What should you look for in a VoIP Provider?

Transparency of your VoIP Provider

You are walking in a reseller maze, this means that if you are buying from carrier X they someone is reselling to carrier Y thus you don’t really know who you are buying from. The industry is transcending and people are demanding more transparency. This aspect will empower them and build their trust in your phone system.

Emergency call

An emergency number (or 911 service) is an important component when you are dealing VoIP services. This is an emergency-calling system that automatically associates a physical address with the calling party’s telephone number. You should ask your VoIP provider if they have this feature.

Failover

Worst case scenario, you aren’t operating your own switch and your client’s switch goes down. Then your business should provide a failover or forwarding service for your direct inward dialing so you can quickly reroute to the client’s cell phone, answering machine or any other location. Ask your VoIP provider if they support this feature.

Porting

When you are thinking about porting your number you should consider the following steps: get your phone bill from your current provider, find out if the number is portable, identify the billing telephone number, obtain the customer service record from the losing carrier.

Other services

Gather all the information you can regarding you VoIP provider. Find out what services they offer to make your life easier, do they offer a billing solution for you to bill your clients? What about 24/7 support, traffic analysis, security, fax or conference calling? Ask them the most important question, what makes them different?

Support

Having a good customer support will make your service more likeable, more recommended by other users and feared by the “enemy”. Settling for a mediocre support is not a very good idea because it’s nothing worse that talking to a client whose phone service is down on Saturday and your carrier is closed until Monday.

Categorised in: Did you know, VoiceMailTel, VoIP