With the ‘VOIP’ business phone service, your company acquires a much more professional and impressive tone – when customers call! What’s more, with it, not only do you manage to save more money on phone bills, but also increase employee productivity! If you are not familiar with the term – ‘VOIP’ – it stands for ‘Voice over Internet Protocol.’ Also known as –‘internet telephony’- VOIP provides your business with a phone service, that is not just more cost-effective, but also more versatile, flexible and feature rich.
“Voice over Internet Protocol, is a method for taking analog audio signals, like the kind you hear when you talk on the phone, and turning them into digital data that can be transmitted over the Internet,” informs HowStuffWorks on its website. Today, with high speed internet becoming cheaper, more and more companies are choosing VOIP instead of landlines as their preferred business phone service.
Benefits of Using VOIP as Your Business Phone Service
VOIP Is More Adaptable…
VOIP’s growing popularity as a business phone service can be attributed to varied factors, primary amongst which is, its adaptability. VOIP enables you to make calls in multiple ways and through multiple devices, ranging from the simple to the complex! The ATA or ‘analog telephone adaptor;’ IPPhones; Wi-Fi phones; and the Computer to Computer VOIP, are amongst these.
“VoIP can turn a standard Internet connection into a way to place free phone calls,” explains HowStuffWorks. With the result, your employees unrestricted by time and location, can use their computers and laptops to make two-way business calls and conference calls. Moreover, your employees can also continue working on multiple applications including the internet on their laptops, while making and receiving these calls. So in a sense, by making this possible – VOIP increases the mobility and productivity of your staff.
In this context, Nadeem Unuth an ICT enthusiast believes that – the fact that more than two people can communicate using VOIP at the same time; and, that the service requires ‘cheap user hardware and software,’ are major pluses of this business phone service.
VOIP Is More Feature Rich and Versatile
In addition to this, the fact that VOIP is a feature-rich business phone service, also works in its favor, feels Tech Republic. “Beyond options like voicemail, call waiting, toll free numbers, call forwarding, and remote operation, you’ll find a host of other features that can help your small business,” it informs.
Listing a number of fascinating features, it rues how most small businesses – miss out on benefiting from them. “Two features can help you train and monitor your employees’ on-phone performance: barge and whisper,” it informs. “Barge allows you to listen to a conversation between an employee and a client without interrupting. You can alert them — or decide not to. Whisper allows you to provide advice, tips, and information to your employees while they are on the phone with a client without the client being aware,” it elaborates, on this distinctive feature of the VOIP business phone service.
The ‘Door phone entry buzzer integration,’ which integrates an analog door phone and enables a two-way call with visitors before allowing them in,’ is another such feature. While, ‘Find me/follow me call routing;’ ‘Voicemail to email transcription;’ ‘Music on hold;’ ‘Bandwidth utilization and inbound/outbound call detail reports;’ ‘Call screening;’ ‘Coaching tools;’ ‘Auto attendant;’ and ‘Do not disturb;’ are some others that find mention on its website.
VOIP is Cheaper
However, what really tilts any debate in favor of the ‘VOIP’ business phone service, in Unuth’s opinion – are the savings involved! On a landline phone“…You actually pay for each minute you spend communicating on the phone. International calls are much more expensive. Since VoIP uses the Internet as backbone, the only cost you have when using it is the monthly Internet bill to your ISP,” he says. In his opinion, VOIP, can potentially save you up to 40 % on local calls, and up to 90 % on international calls. In fact, sometimes you can even access this business phone service at a minimal cost claims HowStuffWorks. “… by using some of the free VoIP software that is available to make Internet phone calls, you’re bypassing the phone company (and its charges) entirely,” it states.
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This article was written by Hugh Swift a management consultant, who believes that a business phone service can contribute to making your company more productive.