13 Oct 2022 How cloud services improve business resilience
UK businesses have had to react to a lot in recent years. From the pandemic, to shipping delays to new economic challenges, it’s been an unpredictable few years. We’re sure we don’t need to explain that some businesses have reacted to these challenges better than others.
It’s shown that moving forward, we need to be better equipped to proactively prepare for future challenges. At One Connectivity we believe that being supported by the right technology is the best way for businesses to react quicker and more effectively.
Over the pandemic especially, cloud communications tools have shown themselves to be the standout way to achieve better business resilience. Today we’ll explain why.
Cloud is flexible
The main benefit that businesses have seen from switching their technology to the cloud is a new level of flexibility. Unlike phones that are installed and wired-up directly on your premises, you can feasibly take cloud-enabled handsets with you anywhere. We know that isn’t always feasible though, which is why you can access all the features of your cloud phone system through a softphone app.
A softphone is essentially a phone, as software. It’s an app you can install on your PC or Mac, which lets you make, receive and control calls without the need for any dedicated hardware or cabling infrastructure. It’s a tool that we’ve seen shoot up in popularity since the remote working revolution began.
Cloud enables business continuity
Business continuity is massively important. We saw it during the pandemic. If businesses can’t reliably keep running smoothly during difficult circumstances, it can have a hugely negative impact.
This is where the cloud comes into its own. If your office is inaccessible to one or more of your staff, they can still work at their best. All they need to do is login from anywhere with an internet connection, and they’ve got the same tools they’d have at the office.
Cloud phone systems let you access your communication and collaboration tools. If you integrate your phone system with your CRM, it lets you refer back to your customer details. And cloud computing services like Office 365 allow you to access and work on your files.
Over the past couple of years offices have been made inaccessible for a huge range of reasons. From pandemics to rail strikes, natural disasters or power outages, none should hold your business back. Employing cloud services gives you that extra layer of resilience.
The technology behind cloud resilience
Cloud services provide resilience, but how? It’s all based around data storage. With cloud, instead of storing your data onsite, where outages could make it inaccessible, it’s stored in a data centre.
These data centres are hosted in a different region to your business. This means that if there’s an outage in your local area, the data will be unaffected. This is a feature of cloud called geographic redundancy.
How cloud helps you to manage customer expectation
Resilience isn’t always about responding to disasters or outages. It’s also about your ability to react to the changing requirements of your customer base. Your communications must be resilient enough to always deliver a consistent customer experience. Traditional phone lines can be very costly to maintain or upscale, meaning that as your business grows, your customer experience may suffer as a result.
You can respond near instantly with cloud. Cloud systems scale alongside your business. As new team members join the business, you can add them to the phone system with a single click. Even home workers can be added instantly, allowing you easily scale your communications infrastructure to match business growth.
How cloud supports you during staff absences
One of the biggest ways to add extra resilience to your business is by removing organisational silos. Silos are when certain aspects of your operation can only be handled by one member of staff or a small group, and when they’re away, your business can suffer.
One common silo is in customer service, where if staff in a particular department are away, customer requests to that department can fall on deaf ears. Cloud services help you to counteract that using skill-based call routing.
Skill-based call routing is a feature means when customer calls arrive, they are directed to the member of staff with the skills best suited for the request. If that staff member is away or busy elsewhere, the call will then direct to the next most qualified person and so on. This means you can better respond to staff absences, as well as your busiest call times.
How One Connectivity can help
Cloud services have exploded in popularity across nearly every sector of the working world, and it’s easy to see why. Offering businesses a new level of flexibility and resilience has led to many teams being able to support more growth, and improved customer service. If you’d like to learn more about any of the features and services mentioned here, speak to One Connectivity at 0115 896 88 60.