Whether your business is still attached to a landline service, using cellular phones, or has already made the leap to VoIP solutions, it’s important to understand the vast landscape of features you might be overlooking.
You’re here because you’re wondering if they’re worth all the hype. We’re here to share some of the reasons they are for many businesses.
What is VoIP?
There’s a lot to cover in the next section, so we won’t belabor the point too much here. But just for the sake of thoroughness, why don’t we provide a quick description of what VoIP is and how it differs from other forms of phone services?
VoIP—Voice over Internet Protocol—is a method of providing telephone services through computer applications and over an internet connection. This contrasts with landlines (which run call data through physical telephone lines from end to end), and cell phones (which broadcast calls to nearby towers through radio waves, that then transmit the call information through hardlines).
In other words, VoIP is to phones what email is to snail mail. It’s the digital equivalent of an existing analog solution.
Top VoIP Features
The way we see it, there are really only three reasons you’re looking to pick VoIP over a traditional landline:
- You need features that landlines don’t have.
- You want an improved version of landline functionality.
- You can more easily access a VoIP provider than a landline provider.
We’re going to cover the “top features” based on the value prop categories they match. Why does VoIP get so much attention? Well, it’s hard not to be impressed when you see all the bells and whistles a VoIP plan might feature.
Features that didn’t exist prior to VoIP
In the years leading up to VoIP providers joining the market, business phone solutions were becoming increasingly complex. Internal networks enabled call queues, transfers, speed dialing, and a number of other advanced features. But they weren’t easy to set up, and they required specific, dedicated equipment. Worse still, there were hard limits to what landlines could achieve.
VoIP is different. At the risk of sensationalizing the technology, VoIP taught phones so many new tricks they could have joined the circus. Names, terms, and definitions vary slightly depending on the provider that’s offering it, but VoIP services can enable things like:
- “Parking” calls so you can swap from one device to another or otherwise facilitate the juggling of calls between phones, desktops, mobile apps, and more.
- Join calls in progress to provide added support for callers, and to help agents that may need input, authorization, etc.
- Connecting multiple agents to a call, regardless of their location or current device.
- Communicating with agents during a call to provide info or direction, without the caller being able to hear.
Advanced caller ID, priority alerts, and platform interoperability
A lot of the time, businesses are receiving calls from callers who are already on the company’s records. Customers, sales leads, business partners, suppliers, and more are all examples of this. VoIP services allow you to pull up these records automatically, providing relevant information to agents about the caller.
VoIP even goes a couple of steps further. You can tag certain callers as “priority,” and create custom alerts or ringtones so agents can know immediately if the caller is urgent or of high importance. And with the correct integrations, all of this can happen in concert with tools like CRMs, support management, and automated transcription, just to name a few.
Call management
Sometimes called “advanced call management,” and sometimes used as an umbrella term to cover a few others in these lists, call management encompasses all the fun things you can do when handling calls in any way other than just answering them directly. Prioritizing (as mentioned previously), holding, routing, queueing, transferring, and, in some cases, blocking specific calls are all things VoIP enables.
Mobile app connectivity
Not only does VoIP technology allow agents to connect cell phones to their solution in various ways, but some providers also have companion mobile apps, making things even easier, and empowering agents to take/make calls and work from anywhere they might want or need to.
Call notifications and instant messaging
One area where VoIP has a clear advantage over analog phones is the way it can be tied to written forms of communication. VoIP systems can send text and email notifications automatically in response to certain triggers. They can also facilitate text-based communication like you might see in texting or support chats.
It can also do other kinds of writing-related acrobatics (which we’ll get into below).
VoIP features landline can provide
Landline telephones are definitely an amazing technology, even a century after their invention, but voice calls are arguably the least impressive aspect of what they made possible. Nearly every landline feature can be upgraded by VoIP solutions. Below are some of them.
Call queues, transfers, forwarding, and speed dialing
Those graphic calculators-turned-telephones that became ubiquitous in the ‘90s were already making business intranets possible, but they were comparatively fickle and rudimentary. If you’re old enough to remember having to dial “9” to reach an external number, you know what we’re talking about.
If not, then just imagine your phone being tethered to a desk or wall, and requiring working knowledge of a non-intuitive interface that made you feel like a safe-cracker just to call to order a pizza delivery.
VoIP simplifies all of this because it’s handled via computer software. Queue up callers and set the answering protocol to assign agents. Transfer calls to other agents, across departments, or even to locations on the other side of international boundaries. Forward calls to another number/device as needed, and revert with ease.
Oh, and you can still do that speed dialing thing, though without processes that resemble entering arcade cheat codes.
Autoattendant/IVR
We may not like them too much when we’re the ones calling in, but auto attendants and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) are often the difference between reasonably smooth caller experience (and manageable agent workloads) and the workday-long hold times that used to be much more common in years past.
And while standard landlines can also implement auto attendants, IVR is basically impossible without routing phone services through digital systems.
Custom ringback/hold music
This doesn’t come up too much, and more businesses could stand to leverage these features in our opinion, but VoIP makes it easier to set ringback tones and hold music. If you’re unfamiliar with the difference, hold music is what the caller hears once they’re connected to your system, and waiting for a live agent to answer.
Ringback tones are like ringtones, but instead of the receiving line hearing the banger, it’s the caller that gets to jam out while they wait for the call to be picked up.
Voicemails, voice-to-text, and transcriptions
It’s hard to overstate how useful it is to have written records of calls and voicemails. VoIP solutions don’t just give you voicemails; they can transcribe the spoken message to a text or email and send that to a relevant agent.
And VoIP doesn’t just record calls; it can transcribe calls and store them as text information (which is then easier to parse, search through, and analyze).
Conference calls, video calls, and call continuity
Yeah, we’ve covered how you can add more call agents. Yeah, we’ve mentioned how you can switch between devices. But have we mentioned how some VoIP systems can host video calls, too? Or that failsafe features are increasingly common to minimize the disruption an internet or power outage might cause?
Because VoIP can totally do those things, and landlines can’t.
Do not disturb
Oh, and VoIP can make it easier to avoid calls you don’t want to take. We mentioned above that you can block and screen calls. But you can also set devices (like, say, the cell phone you might have things forwarded to) to have scheduled Do Not Disturb (DND) hours. That way, you don’t get woken at 3 AM in your timezone, or disrupted when you happen to be on vacation.
Call recording, rating, and analytics
Don’t know if you’ve heard, but data’s a pretty big deal these days. And there happens to be a lot of valuable information in the neverending stream of recorded spoken conversations that a VoIP or landline might capture. But only one of these can easily convert said recordings into more easily analyzed text-based records.
And only one of them can easily integrate into business intelligence solutions, so you can crunch the numbers and draw actionable insights from all of it. Two guesses which one, and the first guess doesn’t count.
Integrations
Speaking of integrations, did we mention VoIP services can connect to other apps and platforms, creating interoperable automations and data transfers (among a host of other cool functions)? Because it can totally do that, too.
Click-to-dial
Second-to-last, but certainly not least, we have click-to-dial. Lest we forget, our lives more or less revolve around computer systems at this point. As such, it makes perfect sense that we’d want people to be able to click the phone number on the website from their smartphone, and have it immediately open the phone app and initiate the call.
As the goofballs on the sales and marketing teams are often blathering on about, the fewer steps between the customer and the desired customer action, the more likely they are to take the action. In this case, the action is connecting with an agent to buy, get support, or otherwise interact with your brand.
Online fax
Does…does anyone still use faxes anymore? They must be, because this is a feature that’s still advertised by major VoIP providers. Well, if you’re the kind of professional that still gets a little giddy when they hear the word “Xerox,” you’ll be happy to hear that VoIP still allows for fax. Better still, it can convert it directly to an email, and send the fax scans to any number of destination addresses.
(Full disclosure, we ended on this one not because it’s a “must have” feature, but just to prove that even the most outdated aspects of older phone systems can be improved through VoIP services. And because we genuinely find it funny to imagine anyone trying to send a fax in the year 2024).
Choosing the Right VoIP for Your Business
VoIP offers many benefits but relies on both electricity and a stable internet connection. Unlike traditional landlines, VoIP becomes non-functional during power outages or internet issues. If your business frequently faces power outages, unreliable internet, or slow connections, a landline might be a better option.
However, most advanced landline systems also require power and can be affected by outages unless they have battery backups. On the plus side, VoIP providers are addressing these concerns with features like call continuity to ensure reliability.
Bottom Line: When selecting a VoIP provider, prioritize your essential requirements first. Ensure the solution effectively addresses your key needs without introducing new problems. Check out our guide to the Best VoIP Solution for Small Businesses to help you on your journey.
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