03 May The Future Beyond ISDN

As we mentioned in the previous article, the world is constantly evolving – these changes have allowed for our levels of communication, collaboration, and productivity to reach levels which were impossible a mere few years ago. But, like everything, for every positive there is a negative, and the complexity of different VoIP offerings can make this a particularly difficult environment to navigate.

Modern technology has allowed businesses all over the globe to adopt a remote working team. Recent events sped up this transition, meaning that – as good as the effort was to make the adaptations successful – they were only sufficient as a temporary measure. In looking for a long-term solution, IT professionals all over the country agree that it needs to be very flexible and capable of adapting to changes in the IT landscape as progress advances. That is where VoIP comes in.

VoIP

There are many factors that make a business successful – by some way, communication with colleagues and clients to ensure everything happens as it should, and your clients feeling listened to and understood, are the most important. We could be here for days dissecting why these are important and what they help you achieve, when, in reality, we all know how important they are, or we wouldn’t have got this far in business. As we explored in the previous article, ISDN is approaching its end of life – with the expense of maintaining traditional phone systems approaching extortionate amounts, VoIP is the modern, more capable, and, arguably most importantly, the cheaper option.

Why is VoIP the new ‘go-to’ for businesses worldwide?

• Mirroring of the office setting

We all know how important it is to always project a professional image of your business, and VoIP is the only tool that makes this possible. You can theoretically be anywhere in the world with an internet connection and VoIP allows you to mirror the professionalism achievable in the office setting from anywhere. Your customers’ journeys need not change, the company number can stay the same, and they will be greeted by the same familiar – and, most importantly, professional – company slogan as normal. This allows you to maintain that positive first impression which is crucial to every business.

• Client interaction

Voicemail was once essential for organisations all over the world but in the modern world it simply isn’t good enough, because it can’t keep up with the pace at which we need to be working to be the most productive.

This is, of course, not the case for everyone, but with VoIP there is no need for Voicemail, as VoIP allows you to assign the places that your incoming calls will ring. Confused? Let’s explain. You can use your settings to ensure the first rings take place where you spend most of your time, the second could take place at home, for example, and lastly your mobile, so regardless of what your schedule looks like for the day you will never miss that all important call. This doesn’t sound like much on the surface but with these capabilities you can guarantee to your clients that their calls will be picked up every time, allowing you to offer a level of service far better than before.

• Feature Versatility

Once having connected VoIP’s various features, having them integrated together will revolutionise the way your team works. One feature, in particular, is Voicemail-to-text, when the feature takes a transcript of all of your business Voicemails and sends them straight to your inbox to be read at your will. As poor a service as it sounds, you can then deliberately miss calls that you regard as less important and can carry on with your day knowing that you aren’t going to miss an important message.

• Reliability

There are flaws to VoIP, however – the biggest is that if you lose your internet connection the entire system becomes in operational. Your staff losing the ability to communicate at a moment’s notice may cause you to annoy suppliers and potentially lose customers. But VoIP does offer a solution to its own problem with the call forwarding feature we mentioned earlier – if correctly set up – because then you can simply change to your second location of choice, and so on, until you have a connection again, and, crucially, your clients see no change in service.

• Increased mobility of service

ISDN made a conversion to remote working completely impossible for some, resulting in the pandemic being even harder for those businesses than most. Your team were required to remember the right codes or keys to dial for it to appear as if they were calling from the office, in the process maintaining the rouse they aren’t at home – this was a time-consuming task that could have been better used elsewhere.

With VoIP, your team can be entirely flexible if you want it to be. Your team can work on an entirely random schedule with no difference to their output even with some at home one week, the other half the next, and none the one after – whatever works with your schedule is possible.

With VoIP it makes no difference what days they work or where from as – from the client’s perspective – your staff are still sitting at their desks in the office.

Modern technology to help you thrive securely

Technology is pivotal to your business and we want you to understand the value it provides when it is allowed to work seamlessly with your operations on the most updated tools available. Apogee values transparency and simplicity – we provide the IT support you need when you need it. Within this support is the guarantee that your technology is secure against all manner of cyber threats, that it is operationally beneficial to the way you run your business and is always updated to the latest version. We will work alongside you and guide you into a secure, bright future with technology as your ally. Contact us now to find out how we can help you.