Some small business owners who are experiencing success are leery to make an upgrade to new technology for fear that the disruption may be damaging. In the case of VOIP phone service though the convenience, reliability and potential savings make upgrading something that every business owner should consider.
You may be completely satisfied with
If you are hoping to maximize the success of your small business there is a good chance that you’ll need customers or clients that extend beyond your town, region or state. The problem for many small businesses lies in the fact that reaching out to these non local customers (and vendors) can be exceedingly expensive with traditional telephone service.
Frequent long distance calling can have a profound impact on what is likely to be an already reasonably high phone bill. With traditional phone service you probably pay extra for features like voicemail, caller ID, conference calling and an additional rate per minute for calls outside
Your current business phone system may allow your employees to provide the best possible service right now but what would happen if your small business began to grow? Is your current business phone system capable of growing right along with your expanding business? Your current provider will likely tell you that scaling up your service would be no issue at all, what they probably won’t tell you is that the scale up would require a substantial investment on your part.
Traditional land line business phone systems require a good deal of equipment in order to function. When you want to make changes, upgrades or additions to your current system
Your current business phone system may be reliable and have plenty of features that you feel your business can’t do without, but even the greatest traditional business phone systems have limitations. That crowded closet full of phone equipment nestled in some corner of your office, that your business phone service needs to function, allows you to only use within the office setting.
By switching your current business phone service to a much more convenient VOIP service you’ll be giving your most important form of communication portability. You can connect with your customers and vendors via your VOIP service from your office,
Your phone system is the most prominent line of communication you’ve got to your vendors and customers and, as such, it is an integral part of your business’ success. If you want to keep the customers that you have worked hard to attract you need a completely reliable mode of direct communication.
Fortunately you can easily offer the complete accessibility that your customers and prospect need without being at the mercy of traditional phone service providers. Traditional business phone service
Traditional business phone systems consist of a tremendous amount of complicated equipment tucked into a communications closet somewhere within your office. If you plan on making upgrades, additions or you just want to grow your business that equipment will likely have to undergo some serious changes that could take valuable time to implement. You are at the mercy of a field technician’s schedule every time a change or upgrade needs to be made to your equipment.
If you are looking for an easier, more efficient and more effective mode of phone communication
I decided to research Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone for my business. It felt like the industry had reached a point where voice quality, features and price made it a smart choice. I was also very frustrated about my phone bill from Verizon. They were charging me for calls to Annapolis and when I called to ask them about it they gave me some double-talk about Latas or Stratas. I told the operator to "get real". Do they really expect businesses to pay a premium for in-state calls? OK. We aren't in Maryland. But Annapolis is only 45 minutes away. I guess they feel like they might have an advantage with call quality or service. Or maybe they think people want to work with a big name company.
Well, I decided to call on my old friend, Allen Kadis of EMC. Allen has a lot of experience with VOIP and small businesses. He immediately recommended Vocalocity. So, I did some more research and they received good reviews for service and price. I also learned that there is a bit of a price war going on in the VOIP phone industry. It seems that there might be too many players for the market. And VOIP phone companies just handle the phone traffic and do not make their own phones. So, you buy industry standard phones and pick your carrier. It is a very competitive industry.
So, I chose Vocalocity and got my phones in the mail in about 2 days. I was very excited because I would have a phone that I could take anywhere and that had auto-attendant and other great business features. Actually, it seems to have all of the features of a standard business phone system. I plugged it in and it worked. I was very impressed. But then I started experiencing some problems with the service. I found that about 1 out of every 5 calls would lead to the caller not being able to hear my voice. So, I called in to Customer Service and was told that I might need an adjustment to my firewall settings.
The technician worked remotely and eventually gave up. She told me to get a technician on-site to make the changes. I called back a few days later and was told that my firewall was too old and would not work at all. So, I removed the firewall. Well, that just made my phone worse. That made it so that the phone once and disconnect. I called in again to Vocalocity and was told that my router was also too old and that it was incompatible with VOIP.
So, I ordered a new D-Link Router for $45 (including shipping) and plugged it in. That made my VOIP phone die. I had "No Service" on the phones. No dial tone. No ringing. Nothing. When I called into Customer Service they told me to get Verizon (my Internet Service Provide) to "bridge my router". So, I called Verizon and I spent about an hour working with them to change the settings in my modem and my new router. I was told by Vocalocity that this would be the last step. But after the bridging process I still had "No Service" on all of my phones. Grrrrrrr.
Now this was my 3rd day without a business phone. All of our calls were being forwarded to my cell phone. I called Customer Support and Jack Jackson spent about 45 minutes gettings the phones corrected to communicate with our new "bridged router". Jack was very helpful, knowledgeable and patient. And he got our phone system working.
The lesson I would like to share with you is this.
Switch to VOIP. You will save a lot of money and you will get MORE features than you have now. And the sound quality is excellent. But before committing to a VOIP phone system, make sure you tell them the make and model of your router, firewall and modem at your office. Otherwise, you might have 2 or 3 days of no office phone! The other consideration is to make sure that you have enough Internet speed. Check your speed at Speedtest.net. How much speed you will need will depend on the number of phones at your office.
I highly recommend Vocalocity. They ultimately did help me find and fix all of the problems. And I now have a really great VOIP phone system that is packed with lots of great business features. So, if you want to make the switch, give them a call at 1-877-862-2562 and tell them that Progressive Office referred them to you.
Feel free to comment or to contact us if you need help.
This is what the wall closet looked like at the new office at GovDelivery when we first got on-site. Our job was to add more cabling and to clean up the mess left behind by the previous tenant.
After photos of the new Cat5 network wiring system. We removed all of the phone blocks because the new phone system is VOIP and therefore runs on the Cat5 network cabling. Jonathan Banks took our Post Installation Survey and stated that he was "most satisfied "with our price.
Jonathan Banks of GovDelivery.com says "Progressive Office provided great communication and efficiency throughout the process."
