If you’re in the market for a new telephony solution, you’re bound to have noticed that the number of features now available are phenomenal. Integration, analytics, Power BI – they all have a place and for many businesses they serve an excellent purpose. We deal with hundreds of medium sized businesses day in and day out, and feedback from our engineers tells us that traditional telephony features are also still so important.
Whether your staff are on site or home based, as a business, you want your calls to be answered promptly and dealt with appropriately. You need a solution that works for your team, whether that means phones on desks, softphones on PCs or Mobility apps. One of the biggest challenges we came across when COVID-19 sent us all home to work was getting calls to the staff that needed to take them, and for their call quality to be good enough to sound professional. Even with all the other methods of communications available now, this is still so fundamental to most organisations.
When you’re looking at new telephony solutions, it’s easy to be bamboozled by all the features they now provide. Many offerings will look like a shiny new toy with all the flashing lights and clever gadgets. However, it’s vital that you consider whether choosing an IT orientated solution is right for your business and whether the solution itself and also your own infrastructure has enough backbone. If there’s a problem, will you be able to assist in the trouble-shooting required. Many newer providers offer technical support that is limited to email or online ticket systems rather than an engineer on the phone or on-site offering help. This is why Cranberry offer our own Cloud Support packages to give customers that additional support when they need it.
You also need to consider whether your business still has a requirement for some of the more traditional peripheral items. Cranberry are still seeing customers with fax machines and cordless phones on site, door entry units and even loud ringer bells or strobes in noisy areas. While there can be some clever workarounds to connect these to new telephony solutions, for some devices only an analogue extension will do, and some cloud solutions simply can’t cope with these. Before you take the plunge, make sure you’ve done an inventory of anything that might use a telephone line or extension, such as franking machines and credit card machines. Check with your new provider whether these can be catered for. So many of these can now be dealt with online or by using an ATA but you will need to go through the process to ensure you’re not left without service on the day of cutover.
There’s no denying telephony has moved forward at great speed over the last 10 years or so, but don’t forget the basics – your customers want to be able to talk to you.
