For smaller businesses, every penny they spend is crucial, so it’s vital that they get the best value from the goods and services they buy. When it comes to business phone systems, adopting VoIP rather than a more traditional approach can not only deliver savings, but it can also offer a better service. SMEs can now benefit from features that in the past may have been the preserve of larger businesses.
Choosing a VoIP wholesale carrier
One of the advantages of switching to VoIP is choice. There are a number of wholesale carriers that effectively act as intermediaries, passing calls on to traditional telecoms providers. The advantage here is flexibility, as they can re-route traffic dynamically to take advantage of the cheapest rates to any given destination.
Despite the fact that there has been huge growth in email, instant messaging and online chat services, many people prefer to pick up the phone when they need to contact a business. They want a personal touch and believe that a phone call is the best way of eliciting a response and getting issues resolved quickly.
Smaller businesses, in particular, often pride themselves on delivering a personal touch, but with a limited number of staff, providing a good service can become harder as the business grows. While larger enterprises can afford to have dedicated teams handling phone and other enquiries, smaller companies’ staff may have to balance this task with the demands of another role.
Here, VoIP systems can offer some key advantages. Because cloud-based systems give you sophisticated features such as automated menus, re-routing of calls, redirection to mobiles, voicemail and so forth, they can make your small business appear much larger. Not only that but they ensure that you can handle calls in the most efficient way, wherever your staff are located. This reduces the chance of calls being misdirected, or missed altogether and the consequent loss of business.
Mobile benefits
Increasingly, we rely on mobile phones to keep people in touch when they are out of the office. For a smaller business with staff out on the road or working from different locations, this can be an unwelcome cost. Mobile calling rates, even if you have a specific business plan, are not cheap and this can be a major cost for a smaller company. Here again, VoIP can help because you can take advantage of the phone’s internet connection – either on Wi-Fi or via the 3G/4G network – to reroute calls via VoIP.
This means that calls to a business number can follow people wherever they are, with no extra costs incurred for calling a mobile. It also means that employees can make calls from a mobile phone – even a personal BYOD mobile – that will appear to come from their office phone, thus giving a more professional appearance.
Any investment in business tools has to be able to justify itself, more so in a smaller company where budgets are limited, the benefits of VoIP are clear.
