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How can a VoIP phone system help my business?
I run a small retail business, we don't have a huge call volume, but I was curious about how I can benefit from a VoIP phone system. Aside from the reduced costs, how can switching to VoIP help a small business?
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8 Answers
Productivity/Customer Satisfaction and Flexibility
A Hosted VoIP solution immediately gives you the flexibility to implement almost any business strategy without having to worry about the telecommunications aspect of the plan.
Productivity Example
For example, you can set up a call center made up entirely of home based users for a special promotion you are having over the weekend. If you had a Hosted VoIP system any of your employees that have an high speed connection at their homes could bring the IP Phone home from the office and plug it into their home network. The system would work as if they were sitting at their desk at the office.
Another Productivity Example
A satellite sales office would not need a receptionist as calls to the satellite office could be answered by a receptionist at the main office, or a separate and customize Auto-Attendant could be set up for that office.
Customer Satisfaction Example
There are a lot of examples of how a Hosted VoIP phone system can be used to improve Customer Satisfaction. Follow the sun is an example. A company could spread out its customer support personnel on both coasts. This not only increases a company's support hours, it also does this without incurring costly overtime.
Another Customer Satisfaction Example
The Auto-Attendant, a standard Hosted VoIP feature, allows you to direct calls to various departments in your organization 24/7. The Auto-Attendant can even handle overflow call that a receptionist is unable to get too.
Flexibility
Changes can be made to a Hosted VoIP system immediately. There is no longer a need to call a phone guy out to the office. If an employee leaves and another one takes that person's place, the phone can be changed over to the new employee immediately by the VoIP Provider, often using a web interface. You can even move that phone to a different location.
There is virtually an unlimited number of examples of how a VoIP phone system can help any size business.
If you run a small retail business, then I assume you don't have a lot of IT resources available. In that event, a hosted PBX system is much simpler to manage than an on-premise system. It's flexible, and most of the systems provide extensive feature sets. You can set up extensions and turn them on and off as you staff up and down. Plus you don't have to manage the infrastructure. But these systems are probably more expensive over time than an on-premise system, especially if you have resources to invest up front and access to capable IT resources who can install and manage an on-premise system.
Neal gives a good list of capabilities. Here are some that we use pretty routinely:
Call blast - when a call comes in on the VoIP line, it can be set to blast my cell, home, and office (SIP) phones so I can pick up anywhere.
Hunt - if the first extension does not pick up, the system can hunt and route the call to the next available rep.
Email notification - I get an email each time a call comes in - so if I miss it, I see who called immediately, even if I'm not looking at caller ID. Also, voice mails are emailed as a .wav file that I can play on my smartphone or computer. (I can also access them through the phone's voicemail)
Auto Attendant - allows us to promote the company and provide multiple routing options for callers - making us look bigger than we are.
Transfer - we can transfer callers to other phones or other extensions regardless of where we pick up the call.
Call lists - online and SIP phone access to detailed call lists (missed, received, placed)
Online configuration and provisioning - we can set up or remove extensions through an online interface. It takes only a few minutes to add or remove or re-route.
Call screening - the system can announce the caller (however, this makes for a longer wait on the caller's side)
Call from anywhere and look like you're in the office - When I'm travelling overseas, I use a free softphone on my laptop to place calls over the internet. It works just like when I'm home and calls to my home country are not charged long distance.
Multiple lines - all our phones are able to support 2 active calls simultaneously.
Direct dial phone numbers - we often provide unique phone numbers for specific client engagements. This is easy to set up, costs about $5 a month per number, and can be routed to one or more extensions or fit into our normal call setup. We're also able to provide each employee with a direct dial number instead of just using a central number with extensions.
Our system costs about $69 per line including all those features and unlimited local and long distance. If you have low call volume, you can use a metered plan that is lower cost. But that should give you a point of comparison.
How small is the business? How many phone sets? How many locations? Voice Mail? It matters.
IP Telephony (IPT) is the first step to merge your voice applications (Customer Service) with your data applications (Order Processing, Accounts Receivables, etc.)
Additionally, you may see call savings with SIP trunking or toll bypass, but that is very dependent on your business activities and your carrier. These savings may be insignificant after factoring in all costs.
Don’t assume lower costs for IPT. Remember that IPT still requires equipment (switch, telephones, soft phones, voice mail) with service contracts. It still requires telecommunications services with carriers. It depends on your situation.
It may not be worth it to swap your TDM phone system today, but at some time in the future, you may have no choice. So for new phone systems, an IPT system is recommended, but do you swap out your existing system? It depends. You have to do the work of figuring out initial cost, TCO and ROI.
Your business may be a candidate for a complete phone service from a provider (a.k.a. old-time Centrex).
I agree with Timothy - VoIP will probably lower your telecom costs - but it may not. Furthermore, the savings may only be nominal, so you need to be careful here.
Otherwise, as noted, there are lots of other ways VoIP can help your business. For SMBs, you'll probably get more choices with a hosted provider, but a premise-based system could well be a big step up from what you have now. The main benefit I see is the flexibility you didn't have before. This applies to both your employees and your IT, by the way. Both get flexibility in terms of using/deploying the service and that helps each become more productive. Explaining this further would require another post, but let's see what others say next.
Not knowing the size or current needs, if you have more than one locations, etc., all this is important in determining your current and future needs. In your case VoIP most likely will not be a benefit to your company. For VoIP you will need high speed reliable internet and some other equipment. There are other options to lower your monthly costs. Don't jump the gun and find out your on the wrong side of the barrow.
Some very good advice here. Good to hear reason. Please allow me to ask...
Why are you changing your telephone system to VoIP?
Please consider talking to a professional to avoid an unnecessary expense, either in just going to VoIP for Voice (not often a good choice) or in implementing it to meet your needs (highly involved and risk laden).
From what little I know about your business (a small retail business) I can suppose if you are not doing business on the web you don't need VoIP. Except, if you already have the infrastructure in place and would like to use something like Asterisk, which is free (but labor intensive) to save money. Your biggest expense here will be SIP phones ($20 to $200 each) and a generic PC ($200).
On the other hand, if you would like to augment your website with "click to call" (an icon which people can click on to call you immediately), or an IM client to funnel potential customers to your business, or any of a dozen very cool Internet features then you are indeed a candidate for VoIP. The cost will range from $5,000 to $50,000 to much more.
If yours is the latter case, shouldn't you really talk to a professional?
Communication is very important, not only in life but as well as in business. If you have good communication process everything can run smoothly. Prospect clients can be a loss if you have poor phone system.
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