Despite email and chat becoming mainstream communication tools between staff, suppliers and customers the humble business telephone system remains vital. A phone call is often still the most efficient and direct way to make contact and the best way to ensure your communication is clear, understood and acted upon quickly.
Today businesses have a much wider range of choices when it to comes to implementing their business telephones; traditional PBX, mobile phones, on-premises VoIP systems and cloud hosted VoIP. Here at Caznet, we believe the cloud hosted VoIP business phone system is the best way to go for all organisations – large and small. Why?
1. Portability
Probably one of the most exciting features of cloud hosted VoIP is its portability. Unlike a traditional phone system which requires a PBX at your office, the handsets connected to a cloud hosted system only need an internet connection to get themselves up and running. Employees can have handsets in the office, at their home and on their smartphone – all connected to the same system at the same time. Calls can be made, received and routed in any way you like meaning a receptionist working from home can answer and transfer a call in the same way as sitting at your reception desk.
When it comes time to move to a new premise, simply pick up the handsets and plug them in at your new office. No need to have the PBX installed at the new address and your telephone numbers moved – just plug the handsets into your internet connection and you’re ready to go.
For staff on the go, a softphone extension can enable that person to access your office phone system from their mobile – make and receive calls in the same way as at their desk and calls can be transferred to them with ease. Perfect for a roaming sales agent!
It’s simply impossible to find a business phone system that can offer the same portability and flexibility as a cloud hosted VoIP system.
2. Lots of features
Traditional phone systems tend to have a limited number of features and call flow options. Some are simply not supported by standard hardware and others require additional licensing to be enabled.
A good quality cloud hosted VoIP system provides even a small business with access to the high end phone features that an enterprise would be used to – call queues, voicemail to email, IVR and so much more.
If you’re wondering what features might be available, check out our product page which has a comprehensive list: https://caznet.com.au/voip-business-phone/
3. Lower costs
Cloud hosted VoIP doesn’t rely on expensive PBX hardware (the type traditionally bolted to the wall in some corner of your office). There are also no physical phone lines or complex technologies like ISDN which need to be connected to your premises to plumb it all together and get phone calls flowing. All that’s needed is the handsets (which can be virtual such as a softphone installed on your PC or smartphone) and an internet connection.
Calls are often included in your monthly subscription fee, features such as additional hunt groups/IVRs/queues shouldn’t incur additional costs and free technical support is generally readily available from the provider.
Most customers can save up to 80% on their telephony costs by choosing a cloud hosted VoIP system over the alternatives.
4. Scalability
Adding an additional handset for a new staff member, some more telephone numbers or a few extras lines is quick and easy. You don’t need to buy bulk spare handsets up front (they can be sourced as needed) and more concurrent call capacity doesn’t require physical lines to be connected or slow to provision ISDN capacity orders from clunky and slow carriers like Telstra.
Most capacity upgrades can be implemented on the fly. The only delay if any is the time required to ship a new handset to you.
5. Business Continuity
Sometimes business isn’t as smooth as we’d like. Perhaps we can’t occupy our office due to fire, flood or bushfire. A great example we’re all familiar with in 2020 is needing to support our staff working from home during Coronavirus COVID-19 while still being able to interact with our customers and take calls.
Cloud hosted VoIP is the best possible solution for business continuity when it comes to your phone system. Staff can take handsets home and operate normally, calls can be diverted to mobiles and for multi-site systems calls can be overflowed to other offices. With exception of mobile diversions, which doesn’t work as well as we’d usually hope, there is no other solution which can support business continuity like a cloud hosted one.
These systems don’t rely on the hardware and internet in your office to keep running. So, if the powers out, the internet down or you’re all working from home it’s easy to simply pick up your handsets or softphones and its business as usual.
Caznet provides cloud hosted VoIP business phone systems providing rich features and powerful flexibility for the Adelaide small to medium business market and education.