Your business needs a new phone system...
You've determined your business needs a new phone system but what system is the best fit for the way your company works? What features are available and which ones will improve employee productivity, customer care and fit your budget? Those are important questions that we will help you answer.
Most companies will benefit from a modern phone system that is:
- Professional - Advanced voice features create a positive customer experience.
- Affordable - Enable all enterprise features you need with existing budget.
- Mobile - Run your business from anywhere and empower your employees to be productive from anywhere.
- Scalable - Your system should easily scale with the business.
- Reliable - Never miss calls even if disaster strikes.
- Managed - The right system is managed 24/7 in the cloud by professionals at no extra cost.
The best small business phone system that fills all those buckets you're looking for is a Hosted VoIP system.
The problem is you’re busy!
The last thing you want to do is spend time picking out a VoIP system, meeting with multiple vendors, talking to sales people and trying to discern what system will work for you. To simplify the process we have provided a link to a checklist to save you time. We also recommend working with a consultant who can show you the ins and outs of several systems and is not beholden to a single vendor.
Here are the steps the checklist will take you through:
- Research
- Investigate
- Demo
- Purchase and Implementation
Step 1 - Research
Start collecting the names of possible providers and technologies available. You'll want to search for:
Hosted VoIP reviews
VoIP features offered
Support
Step 2 - Investigation
Take the list of Hosted VoIP providers you identified and do a deep dive into what they can do, how good their service response is etc and strike off the ones who can't get the job done or meet your budget.
Costs
Are there pricing or service tiers?
What features come with each tier?
Are there maintenance, licensing and upgrade costs?
Features
Are there start up or activation fees or are features all-inclusive?
Do they offer basics like auto attendant, conference bridge, voicemail, find me/follow me?
How easy is it to manage and set them up?
Do you get software updates for free when the become available?
Mobility
Do they offer a mobile app?
Can you make calls on your mobile device using your business number?
Does the mobile app cost extra?
Is the app available on both iOS and Android?
Support
Is support included in the price?
What kind of support can you expect during setup?
Once your system is up and running who will take care of you?
Reliability
How many data centers does the provider have redundant servers in?
Do they publish their status and uptime?
What happens in a natural disaster? Do they have backups?
No provider is perfect so don't be surprised if no single vendor can give you 100% of what you want. But use this list to cross off less than desirable vendors and narrow down to the right solution.
Step 3 Demo
Pick your top 3 providers from your list and have them provide a demonstration of their solution.
Ask questions
Request references
Training - is it included?
Observe how simple the solution is or if the vendor struggles to do simple things.
Lastly grade the demo, go back to your Investigation and narrow down your search to top 2 providers. Your ready to make a purchase.
Step 4 Purchase and Implementation
Once you've pulled the trigger on a solution the provider should be more than happy to answer the following questions regarding implementation.
- Timeline - When is go live date? How soon can the system be deployed?
- Project Management - Will you be assigned a project manager to oversee installation? Who should you contact with concerns?
- Training - How is training done? Webinar, local trainer provides a class, what online training documentation or videos are available?
- Provisioning - How easy are the phones to program? Are they plug n' play install with zero touch provisioning?
Follow the steps of this buyers guide to save you time in selecting, demo-ing and purchasing a Hosted VoIP phone system.
To make it even easier download our Buying a Hosted VoIP phone system Checklist
