Communication is everything in business, regardless of size or industry and your phone system is at the heart of it all. You won’t really think much about your phones day to day, until they stop working properly which can be stressful and ultimately devastating for your company. It is essential that your business telecoms has the functionality, services, and support you need. Here’s what you need to consider when choosing your telecoms provider.
- Price - Once you know what you require you can start comparing prices from various suppliers. Our advice would be to remember that the initial price won’t always reflect the actual cost. For example, if your business loses money because the phones go down, then it doesn’t matter how cheap the deal was to begin with. A lot of the time, price also reflects the level of customer service, maximum downtime, call quality, and flexibility of service so consider that cheapest isn’t necessarily always best.
- Expected Use - Start to work out how your phone network will look depending on different roles within your business. Someone may make several calls with the ability to hold and transfer calls, some may only need a basic single line system, others may even need business mobiles if they work out of the office often. Once you have a good picture of how many handsets, lines, and additional features you think you need, you can give prospective providers the best overall picture of your requirements. If you’re having trouble working out exactly what you’ll need, our expert team are on hand to help you.
- Scalability and Future Proofing - It is important to think about scalability when choosing a phone service provider. Consider things such as how much will it cost to add new staff to your existing plan as your business grows. Also consider not only new equipment costs but also the potential for additional telephone lines to be installed. If you check the costs of potential changes and growth within your business beforehand, you can be best informed when choosing the best provider for you. At Beacon IT, we are used to working with rapidly scaling businesses like start-ups, and so we offer highly flexible plans which allow you to scale your phone service as your business grows.
- Customer Support - The level of customer support is definitely an important factor when choosing a phones provider. Even if you’re a business that operates outside of the usual 9 to 5, You need to know that there will be someone there at the end of the phone if anything goes wrong. Some providers, such as us at Beacon IT can offer out of hours, on call services to make sure you always have the support when you most need it.
- Multi Service Provider - Many business telecoms providers also provide other services. For example, telephony is just one of the various services that Beacon IT has to offer. Other services include managed IT support, website design and development, Microsoft 365 migrations, cloud services and cyber security to name just a few. By receiving multiple business technology services from a single provider, you can usually get a deal on the price and, simplify your supply chain. Meaning that if something goes wrong, you have a single point of call with no more being passed back and forth between different providers.
We hope this has given you a useful overview of important factors you may not have thought about when it comes to finding the right business telecoms solution for you. If you like to learn more or have any questions, speak to one of our team today.
