Inventors of the telephone may not even have visualized how much of a power it would become for global communications. PSTN ruled the roost for decades but the upstart VoIP toppled it from its place as the undisputed king of communications. Today PSTN stagnates. VoIP marches ahead relentlessly. Today’s generation would probably find it unthinkable to have a world without VoIP. Businesses are naturally switching over to VoIP given its many benefits and low cost of global communication. It is the presence of communication. It will be the future as well.
Reduced cost of communication
The bigger an enterprise and the more the number of branches it has the higher will be the communication costs. If it has operations in various countries then standard PSTN telephone would be prohibitively expensive. VoIP simply nudges its elder brother aside and comes with a bouquet of low call cost offerings. Businesses love to save costs wherever they can and communication does represent a huge expense.
VoIP, in a way, melts boundaries of communications. It reduces costs and, better still, reduces frustration and wasted time spent trying to connect Given these features it is no surprise that VoIP is the present and the future of business communication.
Reliability
VoIP is reliable. Initiate a call and the call converts to packets that go through class 4/5 soft switches to the internet highway where they can take any available route or the least cost route determined by the Softswitch. It is a rare situation when you will not be able to connect to the other person. That is likely to happen when there is a PSTN line at the other end and there are issues in the exchange or with the last mile connectivity.
Scalability, connectivity
It is easy to ramp up or scale down services with VoIP. One can even increase the number of lines with very little effort and cost compared to landline. Even more important is that a business can have an IP PBX solution in place and enjoy connectivity with mobile phones. Remote workers and executives in the field simply use their mobile phones to connect with the central PBX and through it to the CRM to access the customer database and take action.
Omnichannel presence and communication
VoIP converges channels. These days customers are everywhere. They are on social media. Whatsapp is a part of their daily lives. People use email and are on audio and video chat. Pure telephony accounts for a small part of their engagement with others. Businesses that wish to satisfy existing customers or rope in new ones must naturally fall in line and converse in the channel of choice of the customer and keep track through a single interface.
The choice for businesses is simple: sink or swim. VoIP helps you swim like a champ.
Nex-gen 5G
Unlike earlier technologies, 5G offers ultra-fast data transfer. This is good news for voice and video and even better when you want high definition in both. One of the drawbacks of VoIP is that it is dependent on the internet. Slow speeds can have an impact on voice and video transmission but with 5G and its potential of 400 Gbps speed as well as low latency you have peace of mind. VoIP relies on the good old TCP/IP protocols but 5G goes beyond that with separate, newly developed IP over CCN protocol that is far superior.
Application layers on VoIP
Talk about being left behind and you will be entirely bereft of the advantages that applications confer on business. VoIP rests on the internet and apps rest on the VoIP platform. Businesses make use of apps such as IVR, WebRTC, IP PBX, SMS broadcasting software, and contact center software. Each one possesses an abundance of features suited for business communications.
Then you have call records and analytics to derive intelligence that will help you refine your strategies. A big plus for VoIP based technologies is that they can be plugged into CRM and that gives you a better customer engagement facility.
There are all of these and you can enjoy the latest in enterprise-grade communication without any upfront investment. Simply opt for hosted solutions.