VoIP Service Providers Folsom

Choosing between VoIP service providers in Folsom

Switching to VoIP offers a lot of advantages to businesses, especially SMBs. It is, however, important to make sure that your VoIP service maintains the same standards of quality and security as your existing telephone network. Your VoIP service provider will play a key role in making this happen. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to choosing between VoIP service providers in Folsom.

How to choose VoIP Service Providers?

1. Decide what you need from your VoIP service provider

There are three main areas where your VoIP service provider can assist. The most obvious one is the provision of VoIP services. The less obvious ones are the provision of network infrastructure and the provision of equipment for users.

2. VoIP services

In principle, VoIP services can mean anything from basic calling and call-management functions to Unified Communications with customized third-party integrations. In practice, most SMBs tend to focus on the parts of VoIP which make the biggest difference to their costs, in other words, regular calling, and call management, including call-recording, conference-calling, and video-calling. If they’re still running faxes they will generally use the VoIP implementation as an opportunity to switch to Fax over IP (fax).

Realistically, they are unlikely to go much further, at least not at this point. This means that VoIP service providers who are purely focused on the SMB market may not have the technical skills to support more challenging implementations. The good news is that there are still plenty of VoIP service providers who can, you will, however, need to make sure that they are comfortable working with SMBs rather than geared purely towards enterprise clients.

3. Network infrastructure

Implementing VoIP almost always means that companies need to upgrade their network infrastructure, possibly significantly. The question then becomes how to go about doing this. If you want your VoIP service provider to take care of this for you, then you will need to make sure that this is reflected in your vendor-selection requirements (and budget). If you want to take care of it by other means then you will need to ensure that everything is ready by the time you want to go live. Either way, making an early start on the process is highly recommended.

4. User equipment

Similar comments apply here. As a minimum, you’re going to need softphones and/or VoIP handsets. If you use softphones, then you’re going to need headsets and it’s highly recommended to invest in the best ones you can reasonably afford. You might be surprised how much of a difference a good headset can make to call quality and that can help to save on your bandwidth.

Given that softphones can vary widely in both quality and usability (especially with mobile devices), it is preferable if you can put together a sufficient budget to use entry-level VoIP handsets if necessary. That way, you can still consider a VoIP service provider who offers a good level of service overall, even if their softphone client leaves you unimpressed.

If you can source this equipment yourself, you could potentially strike the best possible deal, especially if you’re happy to look on the reconditioned market (obviously be careful to use a reputable source, preferably one who offers a warranty). You could also put yourself in a position to avoid being tied into a long-term contract. On the other hand, having equipment bundled with a contract does allow you to spread the cost and this could make it possible to buy better equipment than you could otherwise have afforded.

5. Decide what you need from a VoIP service contract

Once you have covered the basic practicalities, it’s time to go more in-depth into exactly what you need from your VoIP service contract. In particular, you need to decide your minimum standards for call quality, customer service and technical support, and security and compliance.

With regards to this last point, remember that VoIP services will generally transmit not just confidential information, but also personal information. This means that they will come under the scope of data protection laws. If you want to implement call recording, then there are further legalities to consider, especially if you want to store the recordings, which will probably be the case for most companies.

Also, remember that video-conferencing brings another set of security implications. Part of these will be on your VoIP service provider to manage, so you need to make sure that they are up to the task. A lot of them, however, will be on you. In short, you will need to make sure that your staff members know how to use video-conferencing tools safely.

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