How Do You Set Up A VoIP Phone System?

Voice Over Internet Protocol (usually shortened to Voice Over IP or VoIP) is an internet-powered phone service. With the right software, you can answer calls from your computer or mobile phone seamlessly and anywhere in the world. Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has made working from home a mandatory reality for many. This means business telephony has been made location agnostic. People need a phone system that can work anywhere, and VoIP is the best telephony system for that. Businesses can save plenty of money using VoIP over traditional telephone systems. At HSC Systems, we provide VoIP for business and VoIP solutions for those working from home.

VoIP transports your voice in small packets of data (encoding) and then sends it over the internet for a receiver to decode. The quality of the phone call is even higher than normal phone calls because of the very limited interference to VoIP equipment such as an IP phone. This is just one of the many benefits of VoIP.

Major Benefits Of VoIP Services

Lower Costs

When we install VoIP solutions for your business, the savings you make are direct and immediate. Before VoIP, businesses only had a private branch exchange (PBX) setup as their only telephony option. PBX installations are costly capital investments, and even a small business has to invest in the infrastructure and hardware.

VoIP does away with the need to spend all that money by replacing the hardware with an internet connection. What’s better still: there’s no need for extra wiring because VoIP services allow data and voice on the same channel.

Increased Accessibility

With VoIP for business, you can make and receive calls from anywhere. As long as you have a data connection, connecting you to the cloud, you can make and receive calls. With the correct setup, you can use a softphone (software which allows you to use the internet to make phone calls) when you are away from the office.

With everybody working from home nowadays, VoIP is the perfect telephony solution. Employees need not be physically present at the office for them to answer business calls. You can also direct calls between employees in the same VoIP network at no extra cost. Voicemails can even be emailed to the relevant employee so they can get back to the caller. The latter feature works well for companies where telephone calls are a primary KPI. With call reporting you can track productivity of employees and use this as a performance measure. You can see if your customer engagement remains consistent throughout a specified period. Customer retention is important for most businesses and this is a clear and easily scalable way to measure key customer retention metrics.

Complete Portability

If you ever change your business address, you can always keep your VoIP number or Telkom number. VoIP numbers are virtual numbers and are not bound to fixed locations. A virtual number doesn’t require a SIM card or physical address and only requires a reliable data connection to work.

VoIP service providers can also help you set up auto-attendants for your calls. Auto-attendants greet callers and provide a menu to reach the right person. If you’ve ever heard the “Press 1 for X or press 2 for Y” menus, that’s an auto-attendant.

With HSC Systems, VoIP services are available for as little as R50 per month.

Higher Scalability

VoIP solutions are highly scalable. What this means is that the technology will grow in tandem with your business. If you experience a seasonal spike in demand, you just need to tell your VoIP service provider and we can provide you with extra phone lines without the need to purchase new hardware. The extra phone lines are virtual numbers and we will make them available on the existing VoIP network.

Advanced Features For Small Businesses

We want to always try to make things easier for small businesses in the South African market. Advanced features like an auto-attendant and call transferring put VoIP for business over and above traditional telephony. These features allow for a one-person operation to project the image of a larger company. You can use the auto-attendant to ‘transfer’ customers to different departments, even if you’re the only one in the business. The VoIP network also includes built-in conference calling features, so you need not add anything in terms of hardware or software.

Clearer Voice Quality

As long as you have a good internet connection with high bandwidth, your phone calls should be crisp and clear. There should be no latency issues, lag, or call drops. VoIP phones come with noise-cancelling microphones and advanced audio compression codecs for superior sound quality.

What Do You Need For A VoIP Network?

A Reliable Internet Connection

Any VoIP service is as good as the internet connection on which it runs. It’s important that VoIP phones receive low latency (delay before transferring data) on your network.

An Appropriate VoIP Router

This is the only piece of hardware that you have to invest in. A VoIP router is special because it’s configured to prioritize voice traffic over normal web data.

A Subscription With A VoIP Service Provider

You can subscribe to VoIP services with HSC Systems for as little as R50 per month and start calling within a week.

One Last Thing: Ask For A Proof Of Concept

VoIP solutions are not your run-of-the-mill technological implementations. It’s always best to get a company with a proven track record in setting up and maintaining VoIP for business. Remember that VoIP is a cloud-based telephony system, so your service provider should understand client-side and server-side interactions. There are also various micro-services involved in implementing the auto-attendant and different call states.

Before doing anything costly, we run an audit on your entire IT infrastructure to see if it supports VoIP. You might have hardware in place that doesn’t need replacing. We can then help your business more easily. From there, it’s on to saving your money and keeping your business available for customer contact.