Choosing a Business Calling Solution

Don’t Waste Time and Money Choosing the Wrong Business Calling Solution:

Implementing any new system not only takes time, a huge amount of consideration, and also a lot of patience for the implementation process. Getting it wrong can be a headache for you and your team. It can also be very costly too! Cloud phone solutions for any New Zealand business, can come with challenges. Here are some tips to avoiding some of the risks associated with choosing a cloud solution for your phones.

TIP 1: Ask an IT Professional:

Don’t do research, you will get lost! Ask first, narrow it down…then do your research. Why? There are so many systems and cross-breeds of CRM’s and phone systems, or phone and marketing solutions. It is not always clear which one would be a good match for your business. Talking to one of our members at the I.T.A, might help you better define your needs. This will help you in the long run to find a solution that fits. Understanding what you want and need and what is out there is essential. Here is a very basic review of how some of the better known solutions work.

Name	Use?	Benefits	Cost Per month	Link
Cloud Phone System	Based on traditional phone system designed for business with lots of users and lots of extensions.	All of it is in the cloud Transfer calls between sites Looks like an old school phone behaves like todays technology	Pay per phone number and you pay per min. Smaller providers are better value.	https://voicecom.co.nz/ Or https://www.spark.co.nz/cloudphone Or https://www.vodafone.co.nz/office-net-cloud/
Cellphones	Direct lines, a lot of business don’t have a traditional phone system	Mobile, everyone has one! Flexible!	The bill can blow out – better to go with a fixed plan.	Based on your plan provider. Spark, Vodafone or 2Degrees.
Teams	It’s way more than just phones, it’s your CRM and file storage	So many things! Apps and add on’s. VC, and recording capabilities, collaboration on docs is fantastic. You can connect to the std phone system, but it can be expensive.	Comes with office 365 unless you want to have physical phone connection to PSTN (public switch telephone network).	Office 365.
Zoom	Yes this can be used as a phone system, but its main purpose is for meetings and video conferencing	Fantastic for online events over phone conversations, so we would stick to a Teams meeting, if you were choosing between Teams and Zoom for phones.	https://zoom.us/pricing	https://zoom.us
Dial Pad	Used for Marketing and phone sales teams	Searching conversations Fancy AI – It even analyses your call to see if the conversation was leading to purchase.	$35 per person per month	https://www.dialpad.com/
Hero	For people that still want analog usability but on the cloud.	Cloud phone on steroids! Great support, good bundles, 365 Teams integration, VOIP, Conferencing.	It’s complicated but you can click here. https://hero.co.nz/rates.html	https://hero.co.nz

Tip 2: Think Outside the Box

Thinking outside the box might actually help you consider the most simple and cost effective solution. For example we had a client who was after a cloud phone solution for their business. The more we asked what they actually needed the more we realised that perhaps plain old mobile phones were the solution for them. They wanted to focus on flexibility and cost as they were a small contact center. Cloud systems would have broken their budget due to their set-up costs. Also by going with a mobile contract, they could control the cost and manage their cash flow. Pretty clever right?

Tip 3: Consider your Integrations

It is really important to think about what current and future integrations you might need. What do you need your phone system to communicate with? Do you have an existing CRM? What might work with it rather than against it. There is nothing worse than implementing a beautiful system and then not being able to capture the data in your CRM and use it in a smart way.

Tip 4: Ease of use!

If it’s hard to use, no-one will want to use it and you will make your staff really unhappy. This will lead to several issues including more headaches for you. Check your key outcomes. Is it practical? Ask your team what might help them work more efficiently. Some may say having a phone on their desk or others might just want to click a link. For example one of our clients decided to use Hubspot because they could manage their tasks, clicking on their next call and managing the notes, all using that one click of a button.

Get started with a Business Calling Solution

There is not one shoe that fits, unfortunately this ain’t Cinderella’s party… it’s yours. The best thing is to get some direction by talking to any of our I.T.A members here. From there you absolutely can do your research based on what you might need!