Virtual phone systems—or voice over internet protocol (VoIP) software—offer an alternative to the traditional desk phone that can limit your flexibility. Also called cloud phones, VoIP platforms are phone systems that only need an internet connection to allow you to receive and make calls from a desktop, laptop, or mobile phone. 

Many VoIP platforms also allow you to do much more than make phone calls and include features like customer relationship management (CRM) software, phone recording, SMS messaging, and more. If it sounds like the future of the business phone, that's because it is.

But if you've decided to use VoIP software to help you manage your business communications, how do you make sure it plays nicely with your other critical business apps? We've laid out a few ways to take your virtual phone system to the next level with automation.

Quickly respond to new leads

Wake up in the middle of the night worried about which customers might have fallen through the cracks? Following up with new leads is vital to business growth, and if you don't cultivate leads promptly, you could lose business. 

Take the stress out of lead cultivation and automate the process. By creating automatic workflows, you can connect your VoIP software to your lead generation tool, allowing you to quickly respond to new leads.

Manage your support requests

It's just a regular Tuesday morning, but then you look at your support inbox, and it's got more messages than you ever imagined possible. Fortunately, you set up a Zap to automatically respond to support tickets from your VoIP platform, so all your customers have already received an email from you ensuring that you've heard their call.

By connecting your virtual phone system and customer support management tool, you can automatically follow up with your customers so that they have a great support experience. Plus, you can ensure that support tickets and calls get tracked so nothing falls through the cracks. 

Stay up to date on everything

All you did was take off a few hours on Friday afternoon, but somehow you still feel like you missed so much. Unfortunately, the fear of missing something important can put a drag on the time you take off from work—but no more. 

Stay up to date on everything by connecting your communication or task management tool of choice with your VoIP platform. That way, you can stay informed on what's happening and what needs to get done all in one place. 

Create and update contacts

Calls are coming in non-stop, and you can't keep track of all the new contacts. It's a great problem to have—people want what you've got—but a problem nonetheless. If you can't keep track of the new contacts, you will miss out on the growth opportunities. 

Keep track of all the calls coming into your virtual phone system by minimizing your manual tasks and creating a workflow that automatically creates or updates a contact in your CRM (and vice versa). That way, you can focus on the client conversations instead of stressing about who might be slipping through the cracks.

Smoothly add your virtual phone system to your tech stack

VoIP software is a powerful way to take your business phone to the next level. With Zapier, you can automate repetitive tasks so that you can focus on the more important things—like meaningful conversations with your customers.