5 Reasons Why You Need Call Screening

With the introduction of VoIP, many advanced calling features became common in the world of enterprise and personal telephony. Call screening not only provides a way for anyone to block unwanted calls and avoid getting disturbed via them, but it also presents many other benefits. Many top VoIP providers include call screening as a fundamental feature in all their solutions as it’s a very handy feature liked by most people. Normally when we talk about call screening we expect a scenario where a person blocks telemarketers or other unsolicited callers, but there are many reasons why a business should also go for a VoIP phone service that has call screening features. The aforementioned sentence might seem a bit hard to believe but as you read on, your suspicions will start to disappear. Here are only a few reasons why your business needs call screening:

Caller identification

It might seem counterintuitive to set up call screening if you already have caller-ID, but it’s anything but. Via a caller-id you might be able to identify the number from which the call is coming from, but with the usage of call screening, you are able to put your finger on the person who is calling. For example, one number is used by multiple users and you only want one of the users’ calls to be blocked or sent to voicemail. Via caller-ID this isn’t possible because you won’t be able to know what the calling person’s name is but if you set up call screening and pair it up with an auto-receptionist feature (which is part of all top VoIP solutions), you can make a user reveal their name and only pick up calls which are important to you. This is a particularly important feature because most of the time businesses don’t want to be disturbed by unknown numbers but there is a possibility that the unknown caller might be a prospect or a hot lead.

Reject calls for a specific period

There are times when a business expects an overwhelming amount of incoming calls from its customers or clients or vendors. Sometimes, during these situations, it is preferable to set up an automated response for all the calling parties. For example, if one of your product garnered a poor reputation and feedback from a vast majority of the customers and you are working on an update to fix some common issues, you might expect a lot of calls from angry customers. In chaotic times like these, you would want all hands on deck and hence can reject all such calls and instead play an automated response for the caller. Some VoIP companies also provide you with the ability to customize the message depending on the name of the caller.

Screen all the troublemakers

Businesses can also receive numerous calls that are being nothing but a hassle for them. Sometimes, you get hundreds, even thousands of calls every day from troublemakers or pranksters or adversaries or telemarketers who don’t have any good intentions for you. This is another situation where call screening can save the day for you. You can block an entire zip codes, area codes or localities depending on your need. If you are continuously receiving calls from different telemarketing firms then you can also use the auto-identification feature that automatically screens calls made from telemarketing numbers. This allows you to defeat the telemarketers by cutting off their only possible way of reaching you out and also helps you in enhancing levels of efficiency and productivity.

Send low-priority calls to voicemail

By being able to send calls to voicemail, you can save precious enterprise time. If you have been in the sales or marketing department for some time, you will know precisely how important prioritizing your calls and leads can be. All leads are important without any doubt but some are more important than most. For example, a lead A is very close to making a purchase but lead C and lead B are in the initial stages of the sales pipeline. If you have a really tight deadline to meet, you might want to send calls received from lead B and C to voicemail but you would want to have a way to know exactly when lead A calls so you can close the deal.

Accept or reject with one touch

Most of the top VoIP service providers allow you to decide what to do when receiving a screened call. You can either accept the call, reject it or let it go to voicemail. All of these actions can be performed via the single click of a button. You can also set call screening up such that you don’t get notified when a screened number calls, rejecting every received call.

Audio prompts

Your office can be a really busy place and sometimes you don’t even have time to get up from your seat or take your eyes off the computer screen and on to the phone’s display. This is where top VoIP solutions gain competitive advantages by providing call screening features with audio prompts. Whenever a screened call is received, the phone plays an audio which makes you aware of the person calling and the nature of the call. You can then decide whether the call or the person is important enough to disrupt your focus.

Very easy to integrate

Most of the top VoIP solutions allow you to integrate call screening within your communication ecosystem seamlessly. You can select the type or nature of calls that you want forwarded to smartphones or you can set workflows that allow you to receive voicemails from all screened calls on your email. This provides you with the desired flexibility and seamlessness.

Final Word

Modern businesses should harness the prowess of as many advanced calling features as possible to enhance productivity and efficiency and call screening is one of those features. By providing benefits like auto prompts, telemarketer screening and one-touch accept and reject, your workforce is able to save valuable time and keep their focus in times of mayhem.