3 Lesser-Known Reasons Why Hosted VoIP is Perfect for Small Businesses

You may be aware of some or all of the game-changing advantages of hosted VoIP for small business, such as: dramatic initial and ongoing cost savings, advanced features, seamless scalability, total mobility and more. Obviously, these are valuable benefits and help explain why hundreds of thousands of small businesses have already upgraded to a hosted VoIP phone system, and millions more are expected to join their ranks in the coming years. 

However, there are some relatively lesser-known advantages of hosted VoIP that are just as important to small businesses, and in some cases may ultimately turn out to be among the most vital and beneficial. These include:

1. Permanently Saying Goodbye to Bulky, Complex and Confusing Switches

For many small business owners – and especially their IT staff (which may be a single person or a very small team) – there is absolutely no love lost between them and their bulky, complex and confusing on-site PBX phone switch. The mess and maze of wires is virtually impenetrable to non-experts, which means that maintenance and fixes must be scheduled – which means costs and delays. This is particularly aggravating in some parts of the country where old technology and infrastructure is in place. Simply adding another line (let alone a handful or dozens) can require digging and laying cable.  

However, with a hosted VOIP phone system, there is no on-site PBX system at all. In fact, there is no on-site hardware, aside from managed routers and IP phones. Everything runs on the small business’s existing internet infrastructure, and the system is managed and housed off-site with a VoIP Solutions Provider.  

2. Business Continuity and 99.99% Uptime to Protect Reputations

One of the fundamental promises that small businesses make to their customers is that they can do just as good a job – if not in many cases, a better job – than large enterprises, but at a more competitive price position and with better quality, service and care. That’s the good part.

However, things can go very wrong in a hurry when customers – regardless of whether they are local, national or international – want to get in touch during regular business hours, and cannot get in touch with an employee (or call center agent or rep). This is not because the small business is not sufficiently staffed or customer-focused. Rather, it is because a local power outage can take their entire phone system offline. By the time the problem is fixed – even if it is a relatively short brownout – the reputational damage may be done, and the unhappy customer may head straight to a larger competitor who they (wrongly) believe is more capable and reliable.

With hosted VoIP, this scenario simply does not happen, because the system uses geographically dispersed cloud infrastructure to remain online even during the event of a local power outage. What’s more, calls can be easily routed to smartphones and/or to another location that is unaffected by the power outage. Customers, of course, do not experience anything different or unusual. 

3. Employees Take Advantage of More System Features

Walk into any business – small, mid-sized or large – and you will invariably find a small minority of “phone system super users” who understand all system features, while the vast majority may use a few familiar features – but be ignorant or oblivious of the full package that is available to them. This is a significant waste and loss for everyone: business owners and employees alike.

However, hosted VoIP phone systems are refreshingly user-friendly, since the technology is already integrated into platforms and tools they confidently use everyday, such as the web and their smartphone. They can also easily forward calls by clicking a button vs. trying to keep track of confusing codes, and take advantage of what many employees believe is the greatest invention in the history of business communication: voicemail-to-email.

Learn More

To discover all of the reasons why hosted VoIP is perfect for small business -- including some that you may not readily know, but are nevertheless important and valuable – contact the Votacall team today. Your consultation with us is free.

For more information on the truth behind myths about hosted VoIP phone systems, download our FREE eBook: