7 Factors to Consider When Selecting a Business VoIP Phone Provider

Shop smart to choose correctly

No one guide can recommend the single best business VoIP phone provider—“best” means something different to every organization. It’s much more valuable to understand what your company needs and how to find it.

From key features to security concerns, here are several factors that can affect how a VoIP service fits your needs. Zeroing in on what matters most for your business can help you determine exactly what you’re looking for and make your search speedier.

What to consider when choosing a business VoIP phone provider

1. Features

The first step to choosing a business VoIP phone provider is to decide what features are the most important for your business. Make a list of the ones you consider absolute must-haves for conducting business, and then a second list of features that would be nice, but aren’t crucial. Finally, list out the features you feel you can safely disregard.

With these lists, you’ll be equipped to quickly determine whether a given provider meets your needs. Remember that providers often gate advanced features behind higher price points (more on price later).

Here are some features to keep in mind when shopping:

• Voicemail transcription

• Software phone support

• SMS messaging

• Toll-free phone numbers

• Video conferencing

• Automated attendant

• Call forwarding, recording and monitoring

• Advanced call handling

• Directory assistance
  

2. Price

A monthly, per-user fee is one of the most common pricing models among providers. That provides great flexibility for organizations looking to scale.

As mentioned earlier, how much each tier will cost varies based on the number of included features. Each VoIP business phone provider offers a different feature suite at each price point, with the most affordable options typically offering little more than basic call handling.

If you can’t get all the features you need at your chosen service’s lowest price point, you can sometimes drive costs down by paying your subscription annually instead of monthly.

3. Ease of use

User reviews are particularly helpful when evaluating a VoIP service’s usability. Keep an eye out for reviews that complain about confusion during setup, or worse, during regular use. 

Some solutions will offer support for softphones, which are VoIP apps that mimic traditional phone interfaces. They display all the familiar buttons, such as the number pad and the mute button, on the screen during use. That can make them easier for employees to master.

Ease of use also extends to the variety of supported platforms. Consider what tools you want to use to make calls. Will you exclusively use your smartphone? Or would taking calls on your desktop computer be useful?

Many business VoIP phone providers will offer computer clients and mobile apps as a baseline. Some will also offer browser-based clients, which are useful if you’re ever away from your primary computer or phone. Desk phone support or headset support, on the other hand, can let you and your employees use the tools you’re comfortable with.

4. Integrations

Your phone system doesn’t need to be separate from the rest of your company’s workflows. VoIP allows it to interface with other tools you use, which can then boost employee efficiency. The more work your employees can do in a single window, the less time they have to spend swapping tools rather than working.

Take stock of the other tools in your sales workflow, such as calendar apps and customer relationship management (CRM) software. Seek out a VoIP solution that integrates with those tools.

5. Security

For VoIP phone providers, business success depends on meeting high security standards. Unlike traditional phones, VoIP creates another potential entry point for hackers. That makes features such as end-to-end encryption (E2EE) critical.

Your best tool for VoIP data security is encryption. Look for features such as Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Transport Layer Security (TLS). These will help guard data both when it’s sitting in storage and when it’s being transported over the internet.

6. Reports and analytics

Data-driven reports are a great way to understand how well your business works. If you’re looking for ways to grow, reports can automatically dig through your key metrics to highlight opportunities for improvement. That makes it easy to constantly raise the bar for customer satisfaction and efficiency.

The most common report templates included with VoIP services focus on phone usage: analytics such as system health, the number of inbound and outbound calls and average call duration.

To take things one step further, look for customizable reports. When you control the report data, it becomes that much easier to spotlight your areas of focus and speed up the improvement process.

7. Customer service

No matter how intuitive or sophisticated a VoIP solution is, there will always be speedbumps. When those challenges arise, you need to be able to call a support team that’s both available and effective.

For availability, the best-case scenario is that business VoIP phone providers have support staff on hand 24/7. They should offer multiple ways to reach support, such as by phone, email or chatbot.

To gauge effectiveness, read customer reviews. There, you’ll find (potentially cautionary) stories of users interacting with support.

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