Business Phone Systems: ROI Considerations
In fat times, concrete measurements of return on investment (ROI) can become an afterthought. Vague, trendy statements like “technology is the solution” are more than sufficient to justify business purchases of all kinds. Now, with unemployment heading towards 10 percent and business spending restrained, the boss wants to know not only how much a new technology is going to cost, but also exactly how it’s going to pay off.
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Here are a couple things to think about with regard to business phone system ROI.
Business Phone System ROI Derives, At Least Partly, From “The Intangibles”
It may sound like a cop-out, but it’s not: business phone system ROI metrics are, at least partly, about intangible things like time and professionalism.
Businesses, as they grow, face serious challenges when dealing with customer phone calls. When the company was small, customers got used to their phone calls being answered by the CEO. Then, slowly, customers got used to speaking with the CEO’s assistant. Then, even more slowly, customers learned to call the new Duluth office directly.
In particular, as office locations multiply, perhaps even including overseas installations, the time taken up by customer phone calls can become a big issue--not only for the company, but for the customer. If customers cannot get ahold of someone that can help them within a matter of minutes, customers may go somewhere else.
No doubt, multi-option phone systems ("Press one for sales, two for service...") can be annoying. But they can also be entirely necessary and tremendously efficient.
The second intangible part of business phone system ROI is professionalism. Small businesses especially suffer from perceptions of unprofessionalism related to their phone systems. Luckily, many of the impressive bells and whistles of advanced business phone systems--an 800 number, on hold muzak, unified voicemail--are quite affordable and can make a good impression on anyone who calls.
Business Phone System ROI as a Function of Improved, Increased Sales
To truly measure the ROI of a business phone system, it’s important to think about how a new phone system may help a sales department work more successfully.
For today’s “shop around” buyer, for example, the first phone call to a company often does not include a purchase order. Rather, the purpose of the call is to get some information, and perhaps get a price quote.
Because of this mentality among buyers, the sales departments of some companies waste a tremendous amount of time answering the same questions over and over again--from prospects who have no intention of ever buying anything!
Thus the rise and thus the greatness of phone systems that automatically dispense some of the more basic boilerplate information right up front, in the form of an automated voice. Customers that do want more information than that are then put through to a live salesperson, who can then do the profitable job of selling, rather than the unprofitable job of answering the same question over and over again.
Meanwhile, the rest of the sales department is calling out to prospects.
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