Pros and Cons to using a VOIP System

Voice over internet phone systems have become very popular very quickly with many businesses, especially large ones. Essentially, this is a phone system that operates through the internet, usually through an online provider.

Although there are good points of having a VOIP system, most of which revolve around a slight cut in costs, there are some challenges in switching to the Voice over IP system.

While most of us probably have an Internet connection that is sufficient to use VOIP, other factors may reduce the bandwidth available to your call, such as the amount of activity on your network. It gets slower if others on your local network are streaming or doing file transfers. If your VOIP system’s bandwidth is not sufficient, your call quality will not be as good. You also may have trouble connecting to your VOIP provider’s servers or connecting with the person you are trying to call.

As far as setting up an on hold message program, with a VOIP program, the program will always start over at the beginning. Programs on traditional players play on a continuous loop.

It is good to have more messages for a player program because then your customers are always hearing new information. With a VOIP system, you never need longer than 4 messages since a customer will hardly ever be on hold for longer than that. This is one of the disadvantages to having VOIP on hold.

A player is easy to set up as the flash drive plugs right into the player, which is connected to the phone system. With VOIP, anytime there is a change to be made, a phone call to the phone provider is necessary, because most of the time they run the phone lines completely through the internet and will need to add the on hold messages into your system.

Another concern with VOIP systems is that when making emergency calls, 911 operators can trace landlines to where the call came from, which is something that VOIP does not allow, as it is run through the Internet.

As you can see, it’s important to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages when considering a VOIP system, making sure it’s the right system for your needs.