While all businesses have cyclical ebbs and flows, seasonal businesses such as those in the tourism, hospitality, landscaping, gardening, home improvement, and recreation industries have lofty peaks — and deep valleys.
Indeed, for many seasonal businesses, 70% or more of their annual revenue rolls in during the spring and summer months. If they miss this window of opportunity, they’ll head into a long, painful winter filled with belt-tightening, deep budget cuts and layoffs, and in more severe cases, a sell-off or shut down.
To exploit their revenue potential, seasonal businesses typically go on a hiring blitz and onboard anywhere from a handful to hundreds of temporary new hires. That’s where a cloud telephone system enters the picture and makes a BIG difference. Here are the 3 key advantages:
1. Affordably and Immediately Assign Numbers
With a conventional landline telephone system, assigning unique phone numbers to new staff is very costly, and it’s also time-consuming since a technician often has to re-configure the on-premises PBX system. As a result, temporary hires often don’t get their own number.
However, with a cloud telephone system, all temporary hires can affordably and immediately get a unique number (or extension), and be more productive and efficient from day one.
2. Maximize Office Space
Conventional phone systems are fed by telephone lines coming through the wall. As such, temporary hires who need regular access to a phone are often crammed into small workspaces — because that’s where the outlets are.
A cloud telephone system doesn’t use 19th century telephone lines. It leverages the existing LAN (through desktops/laptops) or wi-fi network (through tablets/smartphones), which means that virtually any area of the office can become a functional, connected workspace.
3. Connect Distributed Workers
Many seasonal businesses temporarily hire remote workers to handle sales, support, administration, and other important functions. With a conventional phone system, these workers are on an island and disconnected from the main workforce — which leads to communication gaps and reduced performance.
With a cloud telephone system, all workers — permanent full-time and temporary remote alike — use the same platform to send/receive calls, share instant messages, hold conference calls, access group calendars, and more. It doesn’t matter if temporary hires are on the other side of the city, state, country, or world.
The Bottom Line
Seasonal businesses don’t just want to maximize revenue in the spring and summer: they need to in order to succeed in the short-term and survive in the long-term. A cloud telephone system is a valuable — and frankly, vital — solution that helps them “make hay while the sun shines!”