5 Tips for Choosing the Best VoIP Service for Your Business

In today’s competitive marketplace, choosing the best VoIP service for your small business isn’t easy. Loud advertising and confusing claims can end making all your choices sound the same.

Here are 5 tips to make sure you partner with the right service provider for your business:

1. Determine Your Priorities

The first step in choosing a VoIP service is to clearly define what your business needs from its telephone service. Are three of your six employees constantly on the go? Or do you have a larger customer service team that spend their days helping clients on the phone and online?

In the first case, a call-forwarding feature may be tops on your list while a high voice quality and reliability are more important in the second case.

2. Best VoIP Service By Features

Look for a balance of cost and features. Each provider packages their services in a slightly different manner. Sometimes what you really need is one feature buried in a package of features you’ll never use.

Others offer services individually as add-ons. The base rate for service may sound great, but when you “add on” all the features you really need, the cost is far higher than you may have expected.

3. 3rd Party Integrations

A seamless communication flow may be a major reason why you’re looking at an Internet-driven system in the first place. With VoIP, your phone system is transformed into a data system. You can now connect call data to your CRM or help desk software. Voicemail transcriptions can be fed into emails as well.

Or at least they can with some feature combinations. Your small band of roving employees my miss out on this feature because in some cases the mobile app may not be able to create a transcript of a voicemail.

So even though you thought you found the business VoIP feature right for your phone needs, you’ll want to make sure it supports your data needs as well.

4. Quality and Service Considerations

When it comes to your business, obviously you can’t place too much much emphasis on the quality, reliability or security of your communications. Superior service guarantees are one thing, but the systems and redundancies to back them up are another. So is the confidence to back up service guarantees in writing.

You’ll also want to make sure your IT department is involved in making your service provider choice. They can help you determine if a virtual LAN, which is usually used to segregate voice calls to ensure high quality, would also improve your VoIP security.

5. Price Considerations

Unfortunately, all too often the price is the top consideration a company uses to pick a business VoIP service. We list it last because it’s a fundamental business need, not an optional piece of equipment for the break room.

Once you understand your routine call volumes and what might cause a spike in your demand comparing the price options of the various providers is fairly straightforward.

Get Started

Mapping out your phone usage is probably the best place to start deciding who offers the best VoIP service for your business. However, if you’re not sure if you’re asking all the right questions, these FAQs about VoIP can help you make sure you’re not missing anything.