Why Isn’t My Business Phone Ringing? Managing Phone Systems in a Digital World
Changing your company’s phone system requires some planning for a smooth transition. You need to figure out what features you want on each phone, what should happen when a call comes in, who receives the voicemail, and on it goes. The short-term tasks associated with implementation sometimes mask a larger consideration—what happens if the system breaks?
Voice over IP (VoIP) business phones “break” differently than traditional analog systems.
Common Issues with Analog Phone Systems in Lafayette, IN
Your old phone system was connected to the telephone company by copper wires (i.e., lines). If you lost power, your phones still worked. It required quite a bit to take the system down, like a human physically cutting a line outside (think heavy construction equipment accidentally digging one up) or lightning striking your building and toasting the phone equipment inside. The issues you faced typically included aging equipment that made it hard to hear callers or having to pay an expensive invoice from the phone vendor every time you needed to make a change on the system.
How VoIP Phone Systems “Break”
VoIP phones, however, are digital, like mini computers. They rely on your internet connection and network (all those routers, switches, and other boxes in the closet) to function. And, we all know technology is never 100% perfect (hello, blue screen and spinning wheel of death). Some common issues are call quality (e.g., caller’s voice breaking up like when you’re trying to talk to someone in the middle of nowhere on a cellphone), dropping calls, and phones locking up and needing to be restarted.
As with analog phones, there are too many points of failure to ensure perfection when using a VoIP system; however, there are ways to avoid and prepare for the inevitable. For example, you can install an LTE (cellular) failover system so if your internet connection goes down, your phones start running on LTE and still work. You can also integrate your existing cell phones into your system, so if you lose power, the phone company can easily redirect incoming calls to one or multiple cell phones.
Regardless of whether it’s analog or digital, a phone system is nearly always going to break at some point in its lifetime. VoIP business phones allow small business owners, like yourself, to have the features and functionality that only large companies could afford in the past. Many small businesses are transitioning to VoIP systems after weighing the pros and cons. Embracing this new technology in business phone systems is helping owners run a more efficient operation and typically lower their monthly phone charges. It’s just easy to overlook that new obstacles accompany new technology, and troubleshooting issues is completely different than you might be used to with an analog system.
Where Do I Get Business Phone Service Support?
If all of this makes your head hurt but you want to understand it better, reach out to UpLync Communications, a business phone service provider in Lafayette, Indiana. They offer free support and maintenance with all of their phone systems and are always happy to help you understand those geeky details you don’t want to overlook.