VoIP Phone Systems
Why you should make your company phone VoIP
Voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, technology allows individuals or companies to place phone calls over the Internet using their broadband connection. The main advantage of this practice is the incredible cost savings over traditional landline phone calling, which can cost businesses hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month.
FREE Price Quotes for VoIP Phone Systems
Fill out the short form to connect with qualified suppliers.
For individuals or households, a single VoIP Internet phone attached to the home computer, along with a reliable VoIP service provider, is all that’s needed to take advantage of these savings. For businesses, however, switching to VoIP technology is a bit more complicated. With multiple extensions usually requiring both internal and external calling capabilities, companies generally need an entire VoIP phone system. In addition, the mobile nature of some businesses may require specialized, portable VoIP technology, such as wireless VoIP phones or VoIP cell phones.
Why VoIP?
In addition to the cost savings that make VoIP phone service attractive for both home and office, VoIP phone systems offer several advantages of particular interest to business users.
Perhaps one of the biggest advantages, aside from affordability, is the VoIP system’s portability. With a VoIP phone system, you have the ability to set up an IP phone at any location—an employee’s home, a call center, a branch office—and have it routed through your central VoIP phone system. VoIP is also a scalable platform—all it takes to add a new extension is an IP phone and a few mouse clicks. Finally, VoIP phone systems can be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to increase efficiency and productivity.
Another advantage of VoIP, especially for sales businesses or call centers that need to track calling patterns, is the analytics and reporting features. You can see your entire system from anywhere there’s an Internet connection at just the touch of a button (or a few buttons).
What Should I Look for in a VoIP Phone System?
In order to take advantage of VoIP technology, you’ll want to make sure the VoIP system you choose has Web-based management and the reporting and analytics tools that are going to help you do business better. Other features to consider are call monitoring and call recording capabilities; direct inward dialing, or DID, which allows extensions to dial each other without dialing the outside number; standard calling features such as caller ID, call waiting, and call forwarding; conference calling functions; and, of course, voicemail. Many VoIP systems also deliver voice messages via e-mail.
If your business relies on faxes as part of its transactions, VoIP phone-fax combinations are available. Technically, VoIP fax machines are called FoIP: facsimile over Internet protocol.
Given that VoIP phones are dependent on Internet connections and that even the best, fastest connections occasionally get disrupted or altogether disconnected, a VoIP system that also has PSTN (Publicly Switched Telephone Network) capabilities will ensure that your office phones work no matter what. These hybrids can require a greater investment up front, but until VoIP and Internet technology improve to the point where disruptions are rare, you will likely find it worth the additional cost to have the PSTN backup mode.
