Why VOIP?

Forget the technology for a moment but picture this scenario. Tim lives in Brighton and has decided to work from home instead of commuting. He is about to turn on his PC to pick up his emails at 9:00am when his VoIP phone rings. It's his colleague Lisa who is based in France and works out of a business centre. She doesn't know Tim is working from home because she has called his normal internal office extension number. Whilst he logs into his PC, they are discussing a client when Tim notices on his IP phone display that his client is calling him. He says goodbye to Lisa and takes the call. The customer had called Tim's direct office number in London but realised he needed to speak to Lisa as well. This is no problem because as Tim's phone is transparently connected to the main office telephone system in London, he can easily transfer the customer to Lisa's phone.

Later that afternoon Tim has the same client back on the phone with another question which Lisa needs to answer as well. Seeing from his PC that Lisa's status shows she has just finished a call, he confidently sets up a conference call and they both resolve the problem together. Unknown to Tim, Lisa was working from home that day herself using her laptop, a softphone program and a headset with microphone. That day Tim had called the office in Leeds three times, London twice, his manager Mike in Scotland who has his old cordless phone connected to a VoIP converter, five calls in the afternoon to their USA offices, a 2:00pm sales conference call with five country managers, dealt with two voicemails and received about seven calls from customers and suppliers from all over the world. All this whilst generating no actual call costs for himself, his internal colleagues or his company. This is just one scenario where VoIP (voice over IP) telephones added to your phone system can reduce internal call cost expenditure, and enable employees to become much more efficient irrespective of where they are geographically located.

VoIP allows you to make telephone calls using a computer network, a data network like the Internet and SIP trunks (dedicated IP trunks). VoIP can be implemented in several ways, from a softphone program on your computer used with a headset and microphone, adaptors which can be used with regular analogue home phones, or dedicated VoIP phones connected direct into a network router.

We will be happy to advise you further on ways where VoIP could play a part in your business...and how it could be added to your system.