Businesses of all sizes across Southern California are rapidly discovering the benefits of VoIP, such as reduced overheads and practically limitless flexibility and scalability.
However, like any major change to your company’s technology infrastructure, the move to VoIP does introduce a few challenges. Most of these are easy to overcome, particularly if you opt for a hosted system whereby your vendor will be responsible for any repairs, upgrades and maintenance.
Here are a few tips and tricks to help you enjoy your VoIP system to its fullest potential:
1. Automate Provisioning
For businesses with no more than half-a-dozen employees, expanding a VoIP network with more headsets and/or handsets is usually a simple process. However, for larger organizations, particularly those who have multiple locations and/or a sizable remote workforce, matters can get a bit more complicated.
Many VoIP systems feature automated provisioning, which makes it much easier to expand the network by adding new devices. By enabling auto provisioning, all new devices will be plug and play, since they will automatically obtain their configuration settings from the server.
2. Invest in Quality Hardware
While ease of use and affordability are essential for improving staff productivity and morale, having a reliable system for keeping in touch with customers is the beating heart of any business. That’s why maintaining consistently high call-quality should be a top priority when implementing a VoIP system.
Although numerous factors influence call quality, easily the most important is the standard of the hardware you choose. Cheap headsets, for example, often don’t even feature noise cancellation. In other words, you get what you pay for, so investing in quality hardware, such as DECT handsets and high-end headsets, is highly recommended.
3. Prioritize Bandwidth
Since VoIP uses the same infrastructure as your internet, your calls also need to compete with all other internet traffic, whether that’s employees accessing cloud-based apps, operating systems automatically updating, or anything else.
If your other systems are consuming too much bandwidth, less will be available for VoIP, and call quality will suffer as a result. Fortunately, you can easily mitigate such problems by prioritizing certain types of web traffic through your router’s built-in web server. Almost all business routers support this functionality, but if you have only a basic router designed primarily with home-use in mind, it’s probably time to upgrade!
4. Install Mobile Apps
Mobility is one of the core advantages of making the move to VoIP. Hosted solutions, for example, are cloud-based, meaning that everything is taken care of through a browser alone. This also means that VoIP allows you to answer calls from any device that can connect to the internet, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet or a desktop computer.
However, while some systems are exclusively web-based, most also provide mobile apps for Android and iOS. These lightweight applications provide optimal functionality and usability on the small screen, and they’re much more responsive than working through a browser alone.
5. Train Your Team
Most VoIP systems are extremely easy to use once set up. However, by providing a few informational training sessions to your employees, they’ll learn how to set up their apps and handsets to their liking, which can improve morale and productivity. More importantly, business VoIP systems provide built-in coaching features that also allow supervisors to help their employees while they’re on the phone. For example, most systems provide a whisper function, which allows supervisors to talk to staff while they’re on a call, without being audible to the client on the other end.
The success of any organization relies heavily on its communications systems, and that’s exactly why so many are making the shift to VoIP. If you’re ready to take advantage of streamlined collaboration, significant cost savings and limitless scalability, then give Fluid Networks a call today.