When your phone system goes down, it’s an issue. Productivity halts, your clients and customers can’t get a hold of you, and you lose revenue. But when your phone system works perfectly fine, doesn’t go down very often, and has few issues – it’s hard to make a decision to change it. After all, if it isn’t broken – don’t fix it, right? As we continue to innovate technology in businesses, we need to evaluate not only servers, workstation and networks, but phone systems as well. It’s time that we asked for more from our phone providers than uptime.
Here are a few things that you should be demanding from business phone service this year:
Mobility.
In the age of new technology and innovation, you need a phone system that travels with you, not just one that forwards to your cell phone. While old analog and digital phone systems might do the trick, they lack the finesse that comes with Hybrid and Pure IP phone systems. Many of the companies offering VoIP solutions have an app that will allow you manage voicemail, set greetings, and make calls from your extension seamlessly from the road. This is extremely important, particularly for businesses that have remote employees or employees that work from the road. Rather than making calls from their personal phone number, they can make calls from company phone numbers within an app on their mobile device or tablet.
Better call quality.
Pure IP systems are a significantly less expensive solution, but are subject to a high quality network with certain configurations. If the ideal factors aren’t met, reception can be garbled and your employees and customers may have trouble with call quality. If you’re in an existing Pure IP system, but have poor call quality, it’s time to sit down with your IT provider and your phone company to help bring things together and negotiate the best route to better call quality.
Automatic routing.
Your phone system should be smart. It should be able to negotiate a certain basic set of instructions based on timing and route your calls appropriately. You should be able to get up from your desk and still be reached by your colleagues without having to dial your cell phone. When a holiday rolls around, you shouldn’t have to go back into the office or call into forward phones or set a greeting. In 2015 businesses need to demand smart phone systems that accommodate nuances of unique office environments without issue.
There’s a full list of features that we think that every office phone system should have, which is why we started offering a new solution for our clients. It’s time to do some digging – how is your phone system really servicing your needs? Is it doing more than helping you make calls? Take the time to explore what your options are you might find that a phone system can boost efficiency and add revenue for less expense.