Top Features You Should Look for in Hosted Telephony

Hosted Telephony, also known as Cloud telephony or hosted VoIP, is where the provider hosts and manages the business phone system in a private data center. It gives the re-seller access to lower costs, free IP calling, and features like voicemail to email, on-hold music, call parking etc.

A private branch exchange (PBX) is a private telephone network within a company or organization. Hosted Telephony is run on a PBX and can be used over a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), over the Internet (Hosted IP PBX via Internet Telephony also known as VOIP), or both.

There are many benefits to having hosted customers rather than on-premise ones. When a company chooses the hosted deployment, they are relieved of the burden of purchasing and maintaining the hardware.

The future is in Hosted – let’s explore the Top Features You Should Look for in Hosted Telephony:

Time
By switching to Hosted Telephony, you and your customers are ultimately saving a great deal of time.

How Do You Ask?
With Hosted Telephony, desktop and mobile communication apps make it possible to work from anywhere with internet. Your customers will love that when they aren’t in the office they won’t be unavailable or miss calls. But – unified communications mean so much more than just staying in contact.

You are also going to save time with installation. Installation can be done remotely in a matter of days or even hours. There is no hardware to install or set up and no physical problems that could arise. It all can be installed by clicks of your keyboard and mouse.

Customization
You can customize! Some companies who offer hosted telephony offer customization. The customization makes it easier for your customers to add/remove features at any point. Maybe they want to start out with the basics and get their feet wet. Then after experiencing rapid growth, they are ready to go all in. This feature is also possible with the click of a few buttons.

By offering customization, you can meet more customer requirements with less hassle and customers get what they want, when they want it, how they want it. This moves us into our next topic.

Expanding Your Target Market
By offering different features and customization packages you can reach an array of different types of customers. If you have hosted, you can gain different customers who have different budgets. It allows them to pick the features they want without taking a hit to their wallets. It is a win for them and you.

Month-to-Month Hosted Partnerships
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is the key to your company’s profit, growth, and sustainability. Vendors who sell on-premise software sell to their customers one time. Although it is a big one-time check, they are back to square one looking for more customers. If you offer hosted to your customers, you will still receive ‘one-time’ checks and they will be smaller, BUT they will come every month! This long-term commitment from customers will result in continuance profit for your business.

Not to mention the relationship you will build from a month to month hosted partnership. Your company will help its customers grow by supporting and working with them and you will grow with them offering upgrades, add-ons, etc. If you give your customer all the pieces they need to be successful, like staying innovative, offering updates and being supportive they will stick with you for the long haul. Your customer’s commitment to your company will guarantee financial security for your bottom line.

Ultimately, Hosted Telephony is just more convenient. By switching to Hosted, it removes the burden of IT maintenance and extra support from your customer. You don’t have to purchase any servers, it frees up physical space and gives you and your customers a piece of mind that in an emergency they are protected.

Bicom Systems product PBXware is an example of a product that has all these features and more. PBXware was the world’s first and is the most mature Open Standards Turnkey Telephony Platform. If you want to learn more about Hosted Telephony, download our book on ‘7 Reasons You and Your Customers Should Switch to Hosted’.

If you want to learn more about Bicom Systems, visit our website or email us at: sales@bicomsystems.com.