5 simple steps to follow when choosing a VoIP service provider
More and more businesses are choosing VoIP as it offers many benefits. But finding a good VoIP service provider that meets all your business communication needs can be challenging. Although there are hundreds of providers to choose from in South Africa, WhichVoIP.co.za has developed 5 steps to help you choose a good VoIP service provider for your business.
Our steps are based on the five main factors below that you should consider before signing up for just any old VoIP package for your business:
- Your business communication needs
- Reviews and customer feedback
- Your budget and prices
- Features and integrations
- VoIP service providers’ offerings
Before we delve into the details, let’s consider some of the main benefits of VoIP for your business.
Benefits of VoIP for business
1. Determine and understand your business communication needs
“In order to understand others, you must understand yourself first.” Vikrant Parsai
The first and most important step when choosing a VoIP service provider is knowing your business communication needs and requirements. When you know what phone for VoIP or VoIP package you need, it will be much easier to identify the right (and wrong) fit.
Asking the following questions will help you determine what VoIP features your business needs:
- What do we use (or want to use) our business telephone system for? (sales/customer service/team collaboration)
- Do we often have to switch calls from one person to another?
- Do we need a VoIP package that can be scaled? (business growing/multiple locations/acquisitions)
- Are our employees primarily working from the office, at home, or in a hybrid situation?
- What features will make collaboration easy and fun? (messaging/video/statuses)
2. Create a shortlist of the best VoIP service providers based on reviews and customer feedback
Word of mouth is a powerful thing! When a customer is unhappy with a provider, they are twice or three times more likely to write a bad review than a customer who had a positive experience. This makes it much easier to weed out the bad options and identify the good VoIP service providers, as you can trust a fellow customer’s review.
To make your life easier, WhichVoIP.co.za’s provider directory has a comprehensive list of top-rated providers of VoIP (South Africa) that you can sort by location, reviews, views, or ratings. Some providers even share case studies of how they helped their customers.
3. Establish your budget and compare VoIP service providers’ prices
Cost-savings are one of the main benefits of switching to VoIP, but the cheapest isn’t always the best! To avoid overspending, establish your budget and then compare all the fixed and variable costs from your shortlisted providers. Fixed costs are usually line rentals, subscriptions, hardware, and service level agreements. Variable costs are usage-based or ad hoc services, including any out-of-bundle charges.
You should also consider start-up costs like service activation, installation and provisioning, training and hardware, subscription costs like the anticipated costs of using the services, and conclusion or exit costs.
Having clarity and complete transparency on all costs will help you compare apples with apples and ensure you don’t sit with any unexpected surprises down the line.
4. Do thorough research on each of your shortlisted VoIP service providers
Once you have your shortlist, you can find your perfect fit by researching each provider’s offerings, features, integrations, customer service, and prices. Besides the normal business communication features, you can also ask if they provide the following:
- Interactive Voice Response to manage incoming calls
- An automated attendant to manage call queues
- On-hold music or promotional content
- Integrations with your CRM or ERP system, or
- Connections between VoIP calls and AI tools, such as chat
5. Use WhichVoIP.co.za to compare providers
WhichVoIP.co.za is the most comprehensive, unbiased resource for comparing VoIP service providers in South Africa. Our directory provides all the details you need to compare your shortlisted providers’ prices, features, integrations, and offerings. We believe you should have the tools to choose which provider to use, and providers should be given an equal opportunity to highlight their offerings.
It’s everything you want to know in one location!
6. Choose the right VoIP service provider for your business
If you want the best VoIP service provider for your business in 2023, you must compare pricing, features, and customer service. One of the easiest ways to do this is through WhichVoIP’s provider directory. Simply select your desired category (VoIP providers in this case) and sort by location, reviews, views, or ratings. From there, you can explore the different options, features, prices, etc.
Our top tip is always to consider the VoIP service providers that have proven themselves in the market. Choosing the right provider is a consultative process and the more information you can supply about your environment, goals, objectives, and budget, the better. Doing this allows providers to build a solution that will meet your specific requirements – a win-win for both sides!
To keep up to date with the top-rated VoIP service providers in South Africa, subscribe to WhichVoIP’s newsletter here or visit whichvoip.co.za/voip/ for more information.
About WhichVoIP.co.za
Since 2009, WhichVoIP.co.za has helped thousands of South African business to make better buying decisions for phone systems, VoIP and connectivity. In this time, we’ve facilitated the connection of 45 000+ users through our network of 500+ telecoms providers in our directory.
If you need a quote on a telephone system, VoIP, or other business communication solutions, click here to get one in a flash.
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