3 reasons why you should consider Business VoIP in the next 6 months
The non techie guide
A rise in web-savvy Brits has led to a surge in the number of calls people make over the internet through popular communication platforms such as Whatsapp, Skype and FaceTime. These tools have given us the ability to communicate with people all over the world without suffering from a huge phone bill at the end of the month. That’s why it was no surprise for us to discover that by 2016 more than 45% of UK businesses had already adopted business grade Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or other IP Voice services at work.
The jargon explained
But what do we mean by IP Voice and why has it become such a big deal? Put simply, IP Voice means that users can make calls over the internet - so there’s no need to provide landlines for every phone in your business. Instead you can use your resources more efficiently and run your calls, emails, web browsing over the same connection. This brings many benefits so if you haven’t thought about IP Voice yet, then take a look at why you should consider switching to this way of working too.
1. There’s savings to be made
We know first-hand that there are considerable financial savings to be made from replacing traditional landline connections with internet based telephony. In partnership with Censuswide, we commissioned a survey of 1,000 decision makers from UK business, and found that 96% of current internet based telephony customers reported a cost saving, with 1 in 4 claiming they’d saved more than 50% on their old voice package. This is due to cheaper call rates and the fact that many of them were able to reduce the number of permanent phone lines they needed.
2. Expansion and location
Research reveals that many businesses with traditional ISDN phone services find it hard to re-route their existing phone numbers quickly and cheaply when they relocate. The reality is this is not an issue with internet based services as your numbers are not tied to a physical or geographical location, (as it’s based over the internet), it’s easy to take your number with you wherever you go.
Moreover, for businesses looking to expand their reach internationally without the cost of setting up offices overseas, internet based telephony allows them to set up International Numbers for outbound calls. Of those we surveyed, 33% of small businesses believe they will expand internationally in the next year – but we all know that setting up in new markets can be an expensive – and risky – undertaking. Because IP Voice allows you to set up local numbers quickly and easily, it’s a great way to trial setting up operations in new countries at a much lower cost.
3. You’ve got a backup plan
39% of businesses reported losing their telephony service in the past 12 months. These costs really do add up, as we found that each outage lasted on average 8 hours, and cost a massive £24k per hour.
IP Voice means you can quickly re-direct calls to different locations should the unexpected happen, drastically reducing the impact to your business.
Or better still you can have pre-set routing plans in place, so the moment the IP Phone system detects a fault, it re-routes it automatically. Often before you even realised there was a problem.
Make a good call for your future
In order to maintain a competitive edge, decision makers need to consider internet based services now if they haven’t already. When company purse strings are tighter than ever, wasting money on dropped calls and expensively re-routing phone lines is easy to avoid. IP Voice gives businesses large and small better flexibility, improved value for money and a future-proofed system that you don’t have to worry about – leaving you free to focus on the things that really matter.
