The phone just gets no respect.
In this day of collaboration platforms, chat, social media and video calling, it is easy to forget that smartphones are still…well, phones.
And calling is on the decline, admitted. There are more ways to communicate than there were 15 years ago, and both consumers and businesses are using each communications medium where it makes the most sense.
Lost in all the shuffle, however, is the power that calling still provides. It is simple, ubiquitous, easy to use and communicates more emotional content than written communication. It also still is the cornerstone of communication in business and outside of it.
That’s not to say that all phone service is created equal as we roll into 2016. Analog calling is as dead as the rotary phone. Landlines definitely are out. Visual voicemail is a necessity. Mobility is a must.
Phones get no respect because we’re comparing other cloud-based solutions to phone systems that have not adapted. Businesses that have adopted hosted business phone systems, however, tell a different story.
Cloud-based business phone systems come with a wealth of features and a price point much below older phone systems. They also, crucially, deliver the mobility that business demands.
With hosted call solutions, businesses enable employees to not only take calls from the office, but also carry their business phone lines with them when they leave the office by using the service on their mobiles phones.
Better than the mobility of mobile phones, however, hosted business phone systems work both in and out of the country, signal strength is not an issue, and battery drain is never a problem. That’s because hosted solutions work from any computer or smartphone, making them independent of a particular device. They are more mobile than mobile phones in this respect.
Cloud-based phone systems also often play nice with other cloud services; many cloud-based CRM systems allow businesses to connect their hosted phone systems directly to their online CRM, for instance.
Calling doesn’t get the respect it deserves, mostly because we take calling for granted now and compare older phone systems to the latest communications solutions. But when you look at modern calling systems such as hosted business phone systems, calling looks starts to look pretty good again.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson