Business VoIP Phone System – The Best Technology for Your Office and Business
Technological progress does not stand still. New technologies are being developed every day that greatly simplify our life, making it more interesting and diverse. Nowadays, various means of communication have densely entered our life, despite the fact that a telephone call is still the most significant. Every business, from the smallest, has to take calls from customers. Sometimes they are few; sometimes, they become permanent. In any case, you need a high-quality telephone connection. In order to cope with the processing of all calls and not lose a single contact, VoIP Phone System was introduced.
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What is a Business VoIP Phone System?
VoIP is a telephone communication carried out not through ordinary wired lines but through data transmission networks using protocols specially developed for this purpose. The active development of this type of communication began in 1999 after the appearance of the SIP protocol, which turned out to be quite convenient and simple to implement and use. Due to the high quality and low cost of the call and ease of setup, VOIP is replacing traditional wired telephone networks. By using VoIP, you can make calls to devices connected to the network and regular landline and mobile phones. For this, special gateways located around the world are used.
How Does VoIP Telephone System Work?
The VoIP telephone system is based on two key operations. The first is the conversion of a bidirectional audio signal (human speech) into digital form and vice versa using encoder-decoding devices. The second is the formation of data that will be transmitted over the network. Thus, the sound is first digitally encoded. Then it is transmitted over the network; at the “output”, it is decoded into an audio signal, and the subscriber hears you. Unlike a regular telephone network, a user with a specific number assigned to him/her can be anywhere.
In order to connect and configure virtual telephony, you need access to the World Wide Web (www) and special equipment in the form of routers, routers, and servers. This does not concern an ordinary subscriber; the companies provide all equipment for rent “on their territory”. The software is generally free.
The main differences between analogue telephony and IP telephony:
- the capacity of the telephone line is fully utilized due to the compression of the converted voice packets;
- accessibility to most people due to the prevalence of the Internet;
- calls are sent to the internal server bypassing the external PBX;
- the quality of calls is improved by improving the algorithm of work (routing, reservation of resources on communication channels, prioritization of traffic);
- independent control of network owners of bandwidth parameters, the number of subscribers within one line, the speed of call delay.
UK VoIP Providers |
Company |
Price |
Free Trial |
Customer Rating |
Best for… |
|
Vonage |
£9 per user, per month |
✓ |
4.6 |
Small businesses looking for a cheap and easy solution
|
|
Nuacom |
£14.99 per user, per month |
X |
3.9 |
Small companies that are based online
|
|
RingCentral |
£7.99 per user, per month (billed annually) |
✓ |
4 |
Small businesses with varied departments
|
|
8×8 |
£19 per user, per month |
✓ |
4.7 |
Small businesses with big growth plans
|
|
Dialpad |
£12 per user, per month (billed annually) |
✓ |
4.4 |
Telesales teams and small businesses with high turnover
|
|
bOnline |
£6 per user, per month |
✓ |
4.4 |
|
|
GoTo |
|
✓ |
4.3 |
Companies that need to communicate remotely
|
Who Benefits From VoIP Phone Systems?
Companies are massively abandoning analogue telephony and replacing it with modern VoIP systems.
In urban networks, dedicated connections and cable lines are used to transmit telephone traffic. To connect additional users to TDM-PBX, you need to lay additional lines. When physical hardware becomes obsolete, upgrades are expensive. That’s why any business that relies on making a lot of national and international calls can get benefits from VoIP phone systems. You can use VoIP for:
- E-commerce
- Financial Institutions
- Travel Agencies
- Healthcare
- Real Estate
- Call centres
- Customer Care
- Hospitality
- Export and Import Business
- Any other business with multiple offices.
- Small business VoIP: A VoIP is configured for the specific needs of a small business: for each area and industry, a certain set of IP telephony functions is required. Some activities directly depend on telephone – transport and delivery services, online stores. In such areas, VoIP creates additional convenience. The VoIP phone system for small businesses will allow entrepreneurs who are going to start a start-up or are already running small companies to achieve success faster.
Advantages of VoIP Phone System
The users of VoIP cloud-based phone system receive several additional benefits:
Because of VoIP, employees and business owners are no longer connected to their phone lines all the time because they can broadcast their messages anywhere. They can use their mobile phones or laptops to receive voice messages. Of course, in order to use VoIP Business Phone System, you will need an Internet connection and specialized equipment. Such equipment can be an IP phone, a softphone application on a computer / mobile device, or a regular phone in conjunction with an IP gateway.
If a stable internet connection is available, you can use your VoIP systems. Access to all the functions of the service in any geographic location is especially important if it is necessary to organize remote work of employees.
A telephone network based on VoIP telephony allows you to combine the city and the mobile numbers of employees. Thanks to the FMC service and call forwarding, it is enough to use extension numbers to talk with remote managers while the PBX records all calls.
The set of functions can be customized for specific tasks of the company. For example, you can create customer priority lists to determine which calls will be answered first. Recording of voice messages is available, which can be used as an auto informer. You can also create rules to distribute the workload for each employee.
To connect business phone VoIP free call systems, you do not need to buy special equipment. It is enough to pay a subscription fee for an automatic telephone exchange once a month. The monthly payment depends on the number of users and those services that are additionally connected. Moreover, within the company, communication often becomes generally free of charge, even when working in a distributed office or a developed regional structure
Creating a separate line is much more expensive than connecting an additional local network or using WI-FI. You pay only for the connection, and the program itself is almost always easy to find in the public domain. Go to the IP telephony server under your username and password and talk as much as you need. This gives another important advantage – long distance and international calls become much cheaper.
If you want a VoIP phone system for small business or want to switch your existing telephony to VoIP, the best thing is that you don’t have to buy new physical hardware. The costs will be significantly reduced. Statistics show that enterprises with up to 30 employees switch to VoIP, save up to 40% on calls with local subscribers, and up to 90% on calls abroad. The overall reduction in costs for a small business is, on average, 50–75%. You can switch to VoIP in just a day. The equipment is configured according to the provider’s instructions and intuitive interfaces.
The cost of a VoIP phone system for a small business or company can be roughly calculated as the cost of equipment and configuration services, plus monthly payments to the provider for connecting each landline phone and the subscription fee for telephony and Internet packages. Usually, providers have VoIP cloud-based phone systems, where the initial investment will be much less, and the monthly payment will be permanent.
The capabilities of VoIP telephony are many times superior to the functions of some analogue and digital PBXs. One of the key benefits of the VoIP phone system is that it allows businesses to take advantage of many features such as:
- Virtual registrars
- Advanced call forwarding
- Call recording
- Virtual fax
- extensive customization options for the most comfortable and efficient work, using the system to the maximum
- call recording
- Search for information in a convenient voice menu
- work with different applications
- support for hardware Sip phones
- organization of communication in the office and with other departments of the company without additional material costs
- video calls
- audio communication
- video conferencing
- answering machine
- voice mail.
Today, customers don’t have to spend their funds to talk with the company’s employees, making the usual phone calls. There is a more convenient and profitable solution – this is a callback. The main benefits of a callback include:
- setting for a specific time;
- fast communication;
- convenience and no cost to customers.
Because of this useful feature, the company’s sales volumes increase, and customers are satisfied with the proposed convenient communication scheme.
VoIP telephony is actively used to organize effective communication with site visitors, which is an important condition for business development in the worldwide network. Online calls facilitate this. Why are they good:
- free communication for two parties;
- the conversation is carried out between the computer and the phone in the office;
- no need to install special software;
- any duration of the conversation;
- profitability;
- no need to use a telephone;
These conditions make it possible in a short time frame to achieve an increase in the volume of sales made using the web resource, thereby increasing the profitability of the business. Talking with customers allows you to draw their attention to the offered goods or services. You can also give appropriate ideas, offer additional names from the catalogue, tell about ongoing promotions and provide other information.
Business VoIP Phone System services can provide detailed contact information to understand customers and their needs better. This data can be valuable because it helps companies make key decisions with important implications for their future.
- Provides greater security
Data protection is a major concern for consumers, and protecting customer information is a top priority for most organizations. The best VoIP phone system can provide more security than traditional telephone services. The data sent over VoIP systems will encrypt to protect confidential information.
VoIP telephony is available wherever there is an Internet connection with a speed of 64Kb / s. Employees with the most basic Internet access can make and receive calls to their work phone at home or on vacation – even abroad. Naturally, this speeds up the time it takes to resolve work issues.
When you move to another office, communication in a new place will be established instantly. Employees will be able to call each other using the same internal numbers. The external customer number will also remain unchanged. You can also organize conference calls to speed up communications.
- The quality is higher than on mobile
In the presence of a stable Internet, VoIP allows you to achieve ideal communication quality. No voice delays or interference. Modern mobile operators are also building connections with partners based on VoIP telephony, which speaks for itself
Also, VoIP telephony users are never busy. An external multichannel number can be connected to the network; then, all new calls are transferred to free employees. With the help of a virtual PBX, you can set up the order of dialling numbers in a couple of minutes before reaching an available person.
The VoIP phone system allows you to scale the existing corporate telephone network. The service providers can change the number of lines in a matter of minutes, either upward or downward.
What Equipment is Required for IP Telephony
To communicate with subscribers using IP telephony, you can use the following options:
- IP phones: In this case, the equipment is connected directly to the network through the office router. No intermediate hardware or gateways are required. The use of such a telephone for the user is almost analogous to conventional telephones. IP phones can connect to the network using a LAN cable or Wi-Fi. Both devices with wired handsets and radio handsets with base are available. In the second case, several handsets can be connected to the base, which allows you to organize, for example, one access point by distributing the handsets to several employees in the office.
- Ordinary telephones with a wired or radio handset: They are connected to an IP telephony network through a VoIP gateway, and it, in turn, to a router if it is not built into a VoIP gateway. This method of connection is often implemented by Internet service providers offering telephony services. Convenient in that there is no need to abandon the usual analogue telephones.
- IP softphones or softphones: They are applications for various operating systems. Install such a program on your laptop or desktop. After that, set up the connection, connect the headset for work convenience, and go ahead and work. There are IP telephony applications for smartphones. The use of such services allows you to solve the issue of telephony as cheaply as possible. Still, the quality of call will depend on the speed of the computer. You will have to constantly keep the application for IP-telephony running on the smartphone, which does not have the best effect on the battery life.
The choice of a specific configuration of equipment for a VoIP phone system depends on the budget and the tasks being solved. For example, if your work involves travelling, it is preferable to use mobile phones. To organize call centres in conditions of a limited budget, they use softphones installed on desktops. In cases where you need a stable, high-quality, and convenient connection, it is better to choose an IP phone with a wired or radio handset or connect a regular analogue phone through a VoIP gateway.
Let’s Sum Up
To make the most of the advanced VoIP phone system for the office and achieve the best possible result, the installation must be entrusted to highly qualified specialists. The specialist must know all modern standards and the most advanced techniques.
By entrusting the work to professionals, clients receive an extensive list of benefits:
- increasing the efficiency of the work team;
- safe and stable functioning of the system;
- the correct setting for comfortable work;
- the attraction of new clients.
There are several types of IP Internet telephony: telephone-telephone, computer-computer, and computer-telephone. It is necessary to decide which telephony to choose and what equipment to use based on individual needs in each case. We can give several recommendations based on our own experience. With our help, you can easily get a VoIP phone system quickly and on the most favourable terms. This is facilitated by the proposal of a simple and understandable scheme, which includes only three steps:
- Contact us;
- Highly qualified employees will evaluate the business needs of the client. They will provide professional advice, help to determine the appropriate services for specific requests;
- in a short time, the client receives a list of the best available options.
By entrusting us, all clients receive excellent results in a short time frame. We hope that our examples will help you navigate the issue of the VoIP phone system for small business UK– what to choose. If you still have questions, you can contact us for advice.
We regularly compare and evaluate the offers of the main providers of VoIP service providers. We are aware of all the problems and advantages of the equipment existing on the market for both analogue and VoIP. That’s why we offer our clients always optimal, working, and inexpensive schemes for organising telephony.
Compare Business VoIP Costs – Other Useful links about phone systems
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All You Need To Know About Cox Communications
All You Need To Know About FreelyCall
Remember to Compare Your Business Costs is here to help your business every step of the way, from business advice or saving you time and money on your business purchases such as:
James Ward is CEO and founder of CompareYourBusinessCosts.co.uk, a website that won the Prestigious ‘Website of the Year’ only in its second year of operations in 2015. The website has grown organically since then offering comparisons on over 20 different products including insurance, energy, telecoms, card machines, coffee machines and much more. James has a range of interests including horse racing, skiing, rugby and boxing. He splits his time between home family life, friends, exercise and socialising.