"Click to Call": Integrate Your Website and Phone System
Whether you have an old or new phone system, you probably have a website. Wouldn't it be great to transform a website visitor into a telephone caller who can be instantly transferred to a "live" salesperson so you can capture that lead real time? In the telecom industry, we refer to this feature as "Click to Call."
Many large companies offer Click to Call on their websites today and there are plenty of expensive ways to make it happen. However, with Voice Over IP becoming more prevalent, there are finally more reasonably priced Click to Call options on the market. The best ones don't require you to change anything on your existing phone system.
For example, a manufacturer called VoSKY (www.vosky.com) has introduced a gateway product that uses low-cost Skype to connect your website to sales personnel. This product allows companies to connect existing phone systems to the Internet to optimize Skype for the business environment. If you're not familiar with Skype (www.skype.com), it's an Ebay acquired company that offers Internet calling. It started as a consumer service, but now offers business calling plans as low as $9.99 per month.
The VoSKY gateways (and those from other manufacturers) enable visitors to a company's website to place free Skype calls with the click of a web button. Your phone system can then route these calls to the appropriate extension or workgroup/queue so they can be answered on normal desktop handsets.
Click to Call can help increase online sales conversion rates by allowing customers to communicate with your personnel in real time. In addition, the same gateway devices can also be used to significantly reduce toll-free/800 phone number costs.
Especially if your business is website-intensive, a Click to Call application - costing under $5,000 - could quickly earn ROI by bringing you more qualified prospects that you may not otherwise be capturing.
