This article is how we chose Digium for our office phone service provider.
To start at the beginning of the thread, start here.
You might think scalability is the least of your worries because you never plan to get so big that you’ll run into problems. You’re missing the point.
Old school scalability is about running out of ports in the back of the hardware to plug desk phones into. Modern scalability is about working from anywhere and still receiving phone calls AND never running out of capacity in your phone system.
It should be no surprise A3E chose a VOIP phone system for scalability reasons but the following are the kind of scaling that was important to me.
- Transfer to Cell Phone Automatically – This was super important to me. I wanted everyone calling our main phone number, NOT the employees cell phone numbers. This kept the client tied to our company and not to the employee. You don’t need to be told, clients represent future potential revenues. You don’t want an employee walking off with YOUR client when they leave. Your clients need to call a number you own and control.
Transferring calls to cell phones allows you to set hours of operation too. You can separate work and home life, increasing employee satisfaction and retention. When a customer calls after hours, the call goes to voicemail and is emailed as a sound file to the employee email. The email shows up on their phone. They can decide whether and when to get back to the client.
Transferring calls to cell phones also keeps operators from having to take messages and often our scientists can take the calls right in the field. - Desk Phones – When an employee is in the office, they can use their desk phone if they want to, they can also use their cell phone as their primary, even if the call is internal to your phone system. VOIP systems use what are called “soft” phones which work through the operating system on their computers. Not buying desk-phones is a handy way to save money if you want to. For key staff who are on the phone all the time, a desk phone is the best. They also tie into bluetooth headsets to aid in comfort in the office.
These desk phones, because they are VOIP can be plugged into home internet connections. They act the same and ring the same so your employees can work from anywhere. A handy perk during the covid times. - No new hardware – Old school phone systems used to be enormous boxes on the wall of the computer room. This physical box had limitations on lines coming in, VOIP does not.
- No Busy Signals – Busy signals are the kiss of death. With a VOIP system you can literally have infinite simultaneous inbound and outbound phone calls. This is not the case with an on-premise phone system, only a cloud hosted system.
Phone System Customer Experience
A3 Environmental Consultants is a midwest woman owned company serving the needs of utilities, governments and commercial real estate transactions.
