Filipino tech firm targets hidden business losses from unanswered calls

MANILA, Philippines – When people think about digital transformation, they rarely think about office telephones.

Over the past decade, businesses have steadily migrated email, accounting software, customer records, payroll, and collaboration tools to the cloud. Consumers, meanwhile, have largely abandoned landlines in favor of smartphones and messaging apps.

Yet one of the most customer-facing pieces of business infrastructure has remained surprisingly resistant to change: landline telephones.

Unlike email or productivity software, business telephone systems have long been tied to physical office infrastructure. Many companies invested heavily in private branch exchange (PBX) systems designed to last for years, leaving little incentive to replace hardware that still functioned, even as other workplace technologies rapidly moved online.

A PBX is a business telephone system that connects employees’ office phones while managing incoming and outgoing calls.

As a result, many Philippine businesses, continue to rely on legacy, copper cable systems connected to office desk phones.

That, however, is beginning to change with cloud-based telecom infrastructure.

Cloud-based PBX and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems have existed for years, but adoption accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic as companies scrambled to support employees working from home. Remote work and hybrid works setups continue to be a factor for its continued adoption nowadays.

The industry — UCaaS or Unified Communications as a Service — is expected to grow annually by 20% until 2030.

Unlike traditional PBX systems, cloud-based platforms allow employees to answer business calls from laptops, smartphones and tablets while integrating messaging, customer relationship management (CRM) software, analytics and, increasingly, artificial intelligence into a single communications platform.

Yet according to Filipino cloud communications provider Telavi, the pandemic didn’t create the need for modern business communications. It just exposed a problem that had already been there.

“The problem has been there long before the pandemic. The pandemic became the catalyst,” the company’s chief executive Erwin Co said during a media briefing. “We realized we needed to change the way things are done.”

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Changing workplaces, the cost of missed calls

The shift reflects changing customer expectations as much as changing workplaces. Businesses today are increasingly expected to remain reachable regardless of where employees are working.

That realization, the company argues, has exposed an overlooked business problem: the cost of unanswered phone calls.

According to analytics from organizations using Telavi’s communications platform, around 30% of incoming business calls go unanswered. While the figures are based on the company’s own customer data rather than an industry-wide study, Co said the pattern has appeared consistently across businesses using its services.

In one example shared during the briefing, the company estimated that a retailer receiving nearly 3,000 customer calls each month was unknowingly missing roughly P1 million in potential monthly sales because customers could not reach an employee.

Around 85% of people whose calls are unanswered never call again, said Co.

The problem, Co said, is often invisible.

Businesses know how many sales they make, but rarely know how many potential customers gave up after an unanswered call.

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you. But actually, it hurts,” the chief executive said, recalling how call analytics revealed opportunities businesses never knew they were losing.

One of their customers is the barbershop chain Bruno’s Barbers. Its marketing and communications manager Richard Domingo provided an endorsement of the service, saying their branches were “too busy to answer calls” and “were losing bookings and receiving negative feedback.” Adopting a service such as Telavi has improved their conversion rates, Domingo said.

Instead of routing incoming calls exclusively to desk phones inside an office, cloud-based systems allow calls to reach employees wherever they are — whether working from home, another branch or on the road. Calls can also be automatically redirected to another available employee if the intended recipient is unavailable, making it less likely that customer inquiries go unanswered.

Beyond mobility, cloud communications platforms also provide data that traditional phone systems often cannot easily capture, allowing businesses to monitor call volumes, response times and missed calls that previously went unnoticed.

Co claimed it has seen strong demand from retailers, hospitals, schools, logistics providers, banks and government agencies.

Artificial intelligence is becoming the next stage for these services as well, Co said.

Telavi recently introduced an AI-powered customer engagement platform that handles routine customer inquiries through messaging channels before transferring more complicated concerns to employees.

Founded in 2013, Telavi originally installed conventional on-premise PBX systems before pivoting to cloud communications in 2020 as businesses rapidly embraced remote work.

The company now says it serves more than 10,000 users across roughly 500 to 600 organizations, ranging from SMEs to banks, hospitals and government agencies. Telavi is partnered with PLDT, where their services can be acquired as part of a package for business lines.

While larger enterprises formed its initial customer base, Co said the company increasingly sees opportunities among smaller businesses that often lack dedicated communications infrastructure. – Rappler.com