3 Benefits of Ditching Your Traditional Phone System

When’s the last time you thought about your landline? The dinosaurs of the tech world–the Model-T of phone systems–and yet so many businesses hang on to their inconvenient, costly landlines with little to no thought. To bring the analogy to 2020, your landline is bringing you no joy; it’s time to “Marie Kondo” your traditional phone system.

Whether you are in the early stages of building your business, or a seasoned organization, you know how important it is to keep your overhead costs low without sacrificing the quality of your customer service. And a reliable communications system is key to providing a positive customer service experience. VoIP is a fantastic solution for reducing costs without disrupting the quality of your communication.  

VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol is a communications system that is rapidly taking over landlines in both large and small businesses. While it has been around since the 1970s, it has only been in the last decade that it has gone head-to-head with landline service providers.

VoIP allows you to make and receive calls over Local Area Networks (LANs) or over the internet, by converting sound into digital voice communication that is then transferred over broadband. Simply put, VoIP allows you to use the internet to make phone calls. 

Let’s dive into the three biggest benefits of choosing VoIP over a traditional landline.

Benefit 1: Phone system cost savings

The cost-effectiveness of using VoIP is hard to beat. The average cost savings of switching to VoIP from a traditional landline can be more than 50%. If your company is set up to use the internet, then you are already paying for the bulk of a VoIP service just by using your current internet plan. 

There are both short-and-long term savings associated with switching to a VoIP phone system. In the short-term if you are already set up with an internet solution, then you will likely only pay for a minimal installation fee to set up your VoIP adapter. In the long-term, you’ll avoid carriage fees associated with landlines. 

Most VoIP packages include unlimited domestic calls in the lower 48, and charge just a fraction of the traditional landline price for international calls, an added benefit in today’s global economy. From purely a financial perspective, VoIP is an excellent alternative to landlines.

Benefit 2: Advanced technology for teams on the go

Because it is an internet-based system, VoIP offers technical solutions that just aren’t possible with a phone line. If you are using a traditional phone system as your sole communication solution, then you are missing out on some of the great features that VoIP offers beyond call communication.

Conference calls, video conferencing, and increased mobility when using VoIP  are just some of the features that give this system an edge over phone lines. Many VoIP providers also include apps for Android and iPhone which turn your mobile device into a VoIP handset. This makes communicating with both your employees and your customers more convenient and efficient. 

These technical solutions are especially relevant as more and more companies are moving to remote-work models, expanding their businesses worldwide, or responding quickly to the way their business and customer service models need to change in response to COVID-19. 

VoIP allows you to connect to your team quickly and easily. Instead of spending time dialing numbers and slowly transferring calls, your staff will be literally at each other’s fingertips with the touch of a button. All of these small time savings add up and allow your staff to work smarter and devote more time to each customer interaction.

Switching to VoIP doesn’t just fulfill your call communication needs, it gives your business tech-savvy solutions that enable your employees to work efficiently. 

Benefit 3: Savvy customer service solutions

Companies as large as Coca-Cola and JP Morgan Chase have eliminated voicemail and many organizations have already moved to automated messaging models. This has resulted in a decrease of personalized customer service.

We’ve all experienced the frustration of wasting time on an automated voicemail system trying to find the one option that solves whatever issue we called about in the first place. Or worse, having an automated system hang up on you because it doesn’t understand your request and isn’t set up to transfer you to a human being!

The lack of personalization is frustrating for customers, but VoIP’s technology allows you to work around that with multiple solutions.

There are some pretty cool customer service features included with VoIP. You can set up call forwarding to multiple devices, for example from your main office line which then switches to an employee’s personal line after two rings. This reduces the time a customer spends waiting for someone to pick up the phone. Call queueing works in a similar way, ensuring that calls get forwarded to the next available customer service agent during high-volume call times.

Features that benefit you and your employees include voicemail-to-text, so that you can respond quickly and efficiently to customers without having to listen to the same voicemail over and over to catch all the details. VoIP also offers call pulling, which allows you to swap a call between multiple devices without interrupting the call. This is, again, a fantastic tool if your employees are working remotely or constantly on the go.  

Another unique tool that VoIP phone systems offer is an e-fax option, which not only eliminates pricey faxing fees but means you can get important documents to and from customers quickly.

So, on top of fulfilling your call communication needs, significant cost savings, and advanced tech solutions for your company, VoIP also provides customer-first solutions to elevate their experience with your company.

So, what’s the catch?

We’d be remiss to not mention the one downside to VoIP, which is that you do have to rely on having a secure and consistent internet connection. However, most VoIP calls only need 100kbs of internet per connection to run successfully, so this should be a non-issue for most companies. 

Of course you can’t control the occasional internet disruption or power outage, the latter of which is also an issue for landlines. However as technology continues to advance, this will likely be less and less of an issue. The overwhelming benefits of switching to VoIP certainly outweigh the occasional disruption in service.

If you are ready to “cut the cord” and take your company to the next level of communications and customer service, Tech Masters can guide you through a simple and painless transition to VoIP.