When choosing a Phone Systems in Florida, there are many things to think about. First and foremost, you want to make sure that the system has all the functions and features your business needs. Can the service handle the number of employees who need it? Does it have everything your business needs or would benefit from?
Some businesses only want basic calling features like caller ID and voicemail, but others want extras like ring groups, an automated attendant, and music while customers are on hold. Also, think about any other tools your business needs for communication. Are you just looking for phone systems in Florida, or do you want something more like a unified communications system that lets you do things like video conferencing and instant messaging? Your answer to this question will help you find a new phone system for your business.
Another thing to think about is how reliable a business phone system is. If your phone system doesn’t work when you need it to, it’s useless. This is very important for a solution that is hosted in the cloud. Ask each provider what percentage of the year it is up. If it’s not 99.999 percent, ask the company what it’s doing to fix the problems and make it more reliable. Ask about the company’s service-level agreements and whether the contract has any clauses about uptime. Many companies that sell business phone systems will give customers money back if the system doesn’t work a certain amount of time.
If cloud-hosted systems don’t work for your business, you need a phone provider that offers on-premises systems. With an on-premises system, all of your business’s equipment is kept on-site instead of in the cloud. These systems cost more upfront, but they don’t have as many monthly costs as cloud-based systems do.
Small businesses might want to think about whether or not they need a real phone system with desk phones. For businesses that can get by with mobile phones, a virtual phone system might be a better option. These systems link a business’s main number to the cell phones of its employees. When someone calls the main business number, they are greeted by an automated attendant that can connect them to a specific employee or department. Instead of going to an office phone, the call is sent to the right employee’s cell phone. A virtual phone system works well for very small businesses, but it also works well for businesses with a large number of employees who work from home and for solo entrepreneurs.
Lastly, think about what kinds of customer service the phone company has. If you don’t have a full-time IT manager or employees who can handle problems, you’ll want a business phone system provider that will be available to answer questions when you have them, preferably through multiple channels and online resources.
Types of Phone Systems
Businesses that need a Phone Systems in Florida with more than one line have a few choices. The choices depend on where the equipment is kept, how the connections are made, and how much it will cost, among other things.
A PBX is a piece of equipment that lets you make and receive calls. PBX technology is what gives businesses all of the features and tools that unified communications systems offer, like automated attendants, call queues, and ring groups. This technology can be housed on-site at a business or in the cloud.
Landline
Landline phone systems use the connections and wiring that local and regional phone companies set up for traditional phone systems. These systems need PBX equipment on-site, which is maintained and updated by your IT team. All of the PBX equipment is also very expensive to buy up front for these systems. Landline systems, on the other hand, are becoming less popular as more and more phone companies stop making equipment for this model.
VoIP
VoIP Remote Teams systems don’t use copper wiring as landline systems do. Instead, they use internet connections to make and receive calls. This lets you use the same internet connection that your business uses to go online to run your phone system. There are two kinds of VoIP systems: on-premises and cloud.
Cloud-hosted VoIP: The PBX equipment for cloud-hosted phone systems is kept in the cloud. This means that the phone systems in Florida provider are in charge of keeping it in good shape and adding new features to it. To use a cloud-hosted system, all you have to do is connect the IP phones set up for your business to your local area network. Most of the time, there are no costs to start using these systems. Instead, companies pay a monthly fee for each user. Most of the time, the cost per user per month is between $15 and $60.
On-premises VoIP: These systems are similar to landline systems in that the PBX equipment is kept in your business. You have to take care of all the maintenance. The only difference is that these systems still allow calls to be made through the internet instead of a landline. This gives your business more control over how the phone system works and lets you add any security measures you want. On-premises VoIP systems, on the other hand, need a big investment up front and smaller monthly fees to pay for the connections needed to make and receive calls.
Phone System Features
Small businesses can get a lot out of the phone systems in Florida today. This is probably the best thing about cloud-hosted systems: they make it possible for small businesses to use a lot of features without spending a lot of money. Before, only bigger businesses could afford systems with lots of features because the equipment needed to run them cost a lot of money.
- Unlimited calling: Many cloud-hosted VoIP phone systems of today let you make as many domestic calls as you want without charging you extra. This gives you a fixed monthly service cost that doesn’t change no matter how many calls your business makes or gets.
- Automated attendants: When someone calls your business, an auto-attendant answers the phone and sends the call to the right person or department.
- Ring groups: You can put employees into groups with this feature. If someone calls and needs someone in a group, like a customer service, all of the phones in that group will ring. You can choose whether the phones will ring in a certain order or all at once.
- Voicemail: In addition to the usual voicemail service, many phone systems in Florida can also send voicemails via email. This feature sends audio recordings or transcripts of voicemails to an employee’s email inbox so they can read or listen to their messages even when they are not at work.
- Call recording: This means that you can record calls. Then, these recordings are saved in the cloud or on your computer so you can listen to them later.
Other helpful features that many phone systems in Florida offer are extension dialing, call forwarding, call queues, and integrations with services like Microsoft Office and Google Workspace.
These systems also have things like video conferencing, instant messaging, presence indicators, and online meetings that can help a business work together better.
Advantages of Business Phone Systems
Modern phone systems in Florida have all of the pros and almost none of the cons of older landline systems, which have to be bought and maintained with expensive hardware on-site. phone systems in Florida today can also do a lot more than just make calls. They support video conferencing, team messaging, SMS, and online faxing, and they offer integrations with popular business software and CRMs to help manage customer data and communications across the whole business.
Flexibility is another way that business phone systems have changed. Now, employees can take calls on any internet-connected device, like computers, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and IP phones, and it works the same as a traditional desk phone. Businesses can send incoming calls to all devices at once or set up ring groups that dial specific teams or employees with a simultaneous or sequential ring setting to make sure all incoming calls are properly routed and received.
Some people who use landlines may worry that the quality will be bad if they don’t have a good internet connection. However, cloud-based phones are just as reliable and have the same audio quality as landlines. Most phone systems in Florida offer service-level agreements with uptimes of 99.999 percent or more. As part of their analytics tools, many providers also offer quality-of-service reporting, which shows how good each call is. A cloud-based business phone system is a great choice for many business owners and managers because it costs less per month, doesn’t require any hardware, and has a long list of tools for managing calls.