Is VoIP Useful for Small Businesses?

Most customers of today are not much interested in how big your business is, and they are not willing to compromise just because you have a small business. It’s fair to say that when it comes to customer service, customers just don’t care how big your company is, they want to be treated as though they’re very important, and as though your company has the means to satisfy them completely.

All this makes it very important that you make a good impression on any customers who are calling you for the first time. One of the best ways you can do that is to set up a modern, professional VoIP system to handle all your calls. By doing this, your company will appear to be larger and more professional than it might really be, and it will put you on par with some of the major corporations in your industry.

In addition to providing a cost-effective telephone service which is less expensive than traditional landlines, a VoIP system can provide your company with the most modern and advanced features in all of telephony.

What Exactly is VoIP?

The acronym VoIP stands for Voice over Internet protocol, and it refers to the transmission of voice or data packets over the Internet, generally by making use of a broadband connection. Traditional telephone systems all make use of a wire-based connection, which is usually copper wire.

One of the companies which early on saw the potential for VoIP was Skype, which is a company still in business today, and which is thriving because of its powerful offering of free voice and video calls over the Internet.

VoIP technology can be used in many different ways depending on where calls are made from, for instance at home, in a virtual office, or at work. The benefits which make VoIP technology so appealing are that it’s very low-cost and requires very little maintenance. There are also a number of advanced features available through VoIP technology which many businesses take advantage of to try and set themselves apart from competitors.

VoIP and Small Businesses

In addition to providing all the benefits that traditional telephone service included, VoIP also offers far more advanced features, which small businesses could not have afforded on traditional telephone networks. VoIP technology allows employees to be accessed from wherever they happen to be, as long as there is an available broadband connection.

This makes employees productive regardless of where they happen to be at the moment, even if they’re in transit to some remote destination. Many small business enjoy tremendous benefits from VoIP technology, especially simple advantages like the fact you’ll never miss a call again. Inbound calls can be routed quickly, efficiently, and automatically in your VoIP system to the correct person every single time. If that person is not available for some reason, VoIP systems are able to reroute calls to individuals on a priority list, until someone has been reached.

One of the best features about VoIP for small businesses is that all calls made between VoIP enabled devices are absolutely free of charge. Surprisingly, VoIP can actually have a bigger impact on the sales teams or the customer service department of a small company as opposed to a much larger corporation.

One example is having a virtual number, which provides a single phone number for your entire company, regardless of where company employees are physically located. This can give the impression of a much larger, geographically stationary organization. All of your inbound calls can be managed by IVR, which will route them all efficiently, and which will ensure that all calls are handled by one of your team members.

You can also set up customized Ring Groups, so that a group of employees can be consulted when the original called person is unavailable. A partial list of some of the other dynamic features in VoIP technology includes music on hold, queuing, video-conferencing, call recording, voicemail, audio conferencing, and time-based routing. All these features help to boost employee productivity, and to provide a better experience for customers when they call your company.

VoIP Saves Money

Small businesses can also take advantage of the fact that VoIP phones use software which can be downloaded to employees’ smart phones or computers, thus enabling calls to be made from those devices. Considering the fact that no hardware is required for your VoIP system, and that services are based in the cloud, it also does away with the need for any huge upfront investment, or in continuing maintenance.

Small businesses will also love the fact that there is a single small monthly bill to pay, and that when calls are necessary to non-VoIP lines, they will all cost a tiny fraction of what they would have cost using a traditional landline.

VoIP is Portable and Flexible

As long as there’s an Internet connection somewhere nearby, employees can make calls and receive them anywhere they happen to be, and with whatever device they have available. That makes colleagues and customers accessible at all times, and it guarantees that calls will never be missed.

In addition to this huge portability advantage, VoIP phone system was are also very flexible. By setting up some rules-based routing procedures, you can guarantee that all your customers or business partners will always reach someone after hours.

When it’s necessary to add on additional employees during times of business booms, adding new phone lines can be accomplished in mere minutes, whereas that would often take days and significant extra cost in a land line-based system. All things considered, small businesses can achieve tremendous advantages by using VoIP technology, and at a cost lower than most of them currently pay on their outdated traditional systems.