So, you’re thinking of transitioning to a cloud-based business phone system? This post guides you through your cloud-based phone system investment. Our goal is to help you choose a system that is ultimately worry-free and yet proves to be an essential factor in the growth and success of your company.
Scalability: Adding Phones as Your Company Grows
How quickly can you scale with hosted PBX? A cloud-based PBX system hosted by your provider gives you the flexibility to scale up or down immediately, often at the click of a mouse. Rather than taking days to add new users, hosted PBX allows you to create new users on the phone system in a matter of hours or even minutes. As your business grows, hiring additional staff means adding phones to your system, and a unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform is ideal. New office? No problem. Office moves (or expansions) are simpler with hosted PBX.
You Can’t Always Answer the Phone
Initial contact with your business is a very important consideration. How your customers are treated during that initial contact can affect your company’s image. Do you want calls to go to a central receptionist and then routed into an interactive voice response (IVR), where callers press 1 for this or 2 for that? Or will everyone have direct dial numbers? Many hosted PBX phone systems include basic automated attendant functionalities, which take the worry of missed calls off your plate.
Multiple Locations, No Problem
If you have offices in multiple locations, even on multiple continents, a hosted phone system can allow you to dial anyone on your system. Offices across Canada can talk to each other like they’re in the office down the hall.
Moving to a new location with a traditional land-based PBX system requires hardware logistics. However, with your new cloud PBX phone system, your system and all its features are hosted in the cloud, so there’s no on-site management to worry about.
The Power to Communicate Your Way
Hosted PBX phone systems give you choices. Designed for business, advanced features such as call management (i.e., call forwarding, call blocking, call logging, call transfer, and call waiting) and advanced customer experience functionalities (i.e., call recording, voicemail, and IVR) are sometimes built in, and sometimes carry an additional fee.
Tell your provider all the different ways you use your phones. Do you need features like ring groups, voicemail-to-email, call queue, video/web conferencing, instant messaging, text messaging, auto-attendant, extension dialling, conference calling, call routing, call recording, or reporting? What combination of features will make the best customer service experience?
Can I Connect My Work Call to My Mobile Phone?
We have reached a point where there are people entering the workforce who have never used a desk handset, and by the very nature of their job, may never need one. If your staff are on the go, you need a phone system that promotes and supports the way they work.
Technology like call forwarding, VoIP, and digital voicemail sent via email are all things that can make life easier for your mobile workers. Your team should be able to make and receive telephone calls anywhere using a VoIP app. Ideally, choose a system with single-number convenience, allowing your team to transfer calls and meetings to their preferred device—in the office, at home, or anywhere in between. Basically, your employees can make and receive calls anywhere they have an internet connection using their mobile device, laptop, or tablet.
Can I Do Conference Calls?
Even with all the technology available today, the conference call has its place, and a phone system that makes it easy is possible. That said, no doubt a system that enables video conferencing is more engaging than audio conferencing. Ask about the technology that allows for instant conferencing to meet the needs of a few participants, and scheduled conferencing for the larger, formal conferences. Hosted PBX from a trusted provider can let you use conferencing services that are enabled from a user’s phone, desktop toolbar, or a web portal, and leaders can manage active calls using a web-based meeting portal.
Ask your new hosted PBX provider about how audio conferencing can be quicker when supported by a SIP trunking service. Ultimately, choosing a platform with solid conference call capabilities will save on travel, improve communication, connect teams, and improve productivity. Many hosted PBX platforms offer fully unified communication functionalities with features such as high-quality audio and video conferencing, including presentation, screen sharing, and call recording.
Emergency Management & Disaster Recovery
If a disaster strikes—a significant weather event, a fire, or a construction mishap that disrupts your phone service—keeping your lines of communication open is a priority. Being able to respond during times of emergency is critical. Cloud PBX systems use the internet, which means your phone service is as strong as your internet connection. Because all your information is in the cloud, your system should experience little or no downtime in the event of an issue. Geographic redundancy, which is when the provider has several servers in different physical locations, is one of the most common reliability measures. Since each server contains identical information, if one fails another can take its place almost instantly.
Build a Wish List & See if Hosted PBX Ticks All Those Boxes
Your phone system should not be taking up a lot of your time. The maintenance of your phone system can be a big part of its success—or failure. Find out how easy a hosted PBX is to use, how happy it makes your staff, and how good a fit it is for your IT department—who will be thrilled to have a managed system that is running as a service.
