Modern communications technologies have brought the whole world closer together. With all the social media, smartphones, and apps, almost everyone has forgotten about landlines. Yet, landlines are still a massive part of maintaining a business presence across America. That being said, landlines in their traditional form are slowly being rendered obsolete.
We’ve reached a point where an internet phone system can do everything your landline can, only better and cheaper. Here are a few advantages of using a VoIP service instead of your regular landline.
Cheaper Running Costs
The largest and most obvious advantage of using a VoIP phone system is the reduced cost of service. Traditional landlines served their purpose well, but they come with an increased cost of maintenance as well as a scaling cost of service. In other words, making local calls may be affordable, but the moment you decide to make a long-distance call, you’ll be getting a sizable bill at the end of the month.
By using an internet phone system you are essentially solving the issue of costly long distance calls. Whether you’re running your phone system through a direct IP connection to your provider, or you’re using the Internet, you’ll find that VoIP is simply cheaper. In fact, VoIP costs are far lower even if your provider charges you for long-distance calls. Your bills at the end of the month will be less costly.
Increased Flexibility
One of the main disadvantages of standard landlines is the fact that in most cases you can only communicate with one person at any given time. Naturally, this doesn’t apply to massive call centers, but then again most small businesses won’t be using those.
If you’re running a business that is all about customer support and being available to their clients/users, you could greatly benefit from switching over to VoIP. Not only is this form of communication cheaper if you want to run several parallel lines, but it is also much more flexible.
The Vast Network of Features
The flexibility of VoIP comes from the fact that you’re using a form of digital communication that takes place in a diverse ecosystem of software and apps. In other words, you’re not limited by the hardware potential or lack thereof that is standard for landlines.
Using VoIP allows you to create instant conference calls, route your incoming calls according to your own, custom list of priorities and so much more. Naturally, more advanced features such as these will greatly streamline your outreach abilities and make you more available to your customers.
Moreover, you can choose a VoIP phone service based on the features you need to improve your customers’ experience and just to simplify your job.
Make Calls from Anywhere
If there’s one major issue with landlines, it’s the fact that they are stationary. The fact that you can’t use landlines on the go is the one reason why we have cell phones today. With VoIP, you can solve this issue.
There are features such as cloud-based VoIP that allow you to answer your phone and make calls no matter where you are. Depending on your line of work, this can help you run a more efficient business. Additionally, your ability to answer the business phone from anywhere works great with the rising demand for remote work.
No longer do you have to sit at your office, or have someone else sit at your office and take calls. With VoIP, you have the flexibility to choose when and where you’ll answer your phone.
Advanced Call Forwarding and Routing
Speaking of handling calls, the usual landlines often found in homes or small businesses are generally limited to voice mail. With VoIP, call handling, forwarding, and management become a whole different beast.
Voice over IP allows you to customize your call routing in ways that aren’t possible with landlines. For example, say that you have a line in the office but you’re out working. When the call comes, and the phone rings, you can set the call forwarding to engage after a certain number of rings. Once those are up, the call gets forwarded to the next instance in the chain.
You can daisy-chain a number of lines, routing calls from one location to another, without increasing your service costs. If you want, you can even direct missed calls to your email by using a voice mail feature that does the speech-to-text conversion.
Call Quality
One of the major misconceptions about VoIP is that it can’t match the sound quality of a standard landline. This simply isn’t true. In fact, most VoIP Services come with QoS, or quality of service, guarantee.
If you’re using regular internet to run your VoIP calls, you’ll still enjoy a clear, smooth connection. However, it’s worth mentioning that using the internet for VoIP makes you subject to internet coverage in your specific area. The good thing is that you can usually fix VoIP call quality even if you run into issues. When a landline has technical problems, there is nothing you can do about it.
Scalability
A particular point of interest for growing businesses is the scalability of VoIP technology. Instead of going through the complicated process of acquiring more landlines, you can easily get in touch with your provider and simply get a different plan.
A good VoIP provider will help you grow through sustainable features, service costs, and long term support. This is especially important for businesses that rely on customer interaction.
How Reliable is VoIP?
If you were to ask that question a decade ago, you’d be getting a very different answer. However, today VoIP is perfectly reliable. You can count on consistent, uninterrupted service as well as good call quality.
The only real downside to VoIP is the fact that select operators don’t allow emergency calls. However, such providers are rare and even if you end up working with one, there are ways to work around this issue.
Soon enough landlines will be rendered obsolete and VoIP will reign supreme. This is projected to happen within 5 years from the moment this short guide is published. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to be ahead of the curve before everyone is forced to make the switch.