G Suite Benefits: Integrating Your Cloud Business Phone Service
Just as you might bundle your home and auto insurance to save money, businesses are integrating certain aspects of their infrastructure to save time. A great way to get started with integration is to marry your productivity platform to your communication services.
For many, this means finding ways to infuse phone calls and video chats with a bevy of G Suite benefits.
When Platforms Collide
You may ask yourself: "What is G Suite and what might it have to do with business calls?" Well, it goes well beyond some of the better known Google applications, such as Gmail and Google Docs. Once you give it a try, you'll never find yourself asking, "What is G Suite?" again!
G Suite is Google's suite of productivity applications and integrating it with your business phone system makes sense for a lot of reasons, especially if you already use a cloud-based communications service.
Once integrated, G Suite can enable time-saving and productivity-enhancing features such as:
- Full integration with all of G Suite's communications platforms, including Google Hangouts and Google Contacts, allowing you to effortlessly initiate calls, sync contacts, or schedule video or voice meetings using Google calendar.
- Keep better records and analyze reports by labeling and associating calls with a Google contact
Tight integration of the two allows you to communicate even more productively. Without it, you may be left juggling notes, documents, and applications while attempting to maintain your focus. Inevitably, something can fall through the cracks, leaving you to play catch-up — and potentially costing hefty amounts of time and money.
Say you're on a conference call with a mix of colleagues and clients. Some you know, others you're meeting for the first time. As luck would have it, you've been nominated as the honorary scribe. But you're dialing in from out of the office on your mobile device.
Typically, this would have you resorting to the old-fashioned pen and paper play, with the task of transcribing and attempting to remember important context at a later date. But this isn't so when you combine G Suite benefits with your business phone system.
In this scenario, you can take notes directly in Google Docs while including the contact information of everyone involved in the call. When you send out the meeting minutes at a later date, you can simply use the power of Google search in tandem with the benefits of call logging to bring up your notes, contacts, and any relevant attachments — all in one place. There's no need to waste time transcribing or searching your own memory.
Oh yeah, and all of this can come from the convenience of your smartphone if you're not at your desk.
Integrating your communication and productivity platforms — phone system and G Suite, in this case — is ultimately about improving convenience and saving time.
Sizing Up the Market: Maximizing G Suite Benefits
There are a few options for those looking to get started integrating G Suite with a business phone system. Some integrations rely on cookie-cutter functionality, while others offer a more in-depth integration. Basic G Suite functionality from most solutions includes the following:
- Incoming/outbound screen pops that display caller details from your Google Contacts
- Click-to-dial from Google Calendar meeting invites
Integrating with your phone system more tightly delivers even more of the benefits of G Suite, so you might want to look for a solution that offers enhanced capabilities, such as the following:
- Easily initiate calls from Gmail, Google Contacts, and Google Hangouts or any browser window with click-to-dial
- Automatically identify phone numbers associated with your Google Contacts
- Sync new contacts to your Google account and add missing information to your contact database
- Schedule and manage video and audio meetings easily on your Google Calendar with integrated Vonage conferencing and collaboration tools
- Easily schedule follow-up actions in Google Tasks or Google Calendar
- Automatically log all of your inbound and outbound calls. Label and associate calls in Gmail with a Google contact, date and time, duration, and add notes
- Use your Vonage Business phone number for calls from Google Hangouts
- Access one-click reporting on all your company's voice activities.
- Tag and label calls with notes, profiles, and contacts in Gmail
Integrating your communication and productivity platforms — phone system and G Suite, in this case — is ultimately about improving convenience and saving time. When your users have less infrastructure to juggle, they'll be able to better communicate effectively and perhaps, in turn, pass that improved experience on to the customer.
While some people might still be scratching their heads and wondering, "what is G Suite, anyway?" you'll already have left them in the dust and begun to enjoy greater productivity, improved organization, and better ease of reporting — and more time to do the things you really want to be doing, both at work and at home.
