When a customer calls your client or business, providing a seamless and personalized experience is critical. According to Forbes, 71% of consumers value a personal connection when interacting with a business.
Direct inward dialing helps your company or client enhance the customer service experience by allowing callers to reach the intended recipient from a straightforward phone number. The technology eliminates the need for a live receptionist, extensions, or automated answering system.
A cloud-based voice solution can help you unlock the potential of your business or client’s communications. You can implement direct inward dialing to help your business deliver convenient and responsive customer service. With APIs from a reliable partner, the solution is easy to implement and provides accessibility, streamlined communication, efficiency, and business continuity.
What Is DID?
Direct inward dialing (DID) is a communication technology that allows an organization to assign a virtual phone number to a department or individual. It lets callers bypass receptionists, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and extensions. DID makes it frustration free for callers to reach their intended recipient.
While DID was once a feature reserved for private branch exchange (PBX) systems, your client or company no longer needs a PBX to utilize DID. Cloud-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) solutions allow your business to implement DID virtually.
How Can You Implement DID for Your Business?
Cloud-based communication providers offer DID for easy implementation into a business phone system. You can choose DID phone numbers and assign them to users from an administrative portal by implementing a numbers API. A DID phone number allows inbound callers to reach a department or individual directly, improving the speed and convenience of calling the business. A cloud-based communication partner that owns a vast quantity of DID numbers will ensure your company or client can have a DID number for each employee or department phone.
Related: Inbound DIDs: Everything You Need To Know
DID can also be bolstered by your communication partner’s reliability and scalability. When DID is combined with resilient features like dynamic call routing and physical failover, delivery of inbound calls can be guaranteed. It makes scaling the business simple while maintaining fast call times with shorter queues. Not to mention, it can be a cost-effective solution compared to hiring a live receptionist to answer calls and transfer them to various recipients.
What Are the Benefits of DID?
The primary benefit of DID is providing callers with an immediate connection to the business. Callers won’t have to navigate an IVR or speak with a receptionist to reach their desired department or individual.
According to Forbes, consumers are willing to spend nearly 20% more with businesses that provide immediate service. DID helps your company or client offer immediate assistance to callers, improving the customer service experience to generate and maintain customer loyalty. DID can also deliver the following benefits.
Improved Accessibility
Implementing DID into your company or client’s business phone system enhances the accessibility of calling. Customers can reach the exact department or individual by dialing the direct phone number without extensions, IVRs, or receptionists.
Consumers appreciate the streamlined process and more personalized approach to calling the business, reaching their intended recipient quickly and conveniently. For example, if your company or client offers support in another language, such as Spanish, callers can dial a DID number to reach a Spanish-speaking representative without navigating an IVR to choose their native language.
Streamlined Communication
Along with improved accessibility, DID offers a streamlined calling experience. Callers will no longer need to wade through an IVR system, remember an extension, or wait for a live receptionist to transfer them to another department or individual. DID provides direct access to the intended recipient, even if they are working outside of the office, using remote call forwarding to their device.
In today’s fast-paced environment, consumers demand immediate solutions. DID enables your client or company to provide quick service to callers, making reaching the individual or department immediate. It also lets internal employees collaborate and communicate with departments and teams quickly and seamlessly.
Increased Efficiency
Implementing DID can be cost and time efficient. Your company or business can gain a direct calling solution without expensive PBX systems, IVRs, or in-house receptionists. It quickly connects callers to the organization, demonstrating that the company values their time and business. Callers won’t have to wait very long in queues and will experience seamless calling when reaching out.
Business Continuity
In addition to being an efficient, accessible, and streamlined solution, DID can also be a major component of your client or organization’s disaster recovery plan. As mentioned above, DID can be combined with dynamic call routing and physical failover features to maintain communication during a disruption. When there is a network outage or interruption, your business or client can still receive calls to DID phone numbers.
If the workforce needs to remain offsite due to an emergency like a natural disaster, inbound calls to DID phone numbers can be routed to a phone or device in a remote location. Features like remote call forwarding provide seamless routing of calls to the intended recipient’s device, including a mobile phone. It ensures that callers reach the right person even when the user is offsite, thus providing business continuity.
What Are the Advantages of DID Compared to Other Solutions?
Implementing DID into your client or company’s business phone system provides several benefits. It can provide a more efficient and convenient solution than other options for answering calls. DID delivers the following advantages over solutions like IVRs, live receptionists, and extensions.
DID vs. IVR
An IVR can be a cost-effective solution for businesses with high call volumes. It’s an automated system that answers phone calls and provides callers with several prompts, allowing them to perform simple transactions, retrieve information, and transfer to a live representative. For instance, an IVR can provide store hours to a caller, update the caller on an order status, or transfer the caller to customer support when asking more complex questions.
While intuitive IVRs can be helpful, consumers would often rather speak with a live representative when calling a business and may be frustrated by complex IVR systems. Implementing DID ensures callers get the seamless and convenient solution they are looking for when they contact the organization.
DID vs. Live Receptionists
Employing live receptionists can provide a good calling experience and ensure callers are not frustrated by an IVR or extensions. However, hiring and retaining staff to answer the phone can be costly and inefficient. DID provides callers with the fast and personalized experience they expect, seamlessly directing the caller to the correct recipient. DID allows callers to reach an individual 24/7, as long as the recipient is available.
DID vs. Extensions
While extensions allow a caller to reach a number quickly, it can be challenging for customers to remember or note the extension before calling. It requires more effort from the customer, which is not how most businesses build a good reputation. Extensions are less accessible and convenient than DID. When a caller uses a DID phone number, they only need to remember (or simply look up) the phone number to reach their intended department.
Choosing a Cloud-Based Voice Partner for Implementing DID
When selecting a voice communication provider to implement DID into your business or client’s phone system, consider whether the partner offers the reliability and scalability your organization requires. The cloud is inherently scalable, allowing your company or client to dynamically increase and decrease its calling capacity without investing in onsite infrastructure or hardware. Look for a communication partner who provides scalability with a flexible metered pricing structure.
Related: Custom Voice Solutions: The Role of Voice API for Developers
Reliability is a primary concern to ensure your company or client’s inbound calls are delivered without fail. Select a voice partner that offers dynamic call routing, load balancing, and physical failover to maintain seamless voice communication.
As a developer, implementing a voice solution with DID is simple when your communication partner provides a numbers API. An application programming interface, or API, eliminates the need to code from scratch and test your build. Instead, just insert the API into existing systems using only a few lines of code.
Be sure the API provider offers documentation, such as software development kits (SDKs), code examples, and quickstarts in your preferred programming language to make implementing and configuring the phone numbers solution straightforward.
Deliver Fast and Efficient Calling with DID
DID allows your company or client to provide fast and efficient customer service. Callers will reach their intended recipient without frustration in a seamless connection. Flowroute can deliver DID with the reliability of our HyperNetwork™, exceeding 99.999%. Our 24/7 uptime guarantees delivery of inbound calls to your DIDs. You can implement VoIP or SIP calling to deliver scalability and cost-effective calling to your client or organization. Get started with a reliable DID solution from Flowroute.
xt
