Best VoIP Service Folsom

Choosing the best VoIP service partner in Folsom

Switching to VoIP takes a bit of work but the rewards are more than worth it. Both the transition and the general running of the VoIP service can be made a whole lot easier if you have the right VoIP service vendor on your side. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to choosing the best VoIP service partner in Folsom.

How To Choose Best VoIP Service?

Analyze your current landline usage

The advanced functionality of VoIP genuinely can benefit your business in all kinds of ways. Realistically, however, for most companies, the top priority will be to get access to the attractive calling rates which are VoIP’s headline selling point. This means that, for most companies, especially SMBs, the astute move is to start by implementing a basic calling and faxing service. Then build on that in stages as, when, and if your needs, wants and budget allow.

Your historic and current bills and predicted usage should give you a baseline idea about what VoIP services you’ll need with the initial implementation (and any high-priority wants). Ideally, you’ll take this a step further and get some more details about how, exactly, users are (or would like) to use your phone (and fax) service(s) as this may influence your choice of equipment.

Survey users about what sort of equipment they would like

If you’re implementing VoIP then you’re going to have to replace your old landline phones. You, therefore, have an opportunity to survey your users and ask them what they would like to see in their place. This is very likely to depend on job function.  

For example, customer service staff, who spend most of their time at their desks and a lot of time on the phone, may want softphones and headsets. This keeps their hands free and gives them more space at their desks to use as they wish, for example, to take notes during a call. Staff who move around a lot may prefer cordless VoIP handsets to reduce the number of calls they miss and have to return. Staff in desk-based roles who don’t use the telephone all that often might prefer the familiar simplicity of a desk-based VoIP handset.

Once you have an idea of what sort of equipment you will need, you can decide whether you can get it from your vendor as part of your contract or if you will need to purchase it yourself. You may find that you’ll need (or want) to do a bit of both. For example, you might get softphones and at least some VoIP handsets from your VoIP service vendor but buy the headsets yourself.

Check your cell phone usage

You might also want to look at whether you can transfer traffic from any cell phones to your VoIP system. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to eliminate them but anything you can do to move traffic away from them and onto VoIP is likely to result in major cost-savings. You will, however, need extra bandwidth to cope with the extra traffic and this may feed into your choice of VoIP service vendor or, at least, VoIP service package.

Decide whether or not you want to implement Fax over IP as well

Fax over IP (efax) spent years in the business wilderness due to concerns about reliability and security, but these have now been resolved. In fact, efax is now widely held to be more secure than traditional fax because it is paperless by default. It is certainly massively more cost-effective since it saves on both calling costs and printing costs (this makes it better for the environment too) and also more space-effective.

Although Fax over IP is, technically, different from VoIP, it is supported by most VoIP service vendors. Given that traditional faxes run over the standard telephone lines which you want to replace with VoIP, it generally makes sense to implement efax and VoIP together (assuming you need both). Most VoIP service vendors will also support efax but in the unlikely event that you want to use one which does not, some vendors specialize in efax (although they are becoming rarer).

Decide what VoIP services you need/want and in what timescale

If you hope to speed ahead with enhancements to your basic service, then you’ll need to look for a VoIP service vendor who can already support all of your requirements. If, however, you’re only looking for a more basic service and/or can work to a slower timetable, then you may be able to look at a wider selection of VoIP service vendors now and potentially change later.

If you’d like to speak to one of the best VoIP service partners in Folsom, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.