VoIP Service Providers Yuba City

Choosing between VoIP service providers in Yuba City

Your VoIP service will form a core part of your business. It can both reduce costs and improve business processes. For that to happen, however, you need the right VoIP service provider on your side. With that in mind, here’s a quick guide to choosing between VoIP service providers in Yuba City.

How To VoIP Service Providers?

First, work out what you need your VoIP service provider to do for you

There are basically three questions you need to answer. Do you need your VoIP service vendor to manage your hosting? What exact VoIP functionality do you need your VoIP service vendor to support? Do you need your VoIP service vendor to provide equipment for your users?

Do you need your VoIP service vendor to manage your hosting?

Unless you have significant redundant capacity in your current network infrastructure, you’re going to need extra bandwidth. Your options are to organize this in-house, to have managed hosting plus a separate VoIP service contract or to have your VoIP service provider manage your hosting for you. If you’re going for the latter, then you’ll need to make sure that you choose a VoIP service provider who also supports hosting.

What exact VoIP functionality do you need your VoIP service vendor to support?

At a basic level, VoIP can be used essentially as a like-for-like copy of a standard business landline telephone system. At an advanced level, VoIP can be used for large-scale contact-center deployments. In principle, there are all kinds of stages in between. In practice, most SMBs are likely to focus on the parts of VoIP which make an obvious contribution to reducing costs, so these tend to be the parts of VoIP which are supported by most vendors. The further you want to go with VoIP, the smaller your pool of potential vendors may be.

Do you need your VoIP service vendor to provide equipment for your users?

If you’re planning on building your deployment around softphones, then you’ll definitely get them from your VoIP service provider. It’s recommended to trial any softphone client thoroughly before committing to it because their quality can vary widely, especially if you want to use them on mobile devices. If you like a VoIP service vendor but aren’t thrilled by their softphone client then you need to decide whether to purchase VoIP handsets or whether to move on.

For clarity, although softphones themselves are installed on existing hardware, you are still going to need external hardware to use them, specifically headsets. It’s worth investing in high-quality ones as they can really make a difference to the call quality. Also, budget for replacing them as they become worn out (the cables will generally wear over time).

If you’re not going for softphones, you’ll need VoIP handsets. Even if you are going for softphones you may still want some VoIP handsets as softphones might not be suitable for everyone. You might also want to think about speakerphones for conference-calling and webcams for video-calling. Once you decide what hardware you need, you have to choose between sourcing it yourself or looking for a VoIP service provider who will bundle it with your contract at a reasonable price.

Second, define your minimum service standards

In addition to defining technical standards, you also need to set out minimum standards for customer service and technical support and security and compliance. Keep in mind that most VoIP systems will carry personal data. This means that they will come under data protection legislation and regulations. If you’re implementing call-recording, then you have even more legalities to consider, especially if you want to store the recordings, which is likely to be the case.

Remember that you can designate responsibility but not accountability. In other words, if data is handed to you, then, in the eyes of the law and compliance regulators, you are responsible for what happens to it, not your VoIP service provider. This means that you need to be confident that they will fulfill your legal obligations and this means having a robust, enforceable contract. For this reason, the safest option is to stick with VoIP service providers in Yuba City, or at least near Yuba City.

Third, assess what you need from a calling plan

Look at your historic, current, and predicted usage and see what calling plans fit those requirements. Ignore anything outside of that, no matter how affordable it is, unless it has a clear purpose for your specific business. Remember, if you start small, you can always upgrade later but if you commit to a more expensive contract, you’re stuck with it.

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