Entrepreneurship in the Holistic Health Field: Branding and Business Communications
Telecommunication is playing a vital role in delivering long-term care to the global population. The holistic health care industry in particular can benefit from the new technologies available for business communications. If your business depends on active and constant communication with current and potential customers, there are two technologies – PBX and VoIP – that can help to ensure that your business grows and your customers are satisfied.
Growing Your Customer Base
PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange and is used in interconnecting telephone lines and extensions within a company or office. One alternative to having to buy or install PBX equipment is to utilize a hosted PBX which is typically provided by the telephone company, using equipment located in the premises of the telephone company’s exchange. In both cases, the system then links this network to the PSTN. The “Public Switched Telephone Network”, or PSTN is a circuit-switched telephone system that connects callers by establishing a dedicated connection between them for the duration of the phone call.
VoIP works differently from traditional telecommunication technologies. Unlike traditional phone calls, VoIP is known as “packet-switched” telephony. Rather than traveling across a dedicated connection, VoIP phone calls send voice information in countless individual packets across the Internet
Advantages of VoIP and Hosted PBX
The software application driven features of VoIP are its biggest advantage. Analog systems such as PBX do not offer users features such as call blast or simultaneous ringing. A VoIP phone, on the other hand, can be programmed to ring on a cell phone when an external call is received, but route to voicemail for other calls.
Another popular feature is receiving voicemail transcribed in an email or text message. Users can also video chat in VoIP in a softphone client on a desk or video phone without the need for a complex telepresence system. And, voice can be integrated with other business applications.
Traditional phone systems are limited by how many users they can handle as well as how many lines you have purchased from your local telephone provider. Virtual systems can expand and grow with your business as you need them to.
Case Study: Holistic Healthcare Services
With a staff of close to 40 employees, Holistic Healthcare Services – a direct to consumer provider of natural health products – was seeking to convert an old analog system to a web-centric VoIP system in order to cut costs significantly and add flexibility and robustness to their business communications infrastructure. After conducting research on the various options, Holistic Healthcare decided on a hosted VoIP system. Due to the number of staff and their growing business, Holistic Healthcare needed both new features such as immediate call recording and voicemail browsing and compatibility with older technology such as faxes.
“I found it funny that such an advanced system still allows for little quirks like that where you can print a document to fax,” reflected Holistic Healthcare’s chief technology officer, “but some of our business partners still use fax for invoicing so it was important to us.” The company has also set up call queues and facilitated ring groups based on a tier system to make sure calls get routed to the right people.
The company is currently using two call queues, and voicemail to email. The results have been astounding according to the companies CFO: cost savings of more than $25,000 a year, enhanced workflow and improved operations, and a sense of flexibility and security about their telecommunication system.