Category Archives: VOIP

Rise of VoIP

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Headset and VoIP system placed on an office desk showing virtual interface of futuristic symbols

Adapting a powerful development in the business world.

Do you need an updated phone solution? Well, VoIP is the new trend when it comes to making calls efficiently. Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is a phone solution that enables an organization to place and receive calls over the internet. VoIP is an alternative to the traditional phone line. Mobile VoIP is a part of the VoIP technology dealing with voice-oriented services via a mobile phone.

How Does VoIP Work?

With the increase of remote teams, a landline or desk phone is no longer efficient. Businesses are evolving to meet the requirements of staff members that work from home frequently. VoIP operates by transforming analog voice calls into digital data over private or public internet protocol (IP) networks. If you have internet access, you can make calls without the local phone service. You can use VoIP for services like instant messaging, video calls, and file sharing. Numerous VoIP applications are accessible as stand-alone products or bundled with well-known web browsers.

What Are the Benefits of Using VoIP Telephony Services?

1.    Cost Savings

Since VoIP telephony services use Internet Protocol to place calls, all communication data is converted into packets and sent over the IP network. The IP network used is your internet connection. This reduces the running costs by eradicating the need for numerous telephone lines. VoIP costs are your monthly charges from your Internet Service Provider. Moreover, multiple service providers provide inexpensive or free calls to specific areas.

2.    Call Center Benefits 

For organizations in the customer service center industry via the phone, VoIP is suited for the needs of a contact center of any capacity, from a handful of customer service representatives to hundreds of agents. With VoIP, contact care agents can operate 24/7, enjoying services such as;

Unified Communications (UC): Contact care representatives can communicate with clients through chat, email, and phone.
Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR): Customers can speak out their needs; your reps can do away with traditional old-school push-button phone tree and direct calls to the right specific person or department.

Monitoring and reporting: Most VoIP services for contact center solutions provide quick access to the metrics and oversight you require to make more innovative training and staffing decisions.

3.    Add-on Features

Hosted VoIP can scale to your needs. Your business may require some features to unlock efficient communication with your customers. VoIP can transform your business communication by offering add-on features such as call queues, voicemail to email, unified messaging, and custom caller ID.

4.    Reliability

VoIP telephony services are very reliable. VoIP has been built over many years, with applications like Face-Time and Skype leading the invention. VoIP has been adopted by numerous companies internationally and is advancing, making it a reliable telephony technology.

5.    Easy Management

Installation of a traditional phone system requires scheduling an appointment with a technician to install the kit and run the wiring for the phone system. It isn’t easy when you intend to make substantial modifications to your phone lines to meet the needs of your business. With VoIP, all you need are handsets that share similar wiring and switches to your Local Area Network. Getting your company connected to a VoIP service requires a minimum of internal skills and expertise.

6.    Productivity

A business can boost its productivity when using hosted VoIP since it helps unlock mobility. You and your staff members can easily access transcripts of voicemails through email, enabling you to satisfy customer needs instantly. You’ll deal with fewer missed calls and data integration, eradicating the risk of confusion.

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

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.