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VoIP phone service offers your business many features that can improve your communications experience.  If your hosted VoIP phone service provider suggests that all you need to do is plug your phones in and you’re in business, you are missing out on the opportunity to customize the service to advance your communications with your customers and employees.

Certainly, one of the great benefits of voice over the internet comes from the fact that your phones will register and download their configuration wherever your employees office, whether it be at the home or within the four walls of the office.  Many VoIP service providers offer the opportunity to save money on phone service and tout “plug and play” installation.  However, digitizing your phone service platform also provides your business the chance to program the set up.

• Customized Call Flow – Incoming calls to your business can be directed to multiple people, a single receptionist, a sequential series of people, or a combination of the above.  Automated attendants can be in place as a primary or backup service that can aid the incoming call efforts.
• Centralized Reception for all Branches – If your business operates at multiple locations, whether it be in the same town or across the country, you can centralize your reception efforts for incoming call activity and save resources.  Time of day routing can be in place if your business covers multiple time zones.  VoIP phones can have multiple main line appearances, so your reception function will know how to answer the call.
• Mobile or Virtual Employees – Your VoIP phone service can enable your remote or mobile employees to be more in touch with internal or external calls.  Phones can be deployed at the home or office, and every employee can be on an extension dial pattern regardless of location.  Employees can also have direct inward dial numbers (DIDs) and bypass the reception function as well.  Finally, their office phone can be forwarded or programmed with simultaneous ring to their cell phone so they can always be reachable when they are called.

These are just a few of the ways a VoIP service can be custom configured to enhance your business communication or be molded to conform to how you do business.  So, don’t settle for drop shippers wanting you to plug and play.  Make sure your potential VoIP provider can customize your service to meet your needs!

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments.   

In a week where Cisco announced the delivery of their 30 millionth VoIP phone, it is surprising to learn that only 13% of businesses have adopted a Hosted VoIP solution and small and medium business are unaware of the option to entertain a Hosted model.  

Industry research indicates that VoIP applications are the model of the present, as 79% of businesses will have a VoIP application in at least one location of their business by 2013.  Large enterprises are deploying VoIP at an accelerated pace.  With a Hosted VoIP model, small and medium businesses can enjoy all the benefits that larger enterprises enjoy without the purchase of expensive equipment on location.

The fundamental concept behind the hosted model is that your business is outsourcing the traditional PBX and the administration of it.  This significantly lessens the capital cost to deploy VoIP, as you will only need to purchase the IP Phones and some minor network equipment.  Hosted providers typically charge per user and incorporate all distance calling and system administration into their fee.  Thus, your business can vastly improve your communications with the features found in VoIP applications at an unexpectedly low entry price.

Some Hosted models can provide some unique approaches to disaster recovery and call quality assurance, further lessening the fear of change to routing your voice traffic over the internet.  Be sure to ask your potential provider how they address these situations.

The simple message is to not to fear the unknown!  Check out a hosted VoIP provider today!

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments.   

Many small to medium businesses have found that a Hosted VoIP Phone Service has improved their customer service.  Due to the fact that the entry cost of a hosted phone service platform is very low, these businesses have been able to take advantage of programmatic features that simply were not available through their previous analog phones or PBX.  A few of the specific features that have improved their customer service are as follows:

• Advanced Call Routing – Many businesses want their incoming phone calls answered by a person, and not via an auto attendant or receive a recording.  Digital VoIP platforms can create ring patterns where the phone can ring a primary, secondary, and additional groups of people to ensure that the call will be answered.  If there is a receptionist, the individual can also transfer a call into a ring group for a common function, giving multiple people the chance address a customer need.  Your hosted VoIP service provider should be able to consult with you on a variety of different ways your call flow can be programmed to best meet the needs of your customers and your business.

• Auto Attendant – Even if your company prefers a “live” answer, it is helpful to have an auto attendant serving as a back-up.  If your receptionist is juggling too many calls or secondary ring groups are unavailable or busy, and auto attendant can kick in and serve as a traffic cop.  Thus, the auto attendant can be deployed with an hours of operation message, with instructions to have the customer select certain departments (which would route to a ring group), corporate directories, and other customizable options.  Of course, this model, if well designed, can also sit on the front end for effective call routing and by-pass a reception function all together.

It is always recommended to have an auto attendant for after-hours routing.  You may have an emergency service line to have customers select.  Sometimes there are simply after-hours calls that can be routed via an extension dial or directory listing to an employee’s extension or voicemail. 

• Improved Access to Mobile Employees – Many businesses have sales associates, service personnel or other functions that are mobile and out of the office frequently.  Hosted VoIP service provides a number of options to meet the demands of your callers to these types of associates.  You could choose to have the employee’s office phone and cell phone ring simultaneously for calls made to the employee’s extension.  Of course, the office phone could be forwarded to the cell phone when the employee is out of the office.  Additionally, through unified communication features, remote employees can receive their voicemails to their email so they can be alerted to messages when received on their smart cell phone.  Faxes can be delivered to email as well, so the remote employee will know when that important fax came in.

Small and medium business can receive these advanced features and not have to invest in an expensive phone system.  Hosted providers basically provide the phone system via the internet and your digital office phones are literally connected to that phone system via the office LAN. 

Finally, with the entry costs being fairly low (price of phones and potentially some other minor connectivity equipment), users of a hosted VoIP phone service many times see lower monthly service fees when compared to their previous analog service.  So, these businesses experience low entry costs, monthly savings, AND an improvement in customer service.  Why not at least explore a hosted voip phone service for your business?

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

Many small businesses pay for each time they make adjustments to their phone system.  At sipVine, normal volumes of moves, adds, and changes are included in the monthly phone service charge.

When companies have a need to move phones, add or change employees, or make changes in their call flow or configuration, they typically need to engage the services of their equipment vendor or a phone service vendor to make these changes.  Thus, they enter into service agreements, pay trip charges, or incur per hour charges to implement these basic and sometimes routine adjustments.

sipVine’s Hosted VoIP Service includes the central administration of our customers’ phone system, with up to ten moves, adds, and changes included in our monthly service rate. Rarely does a customer need more than ten changes to be made in a month and most, if not all, changes can be administered without an on-site service call.

One of the inherent benefits of a hosted VoIP platform is that the phone system is centralized in our secure data facility off site.  This allows us to remotely make any changes a customer may need.   Simple things, like moving a phone to another office or location (even an external location), only require the customer to plug the phone into their Ethernet connection or active internet connection and the phone automatically registers. 

More complicated changes, like changes in call flow or the activation of previously unused features, such as call park or paging, can also be administered remotely.  Thus, customers are free to adjust their communication processes to how it best serves their business without any concern over the cost of making such changes.

Finally, major changes, like moving the entire office to a new location, do not generate charges that typically are experienced with the moving of a phone system.  The new location needs to be built out for their LAN needs and the phones simply need to be moved to the new location and plugged in! We are happy to work with our customers to establish a move routine that does not generate any down time associated with their moves.

How refreshing and simple is that?  Call us to find out more!   

 

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at  sipVine , a provider of a variety of  digital phone solutions  and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments.