Category Archives: VOIP

A Practical Guide for VoIP vs Traditional Phones – Pt 2

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Businessman using a computer with VOIP video conferencing features to connect to his remote team members.

Connecting with your remote team members through video conference.

Welcome back for part two of our discussion on VoIP vs Traditional phones.  If you missed the first part, click here to catch up on the discussion started in last weeks segment.

Video Conferencing: Digital Only

Video conferencing, already popular, has seen a skyrocket in use during the last year of COVID remote work. It is also one of the things that traditional phones simply cannot do. Video conferencing is a digital-only feature that most VOIP packages are equipped with by default. Whether you are holding conferences with many remote team members or connecting with distant teams in other business locations, video conferencing is a great way to turn your phone system into a live digital meeting platform at the same time.

Flexibility: In-Office Only vs Any Device Anywhere

Of course, the biggest difference between traditional phones and VOIP is flexibility. Traditional phones are installed one office at a time by stringing physical wires from desk to desk. This requires your team to all be in one place, or for a new installation of traditional phones in every office location.

VoIP is not at all limited in this way. Because VoIP is a program that can be run on any connected computer or mobile device, it is ultimately location-flexible. Just as employees could answer their work number in the parking lot or lobby of your building (not just at their desk), they can also forward that number to the VoIP installation on their home laptop, personal cellphone, or to their desktop computer in another business location.

VoIP numbers and the unified network they create for a business are both device-flexible and location-flexible. This allows for remote team members, dispersed and traveling team members, and multi-location businesses within one business account and installation process.

Scalability: New Installation or New Accounts

VOIP is also considerably more scalable than traditional phones. To add a new member to a traditional phone system, you must wire a new desk. And to subtract a desk or team member is not an easy task. With VoIP, scaling is as easy as making a new employee account. You can give individual lines to all your summer interns and then put them away again when the interns go. You can expand your business with new team members and quickly connect them with their own business phone line or you can easily subtract a departed team member from your plan with no hassle or cables to consider.

Cost: Getting More for Less

Comparing the cost of traditional phone lines to VoIP business plans is often found comparable as an effect of the industry. However, as VoIP pulls further and further ahead of traditional phones, the value for that cost becomes less comparable. Get more features and more flexibility with VoIP business phone plans. In addition, the scalability makes it possible to fine-tune your phone costs based on your team size and communication needs.

Technology: Even Traditional Phone Companies are Making the Switch

One of the best arguments in this comparison is that traditional phone companies are also expanding into VoIP. This is not a matter of straight industry competition, even the traditionalists recognize that VoIP is the future and will eventually replace traditional business phones.

VOIP – The Modern Business Phone Solution

Comparing traditional phones to VoIP, the choice becomes clear. Even if you have moved into a building with a few handy phone lines still hanging around, there is no question that VOIP is the business phone solution of today and the future. From supporting remote workers in the same phone network to easy online dashboard management, traditional phones are steadily falling behind.

 

Making plans for your business phone system? Every modern business should consider the merits of VoIP whether you have old phone lines or would need new lines put in. To discuss the potential of VoIP for your company and team, contact us today! We look forward to working with you.

A Practical Guide for VoIP vs Traditional Phones – Pt 1

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Employee working in an office touching a phone's keypad to activate its VOIP features.

Offering a variety of features as compared to using traditional phones.

Business phones are a necessary part of running a modern enterprise. From startups to world-spanning corporations, every employee needs to be connected by phone and many operations require you to be on the same phone network as your team. Call management, call centers, conference meetings, and team intercoms all rely on a unified business phone system, overreaching the use of individual cellphones.

Whether you are starting a new business, opening a new location, or making your post-COVID comeback, the question of choosing the right business phone system is an important one. Should you choose traditional business phone installation or go for the latest in VOIP business phone plan?

Let’s dive into this question with an in-depth comparison between what VoIP has to offer versus the traditional business phone package.

Handsets: Choose Your Phone Interface

For most professionals, workflow is the biggest concern for work phones. If your team is used to traditional handsets or has trained on handsets to do their job, both traditional phones and VoIP offer access to the handset workflow. With traditional phones, handsets are your only option as the phone line cable plugs directly into the back of the handset base.

With VoIP, however, handsets are one of many options. You can choose the handset design you like best for your administration and call center teams, but not everyone needs a desk phone. In addition to handset plug-in, everyone else can rely on the headset, microphone, or even webcam arrangement they prefer instead of a traditional desktop handset.

Installation: Running Cable vs Software Install

Installation also poses an extreme difference between traditional phones and VoIP lines. With traditional phones, phone line must be run to every single desk and location where you need a phone to be located. Handsets are tethered by these lines, and the lines themselves must be threaded through floors, ceilings, columns, and cable runners to keep the workplace tidy.

Digital phones like VoIP require none of this hassle. Instead, the installation process is one of software. Once the VoIP program is installed onto a team member’s computer or mobile device, they will be connected to the shared company phone network and all the features available.

Audio Clarity: Lines and High-Speed Internet

Audio clarity in phone calls has always been determined by the quality of your connection. Traditional phones have a more guaranteed baseline quality because the sound is coming through a wire. VoIP audio quality is based on the speed of your internet and the efficiency of the software you choose. Decades ago, internet was slower, and so were internet phones. Now that information travels down fiber-optic cables at the speed of light, clarity on your business network is never an issue. For most businesses already situated with necessary high-speed internet, audio quality with VoIP is pristine and crisp, sometimes at higher quality than you could achieve running the sound through physical copper wires.

Business Phone Features: More is Better

Often, the biggest concern when transitioning to VoIP from traditional phones is the feature list. Businesses have no reason to be worried, as VoIP software aptly emulates every line-management, conference line, and phone center feature that businesses have come to rely on from their phone systems over the decades of traditional phone use.

In addition to the usual multi-line and pool features of business phones, VoIP offers a new variety of features that could only be available through software. These include transcription like voicemail-to-email and call transcription, whisper calls,  click-to-dial, on-screen dashboards, and multi-site unified networks are all exclusive to VoIP.  Not to mention advanced video conferencing platforms that go above and beyond anything a simple phone line can accomplish.

 

Five Clever Ways to Use VOIP Features in Your Workflow

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Employee using a company VOIP system while working on a laptop.

Using the features of VOIP for efficient workflow.

The rise of VOIP for business phones is undeniably one of the best things that has ever happened to online work. From those whose work is primarily communication to the casual connection between coworkers, VOIP streamlines keeping in touch professionally. You may already know that VOIP makes your work phone number available through any networked device like a computer, phone or tablet. You may be familiar with common corporate uses for VOIP like virtual call centers and connecting the home-office to the work-office with a cloud platform.

What not everyone knows are the cool ways an individual can use VOIP to make your workflow easier. VOIP comes with a list of features a mile long, most of which are designed to facilitate the communication needs of an entire business, large or small. However the perks VOIP creates for individuals are often overlooked. Check out some of the handy things you could be doing with VOIP to make each workday easier and more enjoyable.

Follow Me = “In Office” and Reachable from Any Location

Find-Me, Follow-Me has long been touted as one of the primary ways that VOIP makes life easier for individuals. Find-Me rings each device in sequence to help you answer work calls. But Follow-Me is designed to let you set your own schedule and indicate the device you are most likely to answer at given times during the day.

This means you can set yourself up to be “Found” in your work office, home office, field office or – more relevantly these days – in your home office, on your tablet while you lounge in the backyard, or on your cell while you take the dog for a walk. Set your schedule and use it to be “in office” even when you’re not in an office at all.

Instant Messaging = Take Live Meetings into Casual Chat

It has never been easier to switch back and forth between live phonecall meetings and chatting in messenger. In fact, many VOIP platforms make it possible to chat and talk in the same call, then continue the chat after the call ends. Instant messenger as part of your VOIP package makes it easier to keep in touch with coworkers, but it also makes extending a call’s conversation easier as well. You can go from a live conversation to asynchronous chat or from a verbal conversation to one more comfortably held in text.

Voicemail to Text = Never Have to Listen & Take Voicemail Notes Again

We know you hate calling your voicemail, listening closely and poised to take notes. No one likes having to replay a voicemail several times to try and decipher the important information mumbled into some distant phone. VOIP eliminates this hassle with Voicemail to Text. Just like call transcription, VOIP listens to your voicemails as they arrive and creates a handy transcript record sent to your email. Not only can you permanently forget to check your voicemail starting now, you also get a handy text version of each voicemail so there’s no longer any need to sit poised to take hastily scribbled notes on each voicemail content.

Push to Talk = Clear Audio and Office Privacy in One

Push-to-Talk is a setting in which you are muted by default in a call. Whether you are part of a meeting or a one-on-one phone call, push-to-talk means that all the little ambient noises in your office are not included in the meeting audio experience. Every scrape of your chair, barking dog, and exhalation can be excluded from the call. And when you’re ready to say your part, simply push the button to turn your mic temporarily back on for your turn.

Do Not Disturb = Stop Getting Calls When You’re Unavailable

Finally, never underestimate the power of a DND setting. Do Not Disturb takes the Follow-Me setting to a new level of privacy and work-life balance. DND will send your calls directly to a specific voicemail while you enjoy some much-needed sleep or family time where your work is unable to interrupt.

VOIP is a powerful development in the business world, gaining prominence as millions of teams go remote across the globe. Contact us today to further explore the potential of VOIP for your business, your team, or for personal use.

Consider Choosing VOIP for Your Call Center

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Team of diverse employees working for a call center company.

Using a reliable VoIP service for your call center business provides flexibility for your business

While recent years have seen various changes in the way call centers operate, many call centers continue to operate legacy landline phone systems. However, as the owner of a call center, there are many benefits that you stand to gain by upgrading to a modern voice over internet protocol (VoIP) phone system for your business. Not only do call center owners benefit from reduced costs with VoIP, but agents and customers alike will benefit from improved features and customer service. If your call center continues to rely on a landline phone system, here is a look at just a few of the reasons you should consider adopting VoIP.

Reduced Costs

One of the main reasons call center operators choose to adopt VoIP phone systems is that doing so can help to reduce costs. The fact is that call centers utilizing landline phone systems can be extremely expensive to set up and operate due to the cost of setting up lines, paying for equipment, and paying costly calling rates. Additionally, future upgrades and expansions can be costly with legacy phone systems should additional lines be needed. These costs can add up quickly and eat into your profits.

Alternatively, VoIP phone systems are known to be much cheaper to set up and maintain than legacy phone systems. By utilizing your existing internet network, it is easy (and cost-effective) to add additional lines when needed, as you will not need new infrastructure. Additionally, VoIP rates are much cheaper, which can help some call centers to save as much as 40% on operating costs.

Better Customer Service With Unified Communications

VoIP phone systems can also give you more ways to contact and connect with your customers with integrated unified communications. VoIP’s internet-based nature makes it easy to integrate email, instant messaging, SMS, and other web-based communication methods into your VoIP system, giving your employees more ways to connect with customers. This can improve customer satisfaction, as you will be providing customers with more ways to contact you should they feel more comfortable with alternative methods of communication.

Mobility

Another popular benefit of VoIP phone systems is that they are extremely mobile. In a business environment where it is becoming common for people to work from home, or on the go when traveling, it is important for call center employees to be able to stay connected. While landline phone numbers are tied to a given location, VoIP systems can be accessed anywhere the user has a stable internet connection. This gives you the flexibility to allow your employees to work from home, or you may even choose to hire remote employees from other regions who are more qualified for the job. VoIP phone systems can then bring a new level of flexibility to call centers.

Customization and Scalability 

One of the biggest problems with landline phone systems is that they are extremely difficult to scale. For growing call centers, adding additional lines is no simple task as new infrastructure will likely be needed. Alternatively, adding a new user with VoIP can be done at the touch of a button. This makes it simple for you to scale your call center up or down based on your current needs without any additional stress.

VoIP phone systems are not only easy to scale, but they can be customized in additional ways to meet your needs. From choosing customized hold music to adding additional auto attendants, you can fine-tune your VoIP phone service to meet your exact needs.

More call centers are ditching legacy phone systems in favor of VoIP due to the many benefits internet-based phone services can provide. Feel free to contact us to learn more about how your call center could benefit from adopting a VoIP phone service.