Do you know why your business should consider switching to a VoIP phone system?
In any business, a critical part of operations is having a backup for everything – transaction records, employee records, computer data, and business phone services. Yes, even voicemail.
Reliable And Trusty
What can be more reliable and trustworthy is the good old dial tone that you hear first when you lift the receiver before dialing a number. Either you have a conversation or when the other party is not answering, you leave a voicemail then you hang up. And you leave it at that – simple, straightforward and unless you intentionally deleted the voicemail there’s little fear that the message will disappear mysteriously due to unstable email servers or over the top spam filters.
Phone Providers At Risk
But while people think that phone services are safe, phone providers know that they are not immune to disasters. Recall what happened during Hurricane Sandy – all phone lines went down and the affected areas were rendered disconnected. Communication became as difficult as the rescue efforts. The same vulnerability happens when a lineman wreaks havoc on your phone line unintentionally. Your business becomes practically “unreachable”.
Affected By Disasters And Natural Calamities
Given the reality that disasters and natural calamities can strike anytime, communications systems and services of businesses are at risk of over-extended downtime. Hence, it’s time for small and mid-sized businesses to consider another option, the VoIP phone service – the world of communications beyond the telephone company.
Advantages Of VoIP Phone System
VoIP phone systems are not like the rigid traditional phone services because VoIP offers:
- more flexibility
- cost-effective deployment options
- an incredible array of configurations that suit client-specific requirements service portability options that help businesses adapt to the system in less time
If you’re still undecided on whether to switch to a VoIP phone system, make the decision after reading the three reasons below:
Localized Communications
What if your business requires presence in multiple places? Are you going to install traditional phone lines at every site or location? This is the main disadvantage of traditional phone systems – being tied to location. With VoIP systems, you can take your office number and move from one location to the other. And because they’re tied to a location, when disaster and wild weather happens, your phone lines will be taken offline resulting in a communications crash.
You just need to be reminded about how Hurricane Sandy left customers without dial tone for weeks even if their offices were not as devastated. Many businesses can’t afford that because zero phone calls mean zero income. This is already a big reason to make the switch to a VoIP system.
Stay Connected During Disasters
During harsh weather conditions such as a huge storm or earthquake, businesses can take comfort that even if they are physically inoperable, customers’ phone calls will still go through a cloud-based VoIP system. Businesses are able to set communications strategies if bad weather is expected in the area.
You can make the necessary configurations to divert calls to the office to cell phones or home phones to allow you to receive calls. And what about the unpleasant out-of-service greetings you normally have to listen to whenever the phone line is unavailable? You can set routing and messaging options to replace those irritating out-of-service messages.
Quick Restoration After Downtime
Almost always, when something unexpected happens, communication lines are affected. In case of a fire, part of the firefighting procedure includes cutting the cables or wires in order to prevent further damage. What happens to your communications services?
At best, you can have the cabling re-installed in a day or two. Can your business afford to wait that long? Certainly not. Hence, a phone system that can function even in the worse conditions is definitely an advantage.
Have you reached a decision?
Article Sources:
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com
http://www.smh.com.au
http://www.nojitter.com
I’m pretty sure several executives at the Sony Corporation wished that VoIP and certain email addresses would erase more easily. That is assuming that the whole hacking scandal that took place late in 2014 was not a stunt on the part of Sony in order to reprise their attempt at censoring the internet. Do you recall the SOPA and PIPA bills that the major film production companies tried to lobby and pass on Capitol Hill? Thank goodness that major internet companies like Amazon protested by blacking out their sites all on the same day.
The more you know about your network, the better prepared you are to properly integrate VoIP. I have heard certain technicians say that you should conduct a site survey to review current WAN bandwidth levels, traffic flows, and existing switches for bottlenecks and choke points. Then, identify or determine specific needs through testing and modeling. I guess that is fundamental to setting up a network or a VoiP system in an office. I’ll leave that the network administrators.