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.
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.
Start collecting the names of possible providers and technologies available. You'll want to search for:
Hosted VoIP reviews
VoIP features offered
Support
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.
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.
Once you've pulled the trigger on a solution the provider should be more than happy to answer the following questions regarding implementation.
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