The Importance of a Modernized Phone System in Today's Business World

The importance of a modernized phone system should never be underestimated in today's business world. Lost calls due to insufficient lines and equipment can quickly turn into lost revenue for companies who do business over the phone. The industry term for a call terminated by the customer while waiting for a pick-up is an Abandoned Call.

Abandoned Calls are not only frustrating for the consumer, but also can have the effect of dissuading the customer from trying again at a later time. There are several options available for business who want to lower their Abandoned Call ratio. Automatic Call Sequencers and Automatic Call Distributors are devices which answer the calls as they come in. The Automatic Call Sequencers simply answer with a message indicating to the customer that they will be helped in the order the call was placed in the queue. The calls are then picked up by available customer service representatives who can see the order in which the calls arrived. Automatic Call Distributors are similar, but normally answer with a message and then route the call to an available customer service representative. While many businesses don't handle the volume of calls necessary to merit the use of these advanced devices, those that do find them to be invaluable tools for aiding in prompt customer interaction. For businesses whose lines are almost always busy and who are unsure of whether they are facilitating Abandoned Calls, a traffic study can be performed. A traffic study will determine the volume of calls missed due to an insufficient phone system and also provide information on outgoing calls as well. Many businesses are utilizing traffic studies to update their systems for maximum availability to their consumer base. Traffic studies are also utilized to predict the future traffic of a company's call volume so that proactive measures can be taken to ensure that future system needs will be met.