Have you just heard of a weird acronym and wandered into this article? Lucky you, we will do our best to explain this trendy technology to you. Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP is a contemporary calling solution that allows you to phone other people through the power of the internet, rather than the traditional way of using landlines. Thanks to cloud technology VoIP offers new opportunities which offer flexible and scalable solutions for the various needs of today’s businesses. Ready to dive in? Let’s do it.
What is VoIP exactly and how does it work?
Briefly and simply put VoIP is the alternative option to your local telecom. It provides the same service – allowing you to make calls – with the small difference that you use an internet connection to achieve it. This little tweak makes VoIP enticing to both consumers and businesses, as it provides features that aren’t supported by your common phone service. Such features can include recording your calls, custom caller ID, voicemail to email, and many more. It is also used as a tool to unify internal communications for organizations.
A VoIP service converts a user’s voice from audio to digital data, then transfers that data through the internet and sends it to your address of choice. If the person receiving the call uses a regular phone, the digital data is converted back to an audio signal. That’s it. That’s all there’s to it.
VoIP Phones vs Standard Phones
The main difference between VoIP phones and regular landline phones is that the latter is hardwired into a physical location. A VoIP phone on the other hand can make or receive calls from basically wherever, as long as you have a sturdy internet connection. The other difference is that traditional phones use physical wiring to transfer the signal, whereas VoIP uses the internet. A huge list of pros and cons can be made but without boring you too much we will share just a few that we think matter most. VoIP is much easier to set up, is way more cost-efficient, can still work in case of a power outage (reroute to another number to voicemail), provides a wide variety of free valuable features, and keeps a stable, high-quality call connection as long as you fuel it with a 100 Kbps.
We don’t live in a perfect world so VoIP services come with a few disadvantages. The biggest one, which we already mentioned a few times, is you need a very strong and reliable internet connection for the service to perform at its best. Another challenge is called “dropping” due to using hardware, software, and cloud components from varying vendors. For instance, some vendors provide network hardware, IP phones, and a cloud platform which helps a lot with these kinds of issues.
Types of VoIP Phones
There are a few types each suited best for a different scenario. To achieve a complete and successful VoIP deployment we suggest using the right type for your needs.
Desktop VoIP Phones
The standard-looking phone in a conference room is wired with an Ethernet cable. It provides all of the basic features you would expect from a phone.
USB Phones
This type plugs in directly into a computer or other device using the USB jack. This type works in conjunction with a softphone application such as Skype.
Wireless IP Phones
They come with a built-in Wi-Fi transceiver unit that can connect to an access point (e.g router). This allows you to move freely around your home and/or office while on a call.
Softphones
They are software applications that you can install on your device, allowing you to complete audio and/or video calls. They are very affordable.
Video Phones
An IP phone with a camera. The past few years proved them to be very valuable as a substitute for face-to-face meetings. A great and affordable way to keep in touch and see someone regardless of location.
Conference Phones
They take on the same purpose as their analog ancestors. They are typically used in large offices and conference rooms where numerous people join.
Why use VoIP services if you’re a business?
With hybrid work becoming more and more popular and acceptable, companies need efficient tools to harness and improve internal communication and collaboration. Having multiple services and platforms for communication purposes is an unnecessary complication for employees. It slows down workflows, impedes collaboration, and makes information flow more difficult internally.
VoIP isn’t rocket science and employees are onboarded without any difficulties. This technology benefits teams and businesses by improving collaboration. By using a seamless communication system employees can shoot quick messages, share their screens, and exchange documents as if they were working in the same room. The user-friendly and easy-to-manage helps the user with the process.
Furthermore, as a cloud solution VoIP calls can be comfortably scaled and adjusted to any business needs. Need more phone lines? No problem. Need to plug in extra devices? Easy. A whole new external remote team is added to a project. No biggie. Also, there is built-in security. Cloud security protocols offer protection to sensitive data. Last but not least VoIP services offer a smooth user experience. Whether you are an employee or a customer, the whole calling experience is painless. You can manage phone lines and enable business phones to ring on any device Users can easily switch from audio to video, record and transcribe calls, and hold/transfer calls while also being able to answer a colleague’s line. Ultimately VoIP makes employees perform better, which leads to companies performing better and in the end, everybody is happy and jolly.
For up-to-date businesses that welcome and provide hybrid work is paramount to obtain a unified communication solution that offers a smooth and easy user experience. This is where cloud calling and VoIP services shine the brightest. When communicating through this technology, location becomes irrelevant, and collaboration becomes streamlined. In this era of remote work, this is especially important. Pick a VoIP solution tailored for your needs and make sure to choose the best provider to make the transition effortless and seamless. talkt is an omnichannel solution that provies VoIP services at a reasonable cost and can streamline and automate many of your internal workflows, to make sure your employees stay in touch with the most important tasks.
