Every day our team talks to customers who have a traditional business phone system or a key telephone system. They have had these systems for 5, 10, or even 20 years. Many of these systems are no longer supported, and some of their manufacturers are no longer around.
So, what happens if you have a critical failure? For a significant portion of our clients, the answer is significant downtime. Some systems that require replacement parts only have used or refurbished pieces available to them. This means that 5 or 10 year old parts are installed, only for them to fall apart soon after.
When to Upgrade Your Business Phone System
A lot of clients ask, “Is it time to upgrade? Should I upgrade if it’s not broken?” Considering the changes in technology over the last several years and the risks of staying with an old system, the answer to both of these questions is: yes! Now is the time to upgrade. Customers can start to take advantage of improvements and protect their business by upgrading their system before failure. There are a multitude of benefits that come from updating your business phone system.
Benefits of Upgrading Your Business Phone System
Reduced Cost
Conversations usually start with discussions around cost and budget. For some new phone systems like the NEWT Managed Phone System, investing in this new technology reduces the monthly telecom bills that you pay. This offsets the cost of the investment. We find that we can provide customers with a new phone system at the same cost or less than they’re currently paying.
Access to Calls and Voicemails Outside the Office
Now more than ever, business is conducted on the go. Employees are not always at their desks or in the office. By upgrading your business phone system, you can access features like ‘Find Me/Follow Me’ which rings your extension, and other numbers like your cell phone at the same time so you can answer from anywhere. Another popular feature is voicemail to email, which (as it states) will send an email with the voicemail as an attachment including the sender’s name in the subject line. You now can react in real-time to calls or voicemails without the need to return to the office.
Linking Multiple Offices
If your company has several offices across the country, this is an opportunity to improve inter-office communication and reduce IT/phone system administration. It also introduces the potential to reduce operational costs by minimizing reception staff at some locations.
New phone systems are not all alike, but with a NEWT Managed Phone System and those that are similar, it’s easy to connect multiple offices with 3 or 4 digit dialing to reach staff in other offices. You can use the ‘Auto-Attendant’ feature to answer calls for multiple locations, or route calls between multiple locations. These can drive a better customer experience and also improve efficiencies in your company.
Also, since it is a managed solution and each location will have the same technology, this can ease the load on IT or phone administration staff. It can also be centrally customer administered therefore reducing the need for experts on the phone system at every location.
An IT Infrastructure for Voice
When upgrading to a new IP based phone system, you need to consider the network switches and other IT infrastructures that provide voice quality and power the phones over the network. With NEWT comes a fully managed and engineered solution including the entire IT infrastructure with the IP phone system. Since it’s a managed solution, customers can use the NEWT support team to troubleshoot or resolve issues in the IP phone system infrastructure, all provided by a single provider: NEWT. This reduces the expense and need for your company to gain knowledge and expertise in this new technology.
Backup and Redundancy
With NEWT as a next generation phone system, part of the phone system is hosted in our network in the cloud. Unlike your existing traditional system, if your business suffers a fire, flood, or network power outage, your calls will still ring; not prompt ‘busy’ or ‘no answer’. Your calls will be answered in the cloud by the ‘Auto-Attendant’ feature or be sent to voicemail. Additionally, by using ‘Find Me/Follow Me’ as well as Voicemail-to-Email, you can redirect calls in order to still respond to customers even in the case of emergency.
All system configurations are also backed up to the network, so no customer or IT backups are required. If your system is damaged by an emergency or power issue, a new system can be installed to reflect to the latest configuration with all the system information intact.
New to Business Phone Systems
With a new business phone system comes new features that your business can take advantage of. Some of these new features we find customers enjoy are:
Direct Inward Dial
Employees receive a direct-dialed number to reach them directly.
Conference Bridging
Some new systems like NEWT include free conference bridges hosted in the cloud, often eliminating the need for extra lines.
Call Recording
Recording of calls to and from your business.
Call Us!
Pun intended! For these reasons and more, we recommend clients to consider a business phone system upgrade if they have an older phone system—even if it’s not broken. If you’re interested in upgrading, get in touch and we’ll talk about next steps!