It’s near impossible to run a legitimate office without a proper phone system. With advanced technology today, choosing a phone system can seem overwhelming at first. If you’re not familiar with the various phone systems, you might choose the wrong one.
Most business owners are comfortable with landlines, yet at the same time, they have heard of the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) systems that can significantly increase efficiency and do wonders more than a boring landline.
Today, we will look at the features and benefits of upgrading to a VoIP system and learn how to find the best phone system for your business.
Let’s dive right in!
VoIP vs. Landline: What’s the Difference?
There is an apparent difference between the VoIP phone system and your traditional landline or analog system.
A traditional landline is installed by the phone company using copper wiring, and the telephone poles are used to transmit the electrical pulses through the copper wire. This system is also known as Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS).
The regular phone lines can only travel where the phone company has trenched and laid the wires. Most anything like unfavorable weather or bad installation can interfere with transmissions.
Then you have VoIP that uses your current internet connection for your telephone calls. VoIP is a great way to advance your communication capabilities in your office and advance your company’s growth.
You can make your VoIP system as simple or robust as you would like because VoIP providers allow a tremendous amount of add-on services on top of your phone lines.
VoIP transmits data packets over to a VoIP provider who directs calls with extreme speed between the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
In terms of features, VoIP outperforms landlines all day long.
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Telephone Systems: Which One Is The Best?
There are three primary phone systems, including Analog, VoIP, and SIP Trunking. Today we are only focusing on the first two because they are typically the most common and VoIP seems to be the one businesses are trying to upgrade to first.
So let’s look at which phone system, either landline or VoIP, is best for your business.
VoIP Phone Systems
There are many reasons businesses want to upgrade to a VoIP phone system from a traditional landline. It’s a way to modernize your office environment and help accelerate your business to the next level.
VoIP Feature Examples:
You can have at least one hundred features with a VoIP phone system, depending on the provider you choose.
We can’t possibly discuss them all in this post today, but we can look at some of the most common features that businesses use and why they make the switch.
- Call Management – holding calls, blocking calls, forwarding calls.
- Auto Attendant – helps companies route calls to the right person.
- Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) will allow a business with a high call volume to automatically distribute those calls to the appropriate people.
- Busy Call Forwarding – this feature will send your calls to someone else if your line is active. This is great for smaller customer service centers that only have a few people handling inbound calls.
- Call Analytics – this is fantastic for improving the quality of your customer service centers. With call analytics, you can get reports on incoming and outgoing calls, the time of each call, etc.
- Call Forwarding– this is a common feature that is needed for most businesses and is available with VoIP systems.
- Call Hunting– this is a super-cool feature that allows an inbound call that was made to one number to be distributed out to various other phone lines.
- Call Masking – Just like it sounds, this technology can mask calls to that a different number comes up on the caller ID.
- Video Conference Capabilities
The above quick list is just an example of what a VoIP company can provide. You will need to check with a VoIP company to determine what features come with their system.
Benefits of VoIP
There are several benefits of using a VoIP phone system over a traditional landline system. It primarily comes down to the increased amount of features, unified communication, and lower cost.
Below are a few more benefits of VoIP phone systems over landlines:
- Extreme Reliability
- Better Flexibility
- Cheaper Service
- Better Features for Your Business
- Superior Sound Quality
- Quick Installation
Benefits of the Analog (Landline) Phone System
After seeing all the features and benefits of the VoIP phone system, you might still be wondering if keeping your current landline phones is better. Well, the answer is – it depends.
In order to make a VoIP system work, you need a reliable and robust internet connection. If you don’t have that, you are going to be in trouble.
So let’s look at some benefits of keeping your landline.
- The telephone companies have been building copper wire infrastructure for phone lines for 140 years. If all you need is a reliable phone system, you can’t beat a landline.
- In order to make a VoIP system work, you need a reliable and strong internet connection. If you don’t have that, you will be in trouble. With a landline, you don’t need to worry about any of that.
- If you have an office that news a landline to keep an active alarm, then you may need to keep your landline system running. VoIP codecs can interfere with the transmission of data on equipment, so it wouldn’t be suitable for your alarm system.
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Which Phone System is Right for Your Business?
Now that you know the features and benefits of VoIP versus a traditional landline, how do you determine what system is best for your business? Here are things to consider before deciding on the right system for you:
- What kind of budget does your company have?
- What are the needs of your business?
- Privacy requirements- You will need to determine how private you need your phone lines to be. For example, if you are thinking of a hosted VoIP system, you may need to share a server with other businesses.
- Do you have enough bandwidth to support a VoIP phone system?
- Is your internet connection speed fast enough?
- What features will you need to add to make the switch worth your while?
Conclusion
If you are considering a landline versus a VoIP system, use the above guide to come to the best conclusion for your business. The last thing you want to do is pay to get a phone system set up and then decide whether it’s too much or too little in terms of the features and benefits you need.
For more information on VoIP systems, please visit SE Telecom today.