The best Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution is one that will address the needs of your business and those of your employees and clients. Voicemail, routing, and conferencing utilities are basic features that should be offered in any service that you consider. Depending on the nature of your operation, you may also appreciate employee tracking and collaboration tools. The cost to implement VoIP is usually modest and the service can often be obtained without a binding contract.
Voicemail is a popular feature without which many companies cannot thrive. A suitable small business VoIP service will allow you to access voicemails remotely. Advanced functions can include those that group messages and send them via email. If your operation relies heavily on data usage, digitized voice mail can ensure that the messages are delivered instantly to recipients.
If your company does not have a physical presence or sends its employees out into the field, you may consider a small business VoIP service that offers call routing. You can manually designate values to your employees so that calls are automatically distributed to certain agents over others. For example, questions about billing can be assigned to agents who work with accounts, while technical support queries may be addressed by those in your information technology (IT) department.
The ability to hold conferences may be something into which you need to look if you often take on clients who are located outside of your region. With small business VoIP service, conferencing can be done over the phone or over the web. You may be able to install compatible software to record these meetings, if you need to reference them at a later date.
Some VoIP services for businesses let you track the availability of your employees. By simply looking at this feature, you can see which members of your team are by their desks or at least connected to the Internet through a mobile device. This can be especially useful if your business is a virtual one, or if you need to quickly dispatch employees to job sites.
Collaboration tools can advantageous if you choose a small business VoIP service that specializes in facilitating group projects. File and screen-sharing are typical features, but community access can also extend to live databases, which can also be collectively compiled. Clients can even be active participants of this process, as they help to build their own projects.
The costs associated with implementing a small business VoIP service are nominal compared to land-line alternatives. Generally, VoIP companies waive setup fees, and provide unlimited local and long-distance calling at a modest, monthly flat-rate. You will also be able to find services that are available without the requirement of signing a contract.
