Understanding virtual phone systems with Aircall

Ryan Jones
26 December 2019

Having a business phone used to mean getting an IT professional to come out and install an expensive PBX system with a bunch of confusing buttons. There’s a huge capital expense to set it all up, upwards of $10,000 in most cases.

Then you’d have to pay for alternative business numbers and program in extension codes for your staff or departments. Which are then too hard to change when employees leave. If there’s a power outage, you’re back to square one because no one has maintained the system, and no one knows how to program it.

To make matters worse, these days, we find clients who set these kinds of business phone systems up end up leaving them collecting dust on their desk. Staff are more mobile and prefer the flexibility and mobility of a mobile phone. They hand out their mobile number, often their personal number, and everyone calls that number instead.

This old model isn’t a responsible use of time and money, especially for small businesses. In a day and age where everyone has a smartphone in their back pockets, it doesn’t make sense to use clunky, immobile telephones for business calls.

So what do our clients tell us they need today in a phone solution? Some simple things:

A single phone number that can expand as their business grows, rather than everyone’s mobile number being the bottleneck.
The ability to answer calls to the business line on their mobile.
Call transfers between mobiles, so if a call goes through to one person, it can be transferred to another on any device.
Voicemail to email to make sure no calls fall through the cracks.
An end to the wasteful two phones scenario. No more work phone!

The solution to effective business communication here is a cloud PBX or hosted PBX phone system.

Introducing Aircall: The Cloud-Based Office Phone System

To solve this common pain point for our clients, we have partnered with Aircall as their first Australian partner.

Aircall is a convenient and affordable solution to the ‘game of phones’ that many businesses still consider “effective”.

Aircall is a cloud-based PBX phone system, which is the nerdy way of saying your old office phone system is now in the cloud instead. Instead of having a phone on your desk, Aircall’s cloud phone system allows you to make and receive calls on your mobile phone or on your computer.

The possibilities are endless with Aircall; there is a solution for every single phone call dilemma. They have flexible plans for all business needs, and the phone call software is straightforward to set up without employing the help of an IT guy. It’s a cloud-based phone system so you can access it no matter where you are or what device you have handy.

It is ideal for export businesses, with setup of overseas phone numbers fast and easy.

As a business owner, there is a lot of benefit in switching to Aircall but if you need convincing, read on.

Revolutionise Your Phone System

Aircall is built on the premise of fostering friendly relationships between callers, the business and its staff. You can have your team use it on their smartphones or their desktops, whichever suits them best!

Transferring inbound calls within your business is quick and easy with Aircall. You can save your users numbers under their names or departments in the app. Once you save any essential phone numbers in your virtual call centre, you can transfer calls anywhere - even across the globe!

When you need to pass a call along simply click transfer > the person’s name and the call will be transferred to them. Their mobile phone or computer will ring, depending on what they're logged into. You won’t keep people waiting or on hold until someone gets back to their desk to take a call. Your phone can come with you during your workday so you’ll never miss a beat.

Call routing allows you to assign certain types of calls to specific team members. You can customise your distribution and set ‘ring rules’. For example, client calls can be automatically assigned to their respective account manager.

Another helpful way to direct calls to the right person is through the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) smart directories. It’s the classic “press 1 for…” kind of prompt that you get from almost every service-based company, but it works. Plus, you can make it as dull or as fun as you want it to be!

Call conferencing is a great way to skyrocket your productivity. Instead of making a mental note to ask someone about that thing you talked about in that phone call, you can add them into the call with you. This is great for meetings as you can have up to 5 people on the call.

You can instantly create toll-free numbers with your local area or country code to keep your personal and business life separate. You don’t want to make the mistake of giving your personal number out to clients or staff, trust us!

When using Aircall, your incoming business calls will look different from your personal calls, so you can prioritise them. This also means that you can choose not to answer business calls outside of office hours instead of being deceived by unknown numbers. If you’re in a meeting or OOO and can’t take calls, set your Aircall to auto or unavailable.

Possibly the most helpful feature to help separate your home life from your work life is the set business hours on Aircall. You can set the available business hours in the app so that your phones close outside of 9-5 hours, for example.

Convinced yet?

In one last attempt to get you excited about Aircall, let’s talk integrations.

Integrations

Aircall integrates with almost all the best business based software available. For example, our Aircall is integrated with our Slack, so everyone can see when the phone lines are open, closed, and when calls have come in, in real-time. We also integrate Aircall with HubSpot to keep track of caller ID data during a call and save it to our client records.

Aircall CRM integrated phone system

Aircall can integrate with:

Your CRM software like HubSpot, Salesforce or Zoho to automatically record calls you’ve had with customers and prospects. No more manual call logging!
Your support platform like Zendesk or Freshdesk to automatically show history with a customer
Zapier, so you can integrate with other platforms as you need.
Shopify or BigCommerce to get order information about your customer in the Aircall app while you’re on the phone.
And many more.

Integrations are great for helping you streamline your communications and keeping staff accountable.

Replacing the work phone and saving on phone costs

The great thing about Aircall is that it merges the desk phone with the mobile phone, without giving away your mobile phone number. You can also control when it rings, so you only get work calls on your personal mobile in work hours.

With these great features, you can do away with expensive work mobile phones and phone systems.

Most people will hate carrying two phones. They do it so they can keep their work life separate from their personal life, or because employers want to keep ownership over their mobile number.

But these days most of us have a smartphone in our pocket, so buying each staff member a $100+/month work phone is redundant and wasteful. Add to that the cost of your phone system, which most of our clients put on finance with their telco, and you're spending $150+/month per staff member.

Aircall starts at just $45/month (US$30) per user, with no capital outlay. So for many of us, we could save $105/month, as well as having a more flexible phone solution. Savings that are hard to ignore!

Get Aircall setup with Refuel

Refuel Creative are Aircall Bronze Partners Refuel are Bronze Aircall partners. We use Aircall for our phone needs every day and love it enough that we lend our services to helping other businesses get involved.