It might be a peculiar sounding acronym, but VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has opened to the door to small and growing businesses the world over. For those unfamiliar with the industry, VoIP is a communications system which runs your phone system through the Internet. Because of the competition in the growing market at the moment and the fact that less hardware is usually required, many businesses (large and small) find that VoIP services more flexible and feature-rich than traditional land line providers.
Expansion And Change Is Easier
It should be obvious, but growing start-ups and small businesses experience incredible amounts of change in short amounts of time. You can imagine the hassle and cost when they’re trying to supply new computers, desks, chairs, training, and then throwing wiring, new phone jacks, and hardware into the mix makes for even more logistical headaches.
While VoIP has its own restrictions with bandwidth that you have to account for and pay for if you need more, itâs much easier and cheaper to expand when looking at online resources rather than relying on transmission towers.
Efficient Sales Staff
A strong sales team is important when trying to grow a business as client retention or product sales pushes you beyond the black. That being said, VoIP makes it easier for your sales team to do their job from anywhere rather than needing to be in the office 24/7 on their telephone. Extra services that many hosted VoIP providers feature include features like call forwarding to mobile phones, voicemail to email transcriptions or forwarding, and the ability to access one phone number across multiple devices, thanks to cloud technology. These types of services help to keep leads from falling through the cracks and your sales team working efficiently.
Quality Control and Training
Efficiency drops when growing businesses continue to make new hires since veterans have to devote time to training and monitoring work quality. You can get off to a faster start with training your sales, marketing, customer service reps, or any other position that will be on the phone regularly with VoIP features that allow supervisors to discreetly listen in on customer calls, and even whisper functions that allow one way communication from the supervisor to the trainee during a live call with a customer without the customer ever knowing.
This provides real time coaching and training opportunities rather than retroactive attempts to fix and explain mistakes. This tactic speeds up training and gets new employees contributing faster, which saves business money and other resources.
Nobody’s Perfect
VoIP isn’t a cure all for every business out there and it has its own set of pitfalls. Since it relies entirely on your internet connection being active, any hiccup can have drastic consequences across the floor with phone communications being shut down entirely. This can be circumvented to an extent with hosted servers sending calls to mobiles or emails if the internet fails which can save clients or leads from getting spurned entirely.
Of course as high speed broadband connections become the norm rather than the exception these kinds of drops will become less common and major drops in service are already a rarity in most populated areas. While it may not be a perfect fit for every business, choosing a business VoIP service should be strongly considered for any growing business that is looking to enhance their business phone system.
Demetrius Turner is the self-proclaimed king of billiards in Nashville, TN. Through helping out with his brother’s small business ventures, and being a techie, Demetrius has become an expert on choosing VoIP services, internet storage options, and other cloud-based applications. When he is not sinking shots and calling pockets, Demetrius can usually be found reading various tech and business blogs at his laptop.
