Why Businesses Need IP Telephony

Research shows that 42% of customers won't return to a business due to poor call quality. Background noise, low volume, or call interruptions create negative first impressions. IP telephony — technology for making and receiving calls over the internet — enables businesses to reduce costs while maintaining high-quality communication. It also offers numerous opportunities to enhance customer interactions and streamline operations.

How IP Telephony Helps Businesses Save Costs

Cloud-based telephony significantly reduces implementation and operational costs. This is particularly valuable for new companies with limited resources and unstable revenue streams.

Implementation Cost Savings

Let's compare what's required to set up traditional telephony:

• Analog or digital telephone devices for making and receiving calls
• Running telephone lines to the office for voice signal transmission
• Installing and configuring on-premises PBX for managing internal and external calls and routing
• Office network infrastructure for telephone equipment

Traditional telephony implementation involves more than just purchasing physical equipment and installing telephone infrastructure. Technical maintenance and equipment upgrades also significantly impact budgets. The complexity and lengthy installation process prevent companies from operating quickly, resulting in lost revenue.

IP telephony implementation requires only:

• Stable internet connection for uninterrupted communication
• Computer or phone with headset for sales representative convenience
• Ringostat virtual PBX connection to unite all numbers into a single network, configure call handling scenarios, and access advanced features

Since data transmits over the internet, there's no need for telephone infrastructure or expensive equipment. Companies avoid spending resources on equipment repairs and replacements. Ringostat telephony's rapid deployment — completed within one business day — enables immediate operations without revenue loss.

Lower Call Costs

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a key protocol powering IP telephony. SIP numbers — virtual telephone numbers independent of physical telephone lines — enable calls through internet connections.

SIP numbers offer numerous advantages, particularly significant call cost savings for staff. Calls between SIP numbers within the same network are free. According to Gitnux research, large companies reduce call costs by 40% and save approximately $1,500 per employee annually after implementing cloud telephony.

IP Telephony Flexibility and Scalability for Any Business Size

IP telephony implementation avoids complex, expensive processes like installing telephone wiring. Any business can quickly scale workstations up or down based on needs. Companies experiencing seasonal fluctuations can promptly adjust staffing levels without unnecessary expenses. Growing small businesses can easily add new employees to their corporate network through IP telephony's scalability.

Remote Employee Integration and International Communications

Cloud telephony's flexibility enables workplace setup anywhere, regardless of office location. Businesses can hire staff globally, expanding their talent pool — particularly valuable for companies with complex or specialized products.

Ringostat Smart Phone app enables effective customer service from mobile devices. It processes all calls and messages from messengers and website chat in one unified interface, with access to real-time analytics. All data — call history, conversation duration, missed calls, etc. — saves automatically in Ringostat reports. This ensures supervisors can monitor remote specialists without concern.

International Communications

Virtual numbers reduce internal communication costs while increasing customer loyalty and expanding foreign market presence. They appear identical to regular numbers and come in these formats:

• Local city numbers
• Mobile numbers
• Toll-free 0-800 numbers

However, calling SIP numbers — including international calls — costs significantly less. For example, if your office is in Warsaw, but clients frequently call from Berlin, connecting a German SIP number allows German customers to pay local rates when calling your virtual number. Additionally, a telephone number with their country code builds trust and encourages calls.

Call Processing Automation and CRM Integration

McKinsey research shows employees can save up to 30% of their time by automating routine tasks like data entry and customer request processing. This allows focus on strategic growth and profit-generating activities. These IP telephony features automate call distribution and CRM data entry.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

When customers call companies, employees spend time determining call purposes, identifying appropriate departments or staff members, and transferring calls. This distracts sales representatives from priority tasks, reducing productivity.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) automatically distributes calls between departments or employees through this process:

1. IVR provides callers with department and employee lists plus corresponding numbers
2. Callers press the appropriate number on their keypad
3. Calls automatically redirect to the sales representative handling their specific issue
4. If callers make input errors or enter nothing, calls transfer to reception or duty staff

OptiFeed, which specializes in custom horse feed formulations and ready-made feed sales, handles hundreds of calls weekly. IVR implementation saves up to one hour of work time daily by automatically directing calls to responsible sales representatives.

CRM System Integration

Configuring IP telephony-CRM integration automates typical tasks.

When customers call or sales representatives make outbound calls, these events automatically record in CRM along with call status (answered or missed) to maintain complete customer interaction history.

CRM automatically creates contacts for first-time callers, generates deals, and attaches call recordings to customer profiles. For missed calls, it adds “Call back” tasks with deadlines.

IP Telephony Features for Improving Sales Efficiency

Ringostat IP telephony provides numerous features that prevent lost prospects and increase sales. Here are key examples: 

Flexible Routing Schemes

These routing scenarios determine call distribution order to specific sales representatives and departments. Here's one routing scheme example:

• Customer calls reach all specialists simultaneously
• The first available representative (not engaged in another conversation) answers
• If no one responds within 30 seconds, calls redirect to supervisors

This ensures quick customer-specialist connections, reducing wait times and improving service levels while preventing lost prospects during peak periods.

Call Queues

Call queues retain customers when all operators are busy. Instead of busy signals or “call back later” messages, customers hear their queue position and estimated wait time. This increases loyalty and reduces frustration from delayed responses.

When representatives become available, the next call in queue connects to them. Priority settings ensure important clients or partners receive responses first.

Voicemail

When customers contact during non-business hours, voicemail greets them and suggests leaving audio messages. Sales representatives listen to messages when business hours begin and return calls promptly. This prevents missed requests while informing specialists about customer interests immediately.

The tool can also provide useful information like business hours, physical store locations, etc.

How IP Telephony Improves Customer Service Quality

Research shows 80% of consumers prefer buying from companies offering personalized service, while 71% feel disappointed when businesses lack individual approaches. IP telephony-CRM integration automates workflows while enabling personalized customer communication:

• For returning customers, sales representatives see caller names before answering
• CRM automatically records call histories and order data that representatives use to understand customer preferences and behaviours

Configure “Smart Routing” to direct calls immediately to sales representatives who regularly contact specific customers. Specify in CRM which specialist is assigned to each customer. This ensures customers immediately reach representatives familiar with their needs and questions, while employees avoid time spent clarifying details.

You can also set up call forwarding to representatives' mobile phones, enabling customer contact anywhere, anytime. This is particularly useful when representatives need periodic warehouse visits or show real estate properties to customers.

Call Analytics and Sales Representative Performance Monitoring

Ringostat provides detailed call analytics for effective employee oversight, helping optimize sales department operations and improve customer service quality proactively.

“Real-time Employees” Report

Typically, supervisors discover customer service problems after they occur — when prospects have already formed negative brand opinions and switched to competitors. For example, due to long response times when insufficient active sales representatives handle call volumes.

Supervisors also struggle to monitor remote employee activities in real-time. For instance, instead of making outbound calls, representatives might incorrectly focus on receiving calls. This negatively impacts business revenue since specialists aren't performing assigned duties or generating new prospects.

Before considering hiring supervisors or terminating remote employees due to oversight concerns, consider this solution. Ringostat clients use the specialized “Real-time Employees” report for convenient real-time employee monitoring. It contains:

1. Current status of each employee: online, offline, on call, do not disturb
2. Time spent in each status
3. Total calls currently handled by sales representatives
4. Number of calls awaiting response, etc.

This data helps assess team workload and connect additional specialists promptly when active ones can't handle all calls. Management can also intercept calls before they become missed.

Additionally, this report tracks individual employee work activity with data for today, last 3 days, and last 7 days:

• Total received, made, and missed calls
• Visual diagrams of received, outgoing, and missed calls
• Time distribution diagrams across different statuses

This helps assess daily employee productivity. For example, if representatives frequently appear “Offline” when they should receive calls, this negatively affects entire department operations. Workload distributes among fewer sales representatives, reducing overall call handling capacity.

Employee Performance Report

This report enables quick assessment of individual sales representative productivity, containing this information about incoming and outgoing calls:

• Total quantity
• Number of unique and new calls
• Average wait time
• Total, average, and daily average conversation duration
• Duration of all conversations and unique conversations

Additionally, you can view separate statistics for incoming and outgoing calls, plus missed incoming call counts. This enables early detection when representatives aren't meeting call quotas or are conversely overloaded, affecting performance and call handling ability.

More information about this report and available filters can be found in this instruction.

Missed Unprocessed Calls Report

Every business — large, small, medium, established, or new — encounters missed calls. Various reasons cause this:

• Heavy sales representative workload
• Calls during non-business hours
• Customers avoiding IVR interaction
• Prospects getting distracted and ending calls, etc.

Missed calls don't necessarily harm businesses if you understand causes and quickly return calls. However, Jenne research shows 25% of calls average remain without company representative responses. This gives competitors opportunities to attract up to ¼ of your prospects.

For rapid identification of unreturned calls, Ringostat developed the missed unprocessed calls report. It contains two tabs:

1. Unprocessed missed calls. Lists of calls specialists haven't returned yet. Shows call timing, reasons for representative unavailability (e.g., “Outside business hours”), customer contact attempts, etc.
2. Processed calls. Similar to the previous tab, but includes additional data: call processing methods and which sales representatives spoke with customers.

This report benefits both supervisors and sales representatives. Representatives use it to track missed calls requiring immediate responses. Supervisors monitor missed call processing effectiveness. Additionally, consistently high missed call volumes may indicate departmental problems like uneven workload distribution, insufficient staffing, or missing business hours' information.

AI-Powered Speech Analytics from Ringostat

This modern tool optimizes customer service quality control by automatically converting conversation audio recordings to text, providing brief call summaries, and highlighting critical moments requiring attention. Below is practical experience using Ringostat's AI-powered speech analytics.

Hearing Center “Betterton” provides ENT services and helps select hearing aids. Daily, the company receives numerous calls from customers and their relatives for appointments and consultations. “Betterton” values its reputation, selecting only quality hearing aids. However, this means competing with stores offering cheaper, lower-quality devices. Customers often harm themselves by focusing on price rather than hearing impairment specifications.

Therefore, the hearing center requires sales representatives to follow conversation scripts and clearly communicate the necessity of diagnostics before device selection, plus quality hearing aid advantages. Thanks to Ringostat's AI, “Betterton” assessors' productivity increased. They now analyze more calls and promptly identify problems requiring quick responses. Additionally, they avoid analytics errors that occurred before implementing artificial intelligence.

Security and Data Protection in IP Telephony Systems

Information ranks among business's most valuable resources, requiring reliable protection. This applies to telephone conversations where confidential customer data, brand strategic plans, and other sensitive information may be discussed. If malicious actors intercept this information, companies may suffer direct financial losses plus serious reputational damage and legal consequences.

Statistics show over 2,200 cyberattacks occur worldwide daily — one attack every 39 seconds. Therefore, choosing IP telephony providers that protect data at the highest levels is crucial.

Ringostat is the first Ukrainian business communications platform receiving international information security standard ISO/IEC 27001:2022 of the latest version. This confirms the company implemented comprehensive protection systems at all levels: from technical aspects to staff training and physical security for preserving client data.

Choosing Ringostat provides convenient IP telephony with numerous features plus maximum communication protection. This preserves customer trust, prevents financial losses, and provides competitive advantages. In public procurement, ISO 27001 certification is frequently a participation requirement. Some companies only cooperate with maximally protected contractors to avoid confidential data leak concerns.

Main Challenges When Transitioning to IP Telephony and How to Overcome Them

During the transition to cloud telephony, businesses may encounter some problems. Let's examine the main ones and how to solve them.

1. Internet network quality. Cloud telephony requires internet speed of 64 Kbit per second to operate. But unstable internet connection can significantly worsen communication quality, manifesting in delays, sound distortions, or even call breaks. Therefore, it's necessary to communicate to all employees, including remote ones, the importance of using stable internet networks. Also, the Ringostat Smart Phone app allows joining conversations unnoticed by clients to check connection quality and how the employee communicates with potential buyers.
2. Lack of ready CRM integration. Ringostat offers over 30 ready solutions with popular systems. This guarantees more stable operation and quick connection setup. But if you don't see your CRM in the list of ready integrations, platform specialists will help set up a custom solution using Ringostat API & Webhooks extended functionality.
3. SIP number selection. To use all IP telephony capabilities, you need to switch to virtual numbers. But questions may arise about which ones to connect: city, mobile, or 0-800. Ringostat specialists will help select numbers that will meet company needs. Also, if the business doesn't know how and from whom to purchase SIP numbers, the platform can do this on their behalf.

Which Businesses Get the Most Benefit from IP Telephony Implementation?

Any business, regardless of size and activity, can benefit from using cloud telephony. It doesn't require significant expenses during implementation, helps save on call costs, and has wide functionality that's constantly supplemented with new capabilities. Let's examine several business types as examples and how IP telephony can help them.

1. Startup. This is a young, recently created company that entered the market with a new idea. It typically has a limited budget and lacks stable earnings. But this business needs to quickly occupy its niche before competitors do. Savings on IP telephony implementation and setup and using virtual numbers will allow preserving part of the budget. The company can direct saved funds to development. Thanks to telephony scalability, the startup can quickly increase the number of workstations depending on needs. Cloud solution flexibility allows hiring specialists from around the world to strengthen the team. This is especially relevant if the company's product or service is complex and requires special knowledge.
2. Large companies. Such businesses typically have problems with centralized data storage and control over all employees. Using IP telephony, the company can set up CRM system integration. Then all call information will automatically enter the system. Employees from any office or remote work can use it when needed, for example, to build personalized communication. Thanks to convenient reports with call data and AI-powered speech analytics from Ringostat, managers can monitor all employees regardless of their location.
3. E-commerce. Online stores often receive many calls, especially after launching advertising campaigns and promotions. Since e-commerce has high competition, managers must respond quickly and not leave missed calls unattended. IVR, call queues, and redirection schemes help handle large influxes of client calls. The missed unprocessed calls report allows identifying appeals requiring immediate callback.

Thus, IP telephony has become not just an alternative to traditional communication means but a necessary tool for effective communication with clients and partners. Thanks to its flexibility and scalability, it allows companies of any size to optimize costs, improve service quality, and ensure uninterrupted operation even in remote format.