Considerations when choosing a VOIP provider    

The World is changing fast and people are moving to buying online without ever needing to speak with another person. However, for many businesses, speaking to someone is still very important as it helps them to build a relationship with the suppliers and clients.

Although e-commerce is booming,it’s a simple fact that higher value sales are rarely done only online.Customer service, supplier management, and even the process of hiring staff all require individuals to interact with each other, which means calls are still essential to just about every business.

So, with calls still being the primary method of communication for many businesses, choosing the right company to handle your calls is essential. The wrong VOIP provider can have a detrimental impact on your business, causing issues such as downtime, low call quality, or limited functionality. Each of these could mean a loss in reputation, and therefore business opportunities.

To prevent such issues, here are some key considerations when choosing your VOIP provider…

Number portability

Being able to keep your businesses phone number is vital to most businesses. If customers can’t reach you on the number they wrote down for you, this can have big impact on sales.Some providers don’t have porting agreements, especially smaller players. In the past, we have seen this used as a customer retention strategy, with smaller players not allowing you to port a phone number to other providers, and essentially holding you to ransom. Using the larger carriers generally stops this as they have more porting agreements; this is generally due to the fact that they win and lose customers all the time. At TelcoSolutions, we will always check portability ahead of recommending the best VOIP carrier to work with.

Resilience

There are various potential points of failure to be aware of when using a VOIP provider. These include the‘last mile’ circuit between your business and them (this could either be internet facing, or a private connection), the VOIP provider’s telephone switch and finally, where they break their calls out to the rest of the world.

The first part, the ‘last mile’,is down to you. You can choose if you need just the one circuit or a backup circuit as well, the quality of the circuit, and whether it comes with SLAs and uptime guarantees. What is down to the provider, however, is how resilient their switch and call breakout are. Generally, smaller lower cost providers will have less resources to invest in, which ensures that any potential downtime is minimised. This means that a cheaper service can often be much more expensive in the long term.

Sneaky charges

Most VOIP providers offer what looks like great fixed costs, with unlimited calls and a really simple to understand package. However, when we analyse billing for potential customers,we often see a lot of extra costs. Calling outside of the US, dialling premium rate numbers, and making directory enquiries can all have very different ratecards depending on who you use. For example, if your business does a lot of international calling, you will want to make sure that you have a good idea of what you will be charged long before you sign up. Analysing past bills can help you work out how much this is likely to impact your actual bill at the end of the month (rather than the one you hoped for!).