Change is the essence of survival for businesses. In order to remain competitive, businesses have to keep up with tech innovation. To put an example, just a few years ago your advertisement options were very different, but today, you need to include a Social Media marketing strategy as well. You have to make your online presence stronger than your competitor’s.

Similarly, businesses can now choose to go cloud-based as a cost-cutting measure and to save a lot of storage space and infrastructure. You can even switch to cloud-based phone systems and no longer rely exclusively on your traditional landlines.

It's easy to notice that most of the mentioned changes are Internet-based. In the online world phone systems are called VoIP, which stands for “Voice over the Internet Protocol”. Let’s break this concept down a little in order to  move forward:

What Is VoIP?

With the use of VoIP phone systems, you can make phone calls anytime through your internet-enabled devices such as VoIP phones, computer, laptops, tablets, or your smartphones. What this technology does is convert voice into digital signals and again into voice when it reaches its destination.

Almost every industry is taking advantage of VoIP, whether it is real estate, tourism, finance, manufacturing, B2B, education, healthcare, and a long etc. Worldwide projected corporate VoIP subscribers in 2020 are estimated to be 204.8 billion. The key benefits of switching to VoIP technology include its cost-effectiveness, portability, scalability, advanced features, and clear voice quality.

VoIP comes in two major variants: Fixed VoIP and non-fixed VoIP. The first one provides a telephone number associated with a physical address, whereas a non-fixed VoIP number does not require a physical location, meaning you can call from LA to New York using a NY area code. Both the fixed and non-fixed VoIP phone systems have their own Pros and Cons.

Now, you’re probably reading this to find out what you should consider before deciding to switch to VoIP. Let’s figure out when it’s time to get rid of the traditional landline and switch to the latest VoIP technology.

1.You’re Looking to Cut Costs

If you are striving with your business finances, or you’re simply looking to make the most out of your business by being cost-efficient, then it’s a good time to consider using VoIP technology.

You would be replacing a bulky equipment that often takes up a lot of room as your business grows. Plus, you’d be getting rid of the traditional landline that bounds you to pay huge recurring bills, maintenance costs and IT support. If you have international clients or vendors, the benefits are much clearer, since you could work from anywhere.

Not to mention that if your business fails to take advantage of the new technologies, you’re consequently losing customers because you’re not keeping up with your competitors and eventually will fall behind them. A switch to VoIP will help you get a list of benefits at a much lesser cost. You just need a good internet connection that supports a VoIP system and a device.

2.You Want to Boost Employee Productivity

If you have employees that need to be constantly travelling for work purposes, or you notice that you’re not making any new prospects or sales on the phones, even when customers are complaining about customer support, all these low-productivity scenarios acquaint for a change of strategy on your phone call handling, which is and will remain a crucial task for any business in the foreseeable future.

With VoIP phone numbers, your employees can make and receive calls from anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection. You can use it to acquire new customers, close deals, follow-up, and more importantly: record and monitor everything that happens on the system. At the same time, you’re promoting employee engagement by providing them with a tool that will help them perform better and streamline communications in a shared system.

Also, in scenarios like a global pandemic you may want to have your team working remotely for some time or for good. With VoIP you’d be able to keep on doing business as a team without having the need to access the traditional office phone line. Your VoIP phone numbers keep communication alive within the team and with your valuable customers.

3.You’re Looking to Improve Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most sensitive and significant areas for your business. However, many businesses lose customers just because of delayed communications, long waiting times, or few communication channels.  If you are facing this kind of issue, then you should switch to VoIP phone services as it is an essential tool that adds a lot of value to every customer interaction. There are a number of ways VoIP will help you solve your customer support issues such as:

1. With the help of VoIP, your customer’s queries can be immediately transferred to the relevant department or agent. This leads to a better customer satisfaction level and more chances of conversion.

1. One of the best features is that it streamlines communication with its Voicemail to text feature. In case you have missed a call due to unavailability, VoIP will store audio files and you will receive them via email later as text.

1. You can improve the quality of your call center support using VoIP because VoIP offers call queue dashboards. These dashboards help managers find out the performance of call center agents as it keeps a record of the number of calls answered, the average time to answer, duration of a call, and the number of callers who hung up.

1. A VoIP can provide you with a toll-free number. This will help you gain more customers because it will boost your business credibility.

4.You Want to Grow your Business

If you are expanding your scope of services, products, markets, and employees and your revenues are also increasing because you have more customers to serve, it indicates that your business is growing. Along with your business growth, customer expectations, regarding the quality of your products and services, rise.

You will find customers who want to get their phone calls and inquiries answered quickly. Thus, you need a communication system that has a potential to extend its scope without much cost and effort. You want numbers and extensions for your employees without installing any additional lines or wires.

5.You Want to Have a Customized Communication System

Another great benefit of VoIP is that you can add and remove features according to your business needs. The different VoIP providers offer a variety of features that you can choose to prioritize, exclude or modify according to your expectations and depending on the provider’s plans available.

For example, you want a click to dial option, call queues, music on hold, skill-based routing, audio conferencing, voicemail to text feature, automation, reminders, software integrations, CRM, number of dialed calls per day, and other metrics. You can discuss your plan’s features and other options with your provider and choose one, accordingly. If you do this process according to your customer data and in consideration to your business goals and projects, it will directly impact customer experience in a positive way, as they will notice everything runs smoothly, making them happy with your business.

Conclusion

Traditional phone lines are becoming less common and less advantageous compared to internet-based telecommunications systems. This is enough reason to consider switching to VoIP phone systems. All smart businesses will make the switch to cloud phones as soon as they can. Just think about how many Colleges, Schools, and other brick-and-mortar businesses struggle during quarantines, when most, if not all, of their staff don’t have any access to phone lines from their offices.

With VoIP and your internet-enabled device, you can talk to your employees and customers from anywhere in the world, you can call them and see them on screen without paying much for that. You can eliminate your long-distance call charges and other FCC (News - Alert) fees, all that while boosting your employee productivity.

If you identify yourself with any of the above described scenarios, then it's a good time to ditch your traditional landline and move to VoIP immediately.