The Case for VoIP | VOIP Phone Systems

Consider this (Twilight Zone Theme song here):

There is a sudden health care crisis, and your office is going to shut down. You need your employees to be able to work. What are you going to do?

As you are all too aware, this has been the case over the last several months. It is something we never thought we would face.

Now you may say, well, my employees can take their computers home. Our applications can be accessed from the “Cloud” or via VPN back to the office, but what about your phones?

If you have a Cloud VoIP phone system you have options:

- With most VoIP phone systems your users can just take it home and plug it in to the internet. As a matter of fact, most of the newer VoIP phones have an in and out for the network connection so they can plugin their phone and then run a cable from the phone to their computer.

- Again, most VoIP services these days will give you a free desktop app that will allow you to plug in a headset with mic and use the computer as your phone extension, answering and making calls right from the computer screen.

- Lastly, most VoIP companies have an app for your cellphone. This can be very handy if your work from home people do not need or have access to a computer or internet. The app allows the user to make and receive calls from the office number, not their cell number. This means when anyone makes calls through an app the caller ID will show the office and you are not giving out your employees' cell numbers.

3 things to watch out for:

- If you are looking into a VoIP system DO NOT get a premise-based system. These older VoIP systems put the “brains” of the phone system at your office. The problem with this is two-fold.

o They are not designed to allow you to take the phone out of the office environment.

o If the internet goes down at your business, you have no phone service!

- Don’t use a system that is provided by your internet provider. Most of these systems are far too expensive and only use certain types of VoIP phones and generally require that you have multiple incoming services from the ISP (one for internet, one for phones, and maybe one for security). It is far better to get a provider that specializes in VoIP systems that can use your existing internet service without selling you things you do not need.

- Don’t get a VoIP system where the support is handled overseas. Most of the very large VoIP services place their tier one support overseas. The problem with this is not in the support personnel but in how the VoIP company escalates the calls. Most of the time, the tier one technician can only do the basic troubleshooting and if the problem is above that, a ticket is generated that may take days to get to a technician that can actually fix the issue.

If you would like more information about VoIP services you can download our free report or contact me directly at 520-751-0888 or sales@acaciait.com