One of the more common questions we get from customers and prospects is which is better, a landline phone system or a VoIP phone system?
This is an interesting question because in our experience, everyone hates the phone system they currently have, whether it is a landline phone system, or a VoIP phone system. People do tend to hate their VoIP phones a bit less than landline phones.
However, most businesses today are either already on a VoIP phone system or they are thinking about moving to one. So that must mean that VoIP is better, right?
As a general rule, VoIP will be less expensive, more efficient, easier to implement and maintain, and provide more features than a landline-based phone system. However, there are some instances where a landline phone may be better. The obvious answer is that some businesses are located in areas where there may not be reliable, high-speed internet service. A VoIP phone system is generally going to require a fast and reliable internet connection, and some rural small businesses may not have the connectivity infrastructure required to have a serviceable VoIP solution.
However, assuming there is sufficient internet speed and reliability available in the place where a business is located, VoIP will almost always be the better choice. Below are some points to consider when making the choice to stick with your legacy copper-wire landline phone system, or making the switcheroo to a VoIP phone system.
The simplest and most obvious reason businesses end up switching to VoIP is the lower cost. VoIP is almost always cheaper than a landline-based telephony solution.
Recent survey findings suggest that between 60% and 70% of businesses who moved away from a landline-based, on-premise business phone system to a VoIP system saved money. Some of the areas of savings included the cost of equipment (desk phones, specialized servers, dedicated cabling, etc.) for landline systems. VoIP phones run on the same hardware (laptop computers, data cabling, routers, etc.) as the usual office computer equipment runs on, so companies realize savings through leveraging existing assets, and the elimination of actual phone lines. VoIP also facilitates remote work because there is not a requirement for specialized telephone equipment at the remote location.
When businesses switch from landline phones to VoIP systems, the cost of local and domestic calls drops to nearly half of the cost to make those calls on their legacy landline phones. Overseas calls and international calls are much cheaper than before, sometimes showing savings up to 90% less. These cost reductions are strictly call charge reductions and they don’t include the other savings that moving to VoIP can realize.
A frequently cited reason for migrating from landline phones to VoIP is the flexibility and ease of moving employees to remote work locations.
A major concern over the past 18 months or so has been whether remote employees would be distracted by working at home or in other remote, non-supervised locations. While managers wrung their hands while imagining their remote employees in robes and slippers sitting in front of the TV instead of working, it turns out that the opposite was more likely. About 40% of remote workers ended up working longer hours, and produced more work output than their corporate office-bound counterparts. This not only demonstrates that remote workers have more difficulty separating their work and non-work activities, but that remote workers frequently took advantage of the time that would normally be spent commuting to an office to get more work done.
Instead of worrying about employee productivity while working remotely, employers should probably worry more about the remote worker burnout that can occur resulting in less satisfied and less motivated employees who may opt to look for other work.
Businesses that use telemarketing teams or that have large call centers can increase efficiency and shorten the amount of time required to complete and close a call. This is because of the additional tools and capabilities that can be provided by a VoIP based phone and calling system. The really obvious advantage is that telemarketers can work from home or other remote locations without losing any of the capability that they would have sitting in an on-site call center.
The other huge advantage of VoIP for telemarketing teams is the power of reporting that almost all Voice Over IP systems have out of the box. Managers can track the activities and performance of telemarketers with relative ease, and can use that data to improve efficiency of the operation, shorten the time it takes to resolve a customer issue, and get more productive calls accomplished in less time.
Reliable and available communication is the lifeblood of business. Conversely, unreliable or unavailable communication can bring a company to its knees through lost productivity from poor communication. The past calendar year exposed how reliable communication was critical to business flexibility and agility during an extracted period of disruption. Those organizations who were able to adapt and thrive during uncertainty were positioned to come out of the back end of that uncertainly ready to get back to business. Having a flexible Voice Over Internet Protocol phone system was a key piece of the puzzle to maintaining flexible communications operations.
Time is a precious commodity. Once it’s gone, you don’t generally get it back. A VoIP phone system has the flexibility and programmability to automate repetitive tasks that would normally be done manually sometimes dozens or hundreds of times each day. Studies have shown that companies that have 25 or more phone users can save up to $1000 per month, and reclaim almost 30 minutes per employee of productive time each day by switching to a VoIP phone instead of retaining their legacy landline, on-premise phone system.
There are lots of reasons why switching to a VoIP telephone system will save you time and money over your existing legacy Landline-based phone system. To speak to an expert on VoIP phone systems, please click here.