Telephone System Mistakes You Could be Making

You might take your telephones for granted as they have become such a commonplace in businesses. You don’t really think how much money you save by having a phone system or how they help run your business smoothly. Considering how long telephones have been around for, it’s amazing how many businesses are making the same mistakes! Here are some examples…

Paying Too Much

A lot of businesses are always looking at areas where they can cut costs, but a lot of people don’t consider the ways of reducing their phone bill. Recent studies found that 9 out of 10 business have no idea how much they are paying for their phone bill and few outgoings are taken for granted as much as the telephone bill, especially when it can be reduced dramatically by looking into new technology.

If you change to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) you can save as much as 80% on your business phone bill because the flexibility that VoIP offers will reduce the actual cost of calls. If you use a VoIP solution it will replace the traditional ISDN phonelines which a lot of businesses use without knowing how expensive they are.

Ignoring Customer Experience

Customers are the lifeblood for a business, so it is really important to consider the customer experience. Do you think it would be a good idea to hire a receptionist to answer incoming calls, or can it be done automatically by a call attendant program? Or how easy is it to transfer incoming calls between members of staff?

It’s always a good idea to test your phone systems from the customer experience as well as internally, you need to know what kind of experience they are getting.

Ignoring Infrastructure Issues

One of the most overlooked issues in a business phone system is infrastructure. Traditional phone systems rely on SIP trunks and ISDN lines which can be difficult and expensive when trying to add additional lines and business locations. When a business grows it can quickly outgrow its telephone infrastructure and your system will start to struggle with the increased call volumes or extra extensions.

VoIP uses your internet, so it means all of your employees will be on the same IP network which means no extra hardware is needed to add new business location. Traditional phone systems can take weeks to install additional lines, but if you have VoIP it can be done in minutes. This increases flexibility which makes it easy to keep your phone systems up to speed, as well as saving you money.