The modern consumer is vastly different from the average consumer just 20 years ago.
They expect a lot and, when they don’t get it, they have a lot of other options they’re more than happy to explore.
This is a growing trend – consumers keep expecting clearer, easier-to-use communication even from small or mom-and-pop businesses.
Older phone systems just can’t keep up. With an old, out-of-touch phone system, a business will have trouble landing new customers, lose their current customers faster as other companies innovate, and get in the way of any future expansions or growth.
Luckily though, modernizing a business’s phone system can be a breeze with VoIP, especially a cloud-hosted phone system. VoIP phone systems save companies money in a lot more ways than just making customers happy.
Fewer Calling Fees
Phone lines come with all kinds of calling fees, limitations, and seat charges.
With phone lines, you have to track the number of outgoing and incoming calls, especially if those calls are international, which can directly get in the way of growth.
VoIP phone systems don’t care about interstate or long-distance calls. And when there is a charge for an international call, it’s much cheaper.
On average, a VoIP phone system will save companies up to 50% off their monthly phone bill.
Scalability
Phone lines use literal copper wire lines to make your calls. Every call you make, at one time, needs a unique line.
Want to add a few salespeople to your team? Pay for a line for each of them.
With VoIP, you pay for something called seat charges. These are much less expensive and come with more than just a single phone number.
Each seat is connected to the entire phone system in place, with full access to all the features that come with VoIP, meaning you get more, but for less.
And, because VoIP phone systems send calls across the internet, you can make as many as you want, at the same time, without having to add costly phone lines.
Flexibility and Mobility
From a strict business perspective, we learned a lot about the future of businesses from the covid-19 pandemic.
The way you communicate with your customers needs to be flexible, mobile, and capable of changing as new technologies become available.
Old phone lines cannot do any of that. They’re extremely limited in what they can do now, and there are basically no new innovations on the horizon that gives them merit when thinking about the future.
A cloud-based VoIP phone system can connect your whole business through a single phone system, transferring calls, using extensions, and connecting team members even when everyone is miles and miles apart.
Modern businesses need this now, and with what we learned from the pandemic, mobile, remote working is probably going to become even more critical in the future.
Outages
Phone lines can experience all kinds of different outages, but so can the internet.
With phone lines, fixing them can take days. Weeks. Maybe longer. Delays like this could be lethal for a business.
For VoIP phone systems, they have to worry about internet outages, of course. These outages last for a significantly less amount of time and are usually cheaper to fix if it’s on your end.
And with features like an SD-WAN, your phone system will deviate to a working internet connection whenever there is a dip in quality or an outage, making sure your business stays connected, even when others aren’t.
Updates
Updating an old phone line is very expensive. When you want a feature, like an auto-attendant, you have to buy the hardware, pay for installation, and pay for upkeep.
Want another one at a different location? Do all of that again.
This goes for every update, every additional feature you want to add, making updating a less attractive feature (and where is that going to leave your business in a few years?).
VoIP phone systems are basically future-proof; they can add features or update in the blink of an eye and allows a ton of personalization, so it meets the needs of your team and your customers, even when those needs change.
With a VoIP phone system, you basically have a future-proof phone system on your hands. Adding new features or updates is fast and painless. This lets you personalize how your business communicates with each other and your customers.
Cost of Hardware
Hardware is expensive. And if you already have a physical phone system, you’ve already paid that cost which can make wanting to stick with it an at
tractive option.
But fewer businesses are making the materials for these phone systems than ever before. And that just means the cost of these necessary pieces of hardware is even more expensive.
This will just keep getting worse as more businesses happily convert to a VoIP phone system.
With cloud-hosted VoIP, there is only one piece of hardware you need to consider – the phone itself.
Features
This is the most significant difference between the two phone systems.
With a physical phone line, you have to physically connect and add hardware for every new feature you want to add.
With a cloud-based VoIP phone system, you’ll have access to so many features it might feel overwhelming (but in a good way).
Adding features like text updates and notifications for your team and your customers make staying connected incredibly easy.
You can check out more VoIP phone system features right here (there are about 30 of them).
With the increase in cost, difficulty, and inability to innovate, old phone lines quickly become a
Old phone lines are, for most companies, too costly right now. And as time goes by and customers expect and demand faster, better customer service, that cost will only go up.
Consumers, business owners, and team members all want a communication system that is flexible, easy to use, and, most importantly, effective.
A cloud-based VoIP phone system doesn’t just offer what we all want now, but it’s the foundation for future innovations, which will define which businesses climb and which ones fall.
Not sure if a VoIP phone system is right for you? Get a fast and free consultation right here and see!
