I once worked for someone who thought that it was more important that I wear a suit to work every day, even if I spent a part of my days tracking cables under desks and in closets. He also thought that meeting with department heads and discussing what I planned to do, instead of actually doing it, was more important.
Clearly, his management style was that appearance is everything. A lot of people seem to feel the same way; the feeling is, the larger a company appears to be the more they are able to do for you. Today, technology has made it possible for a lot of startups and smaller businesses to play in the same arena as big enterprises.
If you watch all the commercials, various shipping companies such as UPS and FedEx can offer smaller companies the type of deals that make it appear that they can ship anywhere in the world, giving the appearance of a large enterprise instead of a startup.
Social media, call analytics, cloud-based hosted services and listening to their customers have all added to the illusion of size. Of all the services and solutions available to companies of any size, probably none has benefited the small to medium business (SMB) quite the way that Voice over IP (VoIP) has.
We have witnessed VoIP mature and evolve to the point where it is now a viable option for companies, regardless of size, to use. One of the major benefits that it brings to the table is the fact that the cost of using a VoIP phone system is considerably cheaper than a traditional PBX (News - Alert) phone system.
Coupled with off-site cloud service, not only can SMBs save time, money and space, they can also appear to be larger than they are. Believe it or not, this does make customers feel more comfortable thinking that there is a large company behind them.
Flexibility and scalability become very important pieces of the puzzle giving a smaller company the ability to grow and expand. Without financial resources, it is difficult to upgrade an in-house PBX system as it requires additional equipment, technicians and usually new phones.
As the world around us continues to become more mobile, a comforting factor for clients is face time. There is a comfort to seeing everyone’s face and knowing if they actually understand what needs to be done. The problem is that home offices, hotel rooms and airport lounges are not conference rooms, so it is difficult to see everyone’s face, or is it?
Once again the combination of VoIP, this time with interoperable cloud-based video services, have made all the hard work involved with video conferencing a thing of the past, giving clients and employees the opportunity to conduct meaningful meetings from multiple locations.
In the past, all that was important was getting a good product to market. Unfortunately, today we see that a lot of startups and SMBs are competing in similar markets with like products. One of the things that can set certain companies apart is being able to provide a good customer experience. VoIP goes a long way toward providing that ability.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson