VoIP Can Be Your Gateway to a Unified Communications System
The year ahead will be a significant one for Voice over Internet Protocol phone systems as many businesses adopt them to use with 5G wireless, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
It may be a good time for your business to look at VoIP again as you draft a Unified Communications (UC) strategy. An effective strategy to integrate your company’s voice, video, data and other communications technologies starts with VoIP.
One of the attractions of VoIP is that customer service call centers can easily utilize it in daily operations. In addition, VoIP is ideal for those centers also embracing AI technologies to screen calls automatically, answer queries and manage data.
But first you must be confident that VoIP will support your company’s operational demands. It may mean running it in parallel with your legacy PBX systems before adopting it for customer service functions. Many businesses, intent on gaining a competitive edge over their rivals, are now running VoIP trials.
VoIP benefits for business
VoIP can help your business leverage many of the tools and features that lie within the typical UC strategy. Call centers and other client-facing functions can be given new capabilities that allow for more data storage, call monitoring and assistance — and to free up entry-level personnel who typically work the phones — to focus on more productive tasks in the center or shift to other jobs.
Cloud-based telephone services will allow your employees to make more use of the latest innovations in widely available platforms such as Microsoft Teams. This year, we’re going to see more emphasis on VoIP from Microsoft as it winds down its Skype for Business application.
Elsewhere in the industry, Cisco is merging Broadsoft with Webex Teams for calling. Larger companies using these UC platforms are already deploying VoIP across their organizations but if you’re a smaller or medium-sized company with a high growth profile and looking to leverage these technologies, then VoIP will be a key part of your development strategy in 2020.
Prior to adding VoIP across your business, however, you will need to make sure that you’re complying with local and federal regulations that apply to the use of this technology.
Legal obligations
For example, Kari’s Law is a 2017 federal statute that requires hotels and other companies to let users reach emergency responders rapidly in hotel rooms without the need to dial a prefix.
The law, named for Kari Hunt Dunn, who was stabbed to death by her estranged husband as her nine-year-old daughter tried in vain to dial 911, applies to VoIP lines and traditional PBX lines used in hotels as well as telephone land lines.
The legal responsibility for compliance with federal legislation lies with your company. Therefore, it’s important to ensure all VoIP lines meet all federal requirements.
With technologies like Skype for Business facing a 2021 end of its service life, businesses that want to take advantage of UC platforms must put in place the necessary VoIP building blocks.
Key takeaways:
- This year you will see a wave of new communications innovations for small and medium-sized American businesses.
- If you’re seriously looking at the benefits of a unified communications system, you should first road-test its infrastructure, including internet phones. PBX systems will not be able to tap into all the innovative features of a UC system.
- A trial will allow you to iron out any operational issues before mission-critical areas of your business adopt it.
