How companies conduct business and communicate has drastically changed over the past decades. With new tech inventions continuously entering the market, brands can increase efficiency and savings. Since the mid-2000s, landline usage has declined every year with the advent of mobile phones and VoIP. This phone system continues to see growth and won’t slow down now, with remote work becoming more common.
Many growing businesses are realizing the benefits of making the switch to a VoIP solution. In this article, we dive into the advantages to help you learn more about this service and determine if it’s right for your business.
First, we are defining VoIP and describing how it works.
What Is VoIP?
The term “VoIP” might seem outlandish and for the tech-savvy. However, apps like Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and FaceTime all use VoIP to transmit voice calls.
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a phone system that delivers calls through the internet. With VoIP, data gets sent digitally using the IP data network instead of the traditional network of telephone wires and lines. For users, there’s no difference in the call experience.
How Does VoIP Work?
With the microphone and receiver, a VoIP phone converts sound into packets of data and transmits that through the internet to a VoIP provider. On the receiving end of a call, the phone decompresses the data and plays it for the person to hear. This all happens in milliseconds due to the fast cable or fiber broadband internet connections.
The 4 Key Benefits of VoIP
VoIP services can go beyond improving how your team communicates; there are many benefits to this digital phone system. Below we are listing four advantages of VoIP.
1. Cost Savings
According to Nextiva, switching to a VoIP solution can help businesses reduce phone bills by up to 60%. Compared to using a landline, VoIP has lower setup fees, maintenance fees, and call charges. Traditional business phones require copper wiring and onsite installations. VoIP eliminates the need for extra hardware and wires, which reduces your overall equipment and labor costs.
By using the internet to transmit calls, VoIP makes long-distance and international calls cheaper. So, if your business has contacts across the US or does business overseas, you can enjoy VoIP’s lower call prices.
VoIP lets you leverage your internet service, so rather than keeping track of multiple plans and bills, you only need one network for voice and data services.
Smaller businesses that can’t justify a receptionist's salary can use a VoIP solution like an auto attendant or call answering service to minimize costs.
2. Flexibility and Remote Work
The most significant benefit after cost savings is that VoIP offers greater flexibility and portability.
There are two types of VoIP phones: hard phones and softphones. Hard phones are just like traditional phones that sit at your desk or in conference rooms and are used for direct calls, conference calls, and to access your voicemail. Softphones are virtual phones that you access through an app on computers, tablets, or smartphones.
Softphones can be used as a hard phone but come without the physical limitation of being in an office. Softphones help free up desk space, cut equipment expenses, increase portability, and allow your team to be constantly connected.
With an internet-based phone system, your team can make and receive calls from anywhere. VoIP works between desk phones and mobile devices, so you can stay connected while on business trips or when working remotely. The ease of remote work, thanks to VoIP, increases your team’s productivity and satisfaction by providing employees with another work option.
All that you and your employees need is an internet connection to access VoIP, and you can work on any device, anywhere, and at any time.
3. Higher Scalability
Scalability is another key advantage of switching to VoIP, especially for growing businesses. With VoIP, brands can adjust to their needs whether they are scaling up or down.
When you use VoIP, it’s easy to move or add phones to new locations. Businesses can order new phone numbers and assign them to departments and individuals as they expand. Overall, VoIP allows you to add more phones to the system to connect your business and your team through a private internal phone network.
With traditional phone services, adding new phones requires a technician to reprogram or install new cables, which costs more time and money. VoIP makes hiring seasonal employees and opening additional office locations more feasible for any business.
Also, if a company needs to scale down or change offices, deactivating and reassigning phone numbers is simple with VoIP services. So, as your company changes, so too can your VoIP system.
4. Quality of Voice and Connectivity
When VoIP service first came to market in the 1990s and early 2000s, the most apparent weakness was the poor call quality. Calls would drop unexpectedly, and the voice quality was terrible.
Today, as long as you pair VoIP with a reliable network and your bandwidth fits your business’ needs, you don’t need to worry about call quality. When your network is solid, you can guarantee that your calls will have high-quality sound and connectivity.
VoIP calls are now crisp and clear and free from calls sounding muffled. VoIP is unaffected by long-distance and international calls when both parties are using the digital phone system. You can make and receive multiple simultaneous calls without impacting the sound quality.
Noise-canceling microphones and advanced audio compression allow VoIP phones to reduce distractions such as echoes, delays, and background noise. This means meetings can go on with fewer interruptions and less frustration overall.
Additionally, some VoIP solutions can help you maintain business continuity by forwarding calls to a set number in case of emergency, such as a power outage.
Make the Right Call for Your Business
After reading through these VoIP benefits, it’s clear to see why most businesses switched. VoIP services help reduce your costs, make growing your business effortless, and increases your productivity.
Nicolet Tech will assist in setting up and maintaining your company’s VoIP Services. Our team of professionals can also analyze your business’ needs and recommend the best VoIP system for you. Contact our team today.
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