In just about every new opportunity with a potential new customer, the questions will come up,”What are the advantages of voice over IP?” I will go over individual features that I have seen the SMB utilize when upgrading from a traditional phone system to a Voice Over IP platform.
The feature that seems to get the most use and will attribute immediately to a customers productivity is unified messaging. This feature will transpose a voice mail that is left on the phone system to an email. That email will contain a wave file that will be sent to the end users email address. This will now enable that user to listen to that message in their laptop or any phone that accepts email, therefor enabling that user to forward, save and respond to that message via email. Also, all messages will carry the caller ID, so if that user chooses to return the phone call they simply highlight that number in the header of the email and return the phone call.
Employees that are on the road no longer have to dial into their voice mail or wait until they get back to the office to check messages. In verticals like medical and legal, they can eliminate the need to save certain messages in their voice mail box, as that message can now be archived just like an email. Customer service reps can now forward messages within the organization with ease, knowing that other employee will get the message instantly.
