feature
Though we don’t want to be redundant with our names and titles here, the winner of the VoIP calling feature for video is Video Conferencing. You can complete video calls between multiple users exactly like you would with audio-only calls.
Our Softphone App for mobile and desktop handles one-to-one video calls, conferences, and calls between video and non-video participants. You can also use select desk phones for this purpose.
Video Conferencing in Remote Work
Where Video Conferencing shines most is with internal collaboration. Your team members, no matter where they’re located, can conduct all their meetings in ways you may be used to with Zoom, Google Meet, Jitsi, and other video meeting tools.
The rise of these competitor tools and others, and the creation of our own Video Conferencing feature, shows that there is a high demand for visual calls in this growth of remote work. It also puts into perspective, however, the reality that working remotely can present challenges to individual employees regarding the lack of camaraderie found in traditional offices. Video helps to bring people closer together.
We support conferences with groups as large as 100 members. Both the audio and video in your streams will be high-definition, and because Video Conferencing is offered in select Unlimited Minutes Plan, there’s no cap for how many minutes you can spend each month in your calls.
Top 2021 Texting Feature
We were so excited this past year to have released our Business SMS feature. It has been widely accepted and celebrated by many of our customers.
Business SMS gives you the ability to send and receive messages with customers and co-workers from your desk phones and from the VirtualPBX Softphone.
Business SMS in Remote Work
Business SMS makes a home for itself in both internal and external communications. You can use it to communicate with team members and just as easily reach out to customers.
Remote teams may find it useful for sending short status messages to team leads and other associates. A quick “heading to lunch” is often all that’s necessary to alert a team to your status. Let Video Conferencing work for longer meetings, and have Business SMS fill the gaps in between.
Meanwhile, communication with customers can take place through SMS for similar purposes. We like this VoIP feature for 2021 because it fits well with the culture. Many business leaders are open to communicating through short messages to arrange appointments and check product statuses. Your remote employees, whether they’re in a sales or customer service department, will have an easy time addressing these situations from their devices in an office or at home.
Getting Started With Your 2021 VoIP Features
We’ve built our Business Phone Plans to include features that cater to the needs of businesses of all sizes. Check out our Plan Comparison to see what features are offered alongside the audio, video, and texting options listed above. You’re bound to find something that fits your remote organization well.
