Hosted voice provides a variety of benefits to your communications such as easy scalability and low initial investment. You may also opt to add a few features that improve business processes, such as call forwarding and digital receptionist. Hosted voice offers a wide berth for flexibility but choosing a service provider may prove challenging.
How do you know whether you’re partnering with the right technology company for hosted voice? All services are not created equal, so you’ll need to ask a few questions before choosing:
Who handles their customer service? You want to invest in hosted voice that’s backed up by high-quality support. If a company outsources their customer service, this is an indication that controlling costs may take priority over service and may not offer the level of support you need. Look for live, active support personnel, one-call resolution, proactive monitoring and a variety of customer service access options.
What happens in a worst-case-scenario? A hosted voice service should have a well-developed disaster recovery strategy as part of a bigger business continuity plan. Find out how they handle more routine problems like network congestion, and how they prevent bigger crises, such as a security breach and natural disaster planning.
How do they differ from consumer hosted voice? Consumers are increasingly seeing the cost savings and other benefits of hosted voice, so make sure you’re getting business-level service and features. Look for full network redundancy and voice traffic prioritization.
Get beyond the marketing. Many hosted voice services include the word “reliability” in their marketing verbiage, but don’t accept that claim without some additional information to back it up. A track record of at least 99.99% reliability is the standard you should look for in a service.
What types of unified communications tools do they offer? Even if you’re not wanting to invest in collaborative tools right now, you will want the option in the future as unified communications become more commonly accessed. Look for hosted voice that offers good Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) mobility, which means that it’s easy for a number to travel with a handset or mobile device. You can also determine which unified communications tools might appeal to you, such as call recording and video conferencing.
Choosing a hosted voice solution is about much more than cost. You need to know your business is in the right hands, with the right provider who will connect you with the voice solution your business can use well into the future. Contact us at BlackPoint IT Services for more information.
