In our last blog, we revisited the ever-important topic of VoIP telephony and provided some insight as to why making the switch to VoIP would be good for your business. We imagine, however, that some North American business owners may not necessarily be convinced just yet. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the general attitude of many who have been using landline telephones to conduct business since their companies started.
In today’s blog, we’ll list some important reasons why it just may be time to ditch your old landline telephone. Here are three:
1. You can’t get any work done when you’re not in the office.
With a landline telephone system, you are forced to make and take calls at your place of business. When the business phone rings, the phones in your office ring, right? It’s pretty standard stuff. However, this is very limiting. With VoIP, you can leave your office and have your business number connect to your smartphone – or just about any other device that utilizes the internet – so that you can make and take calls wherever you are!
“Using mobile, cloud-based communication technology allows you to work from anywhere, including at home or on vacation—for better or worse,” explains Katie Truesdell in a National Federation of Independent Business article.
2. You’re finding customization difficult.
As Matt Grech points out on GetVoIP.com, landline telephone systems are much more limited in their functionality. Adding on features like call recording generally requires the addition of hardware.
“Landlines also do not provide mobile capabilities, and what you see is what you get,” he writes, “One of VoIP’s strongest points is the level of customization possible. Users can customize subscriptions to choose specific services or features. Users can specify greetings, business hours, individual user extensions, calling options, and much more.”
3. You’re still giving out your cell number for business purposes.
Enjoying privacy on your personal time is important. But, for many small business owners, peace and quiet is hard to come by. This is because they’re regularly giving out their cell phone numbers for business purposes. As a result, calls come in all times of the day and night, disturbing their private lives. Perhaps, more importantly, giving out a cell phone number is considered somewhat unprofessional.
“The biggest mistake I see small businesses make is they advertise their cell phone as their business phone, never taking into account: What if you grow?” says founder and CEO of TQI, Michael Bremmer in Truesdell’s article, “Virtual numbers and VoIP are very inexpensive. But more importantly, they are very flexible and allow a business to grow as it needs to. With a single cell number, all calls go to one phone and cannot easily be handled by others so that you can scale your business.”
At MeloTel, we offer VoIP-based Commercial Phone Services which include a free Polycom phone program that is designed to make the switch to cloud-hosted phone services easy and cost-effective. For more information, please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-888-MELOTEL or use the Live Chat feature on our website!
