If you’re starting up a small business, sooner or later you’re going to need to think about a phone connection.
Nowadays, as people rely more and more on their mobile phones to make calls, so have more and more people been getting rid of their old analogue landline connections.
Some small business start-ups also try to rely on a mobile phone connection and not bother at all with a landline.
But mobile phones can work out expensive, and they aren’t always the best either in terms of image.
It depends on the nature of your business, but often people expect a solid business to also have a solid “landline” type phone connection, rather than just a mobile number.
So, what should you do if your business ideally needs a landline connection, but you don’t want to have to go back to paying the high rentals and charges of the landline phone company?
What about Skype?
As an addition to a mobile phone connection, some small business start-ups consider using Skype as their “landline” phone alternative.
It’s true you can register a professional sounding Call ID with Skype for business purposes, or maybe even use your own personal name. This means that you don’t have to make and receive Skype calls using the name rubberduck27 or whatever that you might use for calls with friends and family. Using a Skype Call ID derived from your business name (provided the name isn’t already taken) presents a more professional image.
I myself have registered a Skype Call ID using my business name, but in practice I rarely use it. I set it up mainly for instances where I might want to hold a free international conference call Skype-to-Skype to avoid high international call charges.
The fact is though that Skype is primarily a proprietary free audio-messaging service for private users sitting at their computers. It’s not a quality business-standard telephone service.
For normal business use I prefer to use VOIP.
VOIP is the Solution
VOIP is the system of making landline- or mobile-destination phone calls via the Internet using VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
VOIP provides a much higher level of reliability and call quality than audio-messaging. It also enables you to use a proper VOIP phone to make and receive calls.
With systems such as Skype, you have to run Skype software and connect a USB headset to your PC whenever you want to make or receive a call.
A VOIP phone by contrast runs independently of your PC. Your PC or laptop does not need to be switched on. Indeed, you don’t even need a PC or laptop to use VOIP.
A VOIP phone looks like a normal “landline” phone – although usually it has rather more features, more like the average office landline phone. But the big difference is that a VOIP phone connects to your Internet router or Ethernet connection and not to the landline telecom socket.
You don’t even need a landline connection in order to use VOIP. VOIP will run over any kind of Internet connection as long as it is DSL standard. So if you have for example broadband DSL coming into your premises via the cable tv socket, as I do, then VOIP will happily run over that. You don’t need to have broadband Internet from the telecom company in order to use VOIP.
A Phone Number from the Country of Your Choice
VOIP isn’t just an alternative to an old-style landline. It’s a far better kind of landline which gives you more functions at a much lower price.
VOIP also provides you with a proper geographical telephone number – a number of the location of your choice. Unlike traditional landlines, with VOIP you are not limited to a phone number of the physical location of your office. You can choose a number from a country and city which is best suited to your business and your customers, regardless of where your business is actually physically located.
And no-one needs to know that your phone connection is VOIP-based. It’s completely transparent to callers.
In fact, it’s VOIP that the big companies use in the UK to divert customer service calls made to local numbers in Britain onto call centers in India and elsewhere. The very low cost of VOIP together with the ease of switching enables them to do this.
Your business can also take advantage of the same know-how and low cost to run your business telecoms on VOIP. There’s no real need anymore to have any contact at all with your local landline phone company and their overpriced tariffs.
VOIP also makes it possible for you to have any amount of numbers from practically any locations around the world. For example, if your London-based business does a lot of business with say Australia and the USA, as well as the UK, then you can register a London, Sydney and a New York VOIP phone number, all routing to the same physical VOIP phone.
When you pick up your VOIP phone receiver to make a call, you are for the sake of the call already “located” in London, (assuming for this example that that is the primary number of your VOIP service connection).
In the same way, callers to your number are effectively calling you in London, regardless of where you have actually plugged in your VOIP phone – which can literally be anywhere in the world with an Internet or Ethernet connection.
You don’t even actually need to have a VOIP phone to use VOIP. You can have the calls diverted to an answering service, to a landline number, a mobile number, sent to voicemail, or even emailed to you in MP3 format. VOIP gives you many more options than conventional landline telephony.
VOIP is Shaking Up the Old Telecoms
VOIP is also much cheaper than the old landline telecoms – and offers you a much better service. Since VOIP providers are usually much smaller companies, they provide a much higher level of service and customer responsiveness than the old telecom corporations of the past.
The old telecoms are now starting to lose customers as more users switch over to VOIP. In particular, VOIP is especially now a favourite amongst large companies. Many have now thrown out their old analogue – or even digital IDSN- landline telephone systems and have replaced it with VOIP hardware.
At the moment, it’s mostly business users who know about VOIP and who are ditching their old analogue connections. Take-up of VOIP in the domestic market has been much slower. Partly this is because of lack of awareness. But partly also because home users already tend to rely more on their mobile phones and Skype as alternatives to landline phones and so see less need to use VOIP.
Choosing a VOIP Provider
In recent years Skype have started to move into the VOIP market. Reviews of their service have however so far been mixed. Complaints about Skype’s customer service, hidden charges, as well as the issues of dodgy connectivity and poor call quality are not uncommon. I considered Skype briefly when looking around for a business telecoms solution, but I quickly rejected it.
To my mind, VOIP from Skype at the moment just isn’t suitable for mainstream business use. Whether Skype will change and improve on this part of it’s service now that the company has been taken over by Microsoft remains to be seen. For the meantime though, my recommendation for most serious business users would be to opt for a proper VOIP solution.
When you’re looking around for a VOIP provider you need to do your research properly. Because of the nature of the business, it’s fairly easy for very small, relatively low capitalized operators to enter the sector and then disappear a few years later.
You should consider how reliable and competent their service and infrastructure is, how long they have been in business – and whether they are still likely to be in business in a few years time.
Check Out Voipfone
One of the best VOIP providers in the UK is Voipfone, who are based in London’s Canary Wharf. They offer VOIP-based services, including telephone numbers for locations throughout the world. This is also the VOIP provider I chose to use for my own business.
Voipfone are a small company (most VOIP operators are) and as a result, their customer service is second to none. They’ve been around now for 10 years (which is practically a lifetime in VOIP terms) and they are now well established in the UK VOIP market.
Their service offering includes facilities such as voicemail, mobile phone callback for international mobile calls (much cheaper than the so-called “roaming” tariffs the mainstream mobile operators try to get you to use), as well as virtual switchboard systems and much more.
Your business does not have to be based in the UK and nor do you need to be resident in the UK in order to become a customer of Voipfone.
Find out more about Voipfone at their website: http://www.voipfone.co.uk
Image: VOIP Phone – courtesy of John Seb Barber
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Written by kevin
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Kev's Diary