As in any forward-looking company, you and your employees communicate regularly with your partners, suppliers and customers to maintain a professional relationship and ensure their satisfaction. And there's a good chance that you use various types of communication technology to accomplish this task, mainly the telephone and e-mail.

Contrary to reports that phone calls are being abandoned in favor of chat, email and other means of communication, 92% of customer interactions still take place over the phone. This is particularly true for sales teams: one study found that it takes an average of eight calls to reach a potential customer, and that after that initial call, it takes another five follow-up calls to close a sale. This underlines the importance of telephone contact in the business world.

When it comes to telephony, your company has several options. One of them is the softphone. Let's take a closer look at softphone and the benefits this communications technology can offer.

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Softphone: what is it, how does it work and how is it different?

First of all, it's important to understand what a softphone is, and how it differs from a traditional desktop or cell phone.

You may be familiar with the term VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. Its complement, SIP or Session Initiation Protocol, is the protocol used to manage VoIP telephone calls. It enables data associated with Internet telephony to be correctly formatted, transmitted and received. Thanks to this protocol, SIP softphones can operate just like conventional telephones, enabling voice calls to be made from a computer.

To make calls, users need a software client, or application, that manages the user interface for SIP and VoIP phone calls. This is the softphone. The interfaces of these applications generally look very much like the phone application on your smartphone, and offer buttons for picking up and hanging up calls, as well as a telephone keypad. Users use a headset and microphone connected to their computer to talk, listen and easily use call functions.

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Softphone benefits

Now that we know what a softphone is and how it works, let's take a look at the benefits a VoIP phone system can deliver to your business. There are a number of reasons why many SMEs and large corporations are moving away from traditional phones in favor of SIP phones or more advanced softphone applications:

• Reduce clutter: 4.3 million people work outside the company, at least half the time. In most cases, the space dedicated to teleworking cannot accommodate a desk phone. A softphone frees up space while offering the same functionality as a traditional telephone.
• A mobile business line that's always accessible: a softphone also gives employees dedicated business phone lines. It enables teleworkers to use a dedicated business channel to make and take calls from their laptop or smartphone, just as they would with a desk phone. What's more, employees no longer need to communicate or use their personal phone number, ensuring greater security and peace of mind, not to mention cost savings, as employees don't have to use their own phone subscriptions to manage their business calls.
• Adaptive, easy-to-use user interface: a softphone like CounterPath's Bria works simultaneously on a laptop, smartphone or tablet. In addition to being easily accessible, the user interface is incredibly simple, user-friendly and intuitive. If you can use a cell phone, you can use a softphone! Best of all, CounterPath Bria softphones are customizable and offer a wide range of unified communications features when combined with CounterPath's collaboration solution.
• Secure communications: a product like Bria integrates firewall and encryption features to protect all voice and video calls, as well as server data. This enables employees in sensitive industries, subject to strict security guidelines, to use a softphone for their voice communications.

This is just a glimpse of the benefits a VoIP telephony system can bring to your business. Beyond providing a sense of professionalism through dedicated, accessible phone lines, and enriching the user experience with a familiar, intuitive interface, solutions like Bria can also integrate with Microsoft Office or Salesforce to build a fully unified communications system.

To find out more about the benefits of softphone and how Bria and Stretto can fit into your business, get in touch with one of our expert consultants at WCS Europe today.

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