To this day, the concept of the traditional telephone remains something of a perfect innovation.
Despite being invented all the way back in 1876, the fundamentals really haven’t changed much; you have a speaker and a mic, communicating a signal that passes through a line to someone else’s speaker and mic. Nowadays, the infrastructure originally built for that purpose is also used to deliver the internet to front rooms and boardrooms across the world.
Where traditional in-office networks also rely on this increasingly dated copper wire method, switching to ‘hosted voice services’ instead makes use of your existing IT network. So, if you have a network you might have a lot to gain (and save) by switching to a Hosted Voice Service.
Let’s take a look at the fundamentals and see how this approach could benefit your company from day to day…
It’s easy to get started
So, as we’ve mentioned, a Hosted Voice Service uses your existing IT infrastructure – meaning you’re likely already good to go. There’s no need for new hardware, no installations; often everything can be done completely remotely.
Using this approach focuses your entire telephony system into the control of your managed IT provider. This means management of all aspects of your IT falls under the control of one third party.
Installation is a breeze, but how about day-to-day operations? Well, a huge benefit of this approach is that changes can be enacted almost instantaneously via remote access. There’s no waiting for a technician to visit your site; scaling can be done on-the-fly to adapt to as many or as few requirements as you have. Things such as call routing, call priority preferences, adding users and so on can be done in the blink of an eye via an admin portal.
It’s cost-effective
So often when delving into these things you’ll hear the same thing – these services are brilliantly convenient, but you’ll pay for that convenience.
Well, here’s the thing; If you’re a small to medium size business, not only will you benefit from advanced control of your telephony system, but you’ll legitimately save something in the region of 50% compared to what you’re paying for a more traditional setup because of the fact that this system relies upon your existing infrastructure. By design, you get more service whilst paying less.
Finally, because of the highly scalable nature of this approach, you’ll be able to pay for exactly what you need as you need it. Making changes are only a phone call or trip to the admin portal away, so it truly is a case of getting by with what’s important at a price you’re happy with. Running costs are lower than a traditional setup too, so from a financial perspective, it’s tricky to identify any downsides to this approach.
It’s more secure
Security is a major concern in today’s world. Somewhere in the region of 75% of small business fall victim to a cyber-attack over the course of a year. This plays on the idea that a small business will rather naively decide that there’s no reason they would be targeted, and therefore won’t bother to put protections in place, which makes life nice and easy for cybercriminals.
Downtime and data-loss are huge financial drains; the often referenced compromising of the NHS in 2017 cost in excess of £90 million. Sure, you’re probably thinking – that’s an extreme, but the stark reality is that it’s really quite impossible to estimate just how big a financial burden a situation like that can be on your company, and something that really requires a proactive approach if you want to protect your interests because it’s definitely not a situation where you want to find out the hard way. The worst-case scenario could see it taking down your business permanently.
By integrating your telephony services into your IT services, you end up with a system that has all parts working together and complimenting each other to guarantee a secure platform, oppose to the time-consuming balancing act that can be achieving this with a traditional system.
It’s hugely customisable
Requirements naturally vary from business to business, what suits one business may not suit yours and vice-versa.
It’s not unreasonable to say that most traditional telephony systems come in a one size fits all configuration – whilst you may have a choice about the scale of the solution, you’ll have much less about features.
This is again where a Hosted Voice Service shines. You’re getting more than just a telephony service with options for CRM system integration (for call recording), voice recognition (for automated systems), integration with existing communications software on your network, automatic voice-to-text transcription and much more.
This just gives you an idea of the possibilities with such a system. It might seem like an obvious point to make, but think of the system as just that – it’s not just a phone, it’s effectively software on a server which comes with all the benefits you would expect of software – it can be expanded, adapted and refined. Most traditional phone systems are at their core, unintelligent; able to do only a series of preset tasks and little more as requirements change.
It improves productivity
With everything we’ve covered, you can probably start to imagine just how this could improve productivity within your organisation.
And that’s no surprise – many businesses who embrace this system discover just how much more a system directly incorporated into your IT system and user terminals can provide. Take for example customer service calls – instead of the manual processes that come with logging calls after the fact, eating into your staff’s time, just how beneficial would an automatic system that works in real-time be? How much time can be saved if you have the ability to pass information between operatives, also saving your customer the frustration of answering the same questions over and over and using less of each operative’s time whilst getting to the bottom of the problem quicker?
The reality is it’s truly worth your time to investigate just what a Hosted Voice Service can provide; it more than likely can do a host of things you want and even more excitingly, a few things you didn’t realise you need!
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