Is it Time for a New Business Phone System?

Businesses of all sizes rely on communication efficiency for their survival. Companies need to effectively keep in touch with clients, suppliers, and colleagues, among others. If you cannot maintain proper communication in today's competitive market, your reputation and overall business success will suffer. If your business phone system isn’t keeping up with your growth or doesn’t offer as many features as you would like, it may be time for an upgrade. With so many preferred methods of communication including IM, email, SMS and social media, it can be hard to tell if your system is up to par. Here are a few signs it is time for a new business phone system and good reasons to consider an upgrade to a cloud-based unified communications systems:

Does Your Business Phone System Currently Support More Than One Location?

The days of businesses growing by adding new offices and locations with their own autonomous phone systems are dwindling. It is becoming increasingly less efficient to have separate traditional phone systems for each business location, as well as less cost effective. Your business phone system should be scalable to support new users as needed. It makes more sense for companies to use a cloud-hosted service to support multiple office locations. Connecting multiple locations with a traditional premise based system is certianly possible but the implementation of an MPLS network can be extremely costly. It also makes sense as more and more employees are working from home and telecommuting. Companies can allow more flexibility for employees and teams do not have to be in the same building anymore to effectively collaborate. Businesses will save money on a cloud-based solution by consolidating all phone systems under one VoIP service provider. Your phone system should also be able to support conference calls, video calls, mobility and other basic business phone features.

Are You Experiencing Too Much Call Volume?

A business telephone system needs to have the ability to manage incoming calls. When a customer calls your business that is potential revenue. Missing calls can be costly especially is your spending marketing dollars to get potential cusotmers to call you. Only 2 out of 10 people will call back a company that didn't answer their first call, prior to doing business with them. This means you have just lost 8 potential customers. If the phone system you are using can't support an increase in incoming calls and some are slipping through the cracks with callers receiving a busy signal, it is time to upgrade. As a business grows, it can expect more incoming and outgoing calls, and your system has to able to handle the volume. Customers do not like calling a business and getting a busy signal and it looks very unprofessional. Onsite systems need to have an appropriate amount of lines or trunks coming in to support call growth, which means your paying for lines plugged into your system that you are only using a small percent of the time. When you look at a hosted VoIP system for example the carrier can provide flexibility and as many channels as you need. If you don't have enough staff to handle all the calls live you can queue calls in the cloud on the carrier platform and they will be answered when someone is available. 

Do you Have a Disaster Recovery Plan?

In the event of a disaster such as catastrophic weather or a blackout, your phone system needs to be able to reroute calls to your employees' mobile devices or home phones. Otherwise, you won't be able to receive customer calls. It is important that your business can still talk to customers so they don't receive the annoying busy signal. Upgrading your phone system to a cloud-based system will offer a business continuity plan so you will never be out of touch, no matter what the circumstances are. There are also options to record all calls, in case you need to refer back to a conversation or conference at a later date. Take hurricane Sandy for example, buildings have no power the city is closed down but customers with a hosted VoIP system were still receiving calls or at least their customers were getting an auto attendant or voicemail. A disaster plan is something you should consider when you consider a new phone system. how inportant are the customers calling into your company? 

If you have any questions regarding upgrading your business's current phone system read out whitepaper on disaster recovery. If you have specific questions you can always give us a call 866-280-5300.