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Simple to set up. Easy to use. Powerful integrations.
Get startedRemote work has skyrocketed in recent years. What rose to popularity due to necessity during the Covid-19 pandemic has become a staple in the working lives of employees around the world—helping increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction, and cut down on commute times.
In fact, according to research from Stanford University, over 40% of workers are now either hybrid or entirely remote, and around 28% of all days worked are done so remotely.
However, remote teams require a different set of approaches and tools than those who are permanently based in the office. Whether it’s increasing sales close rates or accelerating time to resolution for support, technology is transforming how small and medium-sized businesses drive performance remotely. And, if you get the toolbox right, you can keep all customer-facing teams aligned, engaged, and able to drive impact, wherever they’re based.
Knowing where to start can be a challenge. With the rise of remote working being closely followed by an explosion in the number of tools available to businesses, it’s understandable that many don’t know where to begin.
Fear not—we’ve taken the sting out of the search process, with a one-stop shop for the top tools and apps you need to boost performance in remote and hybrid workforces.
Communication Tools
If there’s one thing you need to get right in a remote or hybrid team, it’s communication. When teams aren’t in a shared physical space, it’s even more important to ensure they can communicate seamlessly—both with their clients or customers and with each other. You can’t rely on the water cooler for information to be shared, and tools like email or traditional phones simply won’t keep up with the demands of today’s customer-facing teams.
Aircall
OK—we’re a little biased, but just ask our customers—Aircall is an essential business phone solution for remote or hybrid workforces. Designed for customer-facing teams, it’s entirely cloud-based, integrates seamlessly with critical business tools (including every tool in this article) and offers an array of features to streamline remote work.
Aircall also works on pretty much any device going, from iOS or Android mobiles to tablets, laptops, and desktop PCs, meaning remote teams don’t need any additional hardware to get up and running, and fast.
What’s more, using Aircall, you can set up new remote team members with a unique phone number in just a few clicks, making scaling a hybrid workforce a breeze.
And when it comes to keeping those teams and their customers connected, Aircall is unparalleled. From Call Routing to easily direct customers to the right representatives, to Warm Transfers that enable teams to quickly share context before transferring a call, its powerful set of features will boost performance whether workers are on the office floor or calling in from their spare room.
Intercom
With Intercom, support teams can centralize all of their phone, SMS, and chat communication in one platform for all team members, helping them to improve the customer experience. By integrating with Aircall, remote teams can streamline their support processes, ensure they always have the right information at hand, and ultimately solve customer issues faster.
Heymarket
Using Heymarket, wherever they are based, teams can easily communicate via SMS using existing Aircall phone numbers. On top of this, they can also create shared inboxes that everyone can access. Not only is this great for remote teams, but it’s great for the customers—who can prioritize channels they prefer, whether SMS, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, Line, or WhatsApp, without having to install a new app.
Collaboration Tools
Driving effective collaboration is essential in any dispersed team. You want to be able to keep your sales or support representatives connected, without overwhelming them with notifications—here are our top tools to do just that.
Slack
A productivity platform and collaboration tool, Slack organizes work into different channels based on teams or projects, making it easy to connect with the right people at the right time and find exactly what you need.
By integrating Slack with Aircall, your remote team can take the power of the channel a step further by responding to callers in real time, with alerts from the Aircall Bot sharing updates directly to the relevant Slack channel. For example, Aircall Bot on Slack can let you know when a call has ended, a contact is created, or when a user’s status is updated.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams helps remote and hybrid sales and support teams to connect with one another and share vital information. In combination with Aircall, these departments can even launch customer calls directly from the Teams interface, share contact details with one another in chats, and prevent missed calls or interruptions by syncing up availability. By doing so, remote workers are always kept in the loop on the latest details about both their coworkers and their clients—helping them to deliver consistent service and great work.
CRM Tools
CRM tools help your teams to keep track of essential customer information, like where they are in the sales pipeline or when their contracts are due for renewal. They’re key for remote teams like sales and support, who need to keep track of and act upon lots of customer insights.
HubSpot
HubSpot offers a simple yet powerful way for sales and support teams to keep track of their deals or customer challenges. It shows key information like who owns a deal, where it is in the pipeline, when it’s expected to close, and more. That makes it easy for reps to identify priorities and take the next steps to drive business results.
And, by integrating it with Aircall, those teams can streamline their call workflows—with the automatic logging of calls and SMS to HubSpot contacts, deals, and tickets, and the triggering of relevant workflows.
Monday.com
By using project management tool Monday.com, distributed teams can create workspaces and workflows that are suited to their needs. These can be set up by anyone—no coding or IT assistance is needed thanks to Monday.com’s intuitive interface.
By integrating it with Aircall, Monday.com can also sort all the information and data about calls that come in, enabling your remote teams to automate their workflows, personalize conversations, and accelerate productivity and performance while working from home.
Salesforce
With Salesforce, sales and service teams have a single shared view of their customer information, helping them to nurture relationships and improve experiences. With all information stored on the cloud, Salesforce can be easily accessed by remote teams, meaning wherever they are, they have the information they need at their fingertips.
What’s more, when used in conjunction with Aircall, sales and support teams can handle all their calls directly in the Salesforce platform—without needing to swap back and forth with their phone solution. That saves more time and ultimately means reps can invest their efforts in closing deals or solving customer challenges.
Secure Payments
Sales and support teams will often need to be able to take payments or deal with financial information when working with customers. To ensure they can do so securely, even when working remotely, they need to be armed with the right tools.
Voxpay
Voxpay offers an omnichannel solution—one that works with voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and more—for securing remote credit card payments. Customers are able to securely enter their payment card details using their phone’s keypad during interactions with agents. This means they’re not audible or visible to the agents themselves, so whether teams are in the office or at home, sensitive customer data remains safe.
Paytia
Paytia specializes in secure telephone-based payments. That’s made them a great match for Aircall, and by integrating the two, users can easily take payments during calls—without exposing customers to risks like fraud or card data theft. This comes from offering a secure virtual terminal that uses the telephone keypad to take information. Moreover, this streamlines compliance with security and data standards—so your business and your customers are protected.
Putting Together a Toolbox for Remote Work
Remote work offers a range of benefits to teams and businesses, from lower overheads on office space to greater work-life balance for employees. However, to be effective when logging on from the kitchen table, they need the best digital tools to keep them connected to coworkers and customers.
With Aircall as their complete business phone solution, alongside over 100+ integrations with other critical apps like CRM platforms and collaboration tools, your team will always be able to do their best work, regardless of where they are.
Ready to find out how Aircall can drive more impact for your remote or hybrid team? Book a demo today and speak to one of our experts today.
Published on July 13, 2023.
