VoIP Service Providers Elk Grove

Choosing between VoIP service providers in Elk Grove

These days, the question is not “if” businesses will make the switch to VoIP but “when”. Once that decision is taken, it raises a whole lot of other questions about how they will do so. Implementing and running a VoIP service is a whole lot easier when you have a good VoIP provider on your side. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to choosing between VoIP service providers in Elk Grove.

How To VoIP Service Providers?

Decide if you need your VoIP service provider to manage your hosting for you

It may seem odd to look at this first, but organizing the necessary infrastructure for VoIP can easily be the biggest and most challenging part of any VoIP service implementation. If you decide you want your VoIP service provider to organize this for you, then you need to include this in your vendor-selection process. If you decide you want to organize this some other way, then you need to decide how you are going to address this. Either way, it needs to be a high priority.

Decide if you need your VoIP service provider to provide user equipment

Similar comments apply here, albeit generally on a smaller scale. You’re going to need some form of equipment for your users to access the VoIP service. This may include softphones, headsets, VoIP handsets, speakerphones (for conference-calling), and webcams (for video-calling).

If you use softphones, then they will come from your VoIP service provider and will usually be free (or provided at a very nominal cost). It is, however, generally advisable to think about whether or not you really need to commit to them for reasons of space. If not, you might want to think about whether you can afford to go with VoIP handsets if you find a VoIP service provider you like even though you are unimpressed by their softphone client.

The other equipment, you can usually either source yourself or have bundled with your VoIP service contract (or a combination of both). Either way, you’re going to have to get it organized before you can go live with VoIP so it makes sense to start organizing it as early as you can.

Assess your current telephone service and decide if any changes need to be made

Your current telephone service is your minimum level of functionality. Anything your staff members can do now, they should still be able to do when you switch to VoIP. The more complex your current system is, the more careful you need to be about finding a VoIP service provider who can manage it going forward. Not only will they need suitable technical skills, but they’ll also need an understanding of SMBs rather than just enterprise clients.

Most SMBs, however, are likely to have relatively simple telephone systems, which they might actually like to upgrade. The key questions then become how much and how quickly. If you simply want to include mainstream value-add functions such as basic call-management, including call-recording, conference-calling, video-calling, and Fax over IP (efax), then you’ll probably find that any business-grade VoIP service provider will be able to offer what you need. The possible exception is Fax over IP, as this is technically different from VoIP. There are, however, specialist Fax over IP vendors, who can plug the gap if necessary.

Once you start going beyond this, then you’re probably going to find yourself with a reduced pool of potential VoIP service providers from whom to choose. That means less competition for your custom. This means that it may be more economical to start with a limited implementation of VoIP and build up from there in stages, eventually changing to a new VoIP service provider if necessary.

This approach would potentially give you access to a wider range of pricing plans, so you could recoup your initial investment more quickly and potentially use subsequent savings to help finance further development.

Define your minimum service standards

When considering minimum service standards, you need to look beyond technical quality (although this is obviously important) and also consider customer service and support, and security and compliance.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of implementing VoIP in a secure and compliant manner. Not only will your VoIP service probably be used to transmit data you would prefer to keep confidential, but it will almost certainly be used to transmit personal data. This means that it will have to keep data privacy front and center at all times. If you want to implement video-calling and/or call-recording then there are extra security and legality implications to keep in mind.

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