Businesses everywhere are migrating to cloud-based phone systems for the many advantages they deliver. A cloud phone system marries the best of traditional telephony—high standards for call quality, security, and carrier-grade reliability—with the mobility and flexibility enabled by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.
But not all business phone systems are created equal. In this post, we will focus on one of the critical features that differentiate best-in-class cloud PBX systems from the competition: call quality.
The high cost of poor call quality
Unlike traditional on-premises PBX systems, cloud PBX systems unlock the ability to make calls from smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other devices. Facilitating calls over the internet is no small feat, however—and in the hands of the wrong provider, businesses can run into a host of problems.
We’ve all experienced it: “Can you hear me now?” Providers that do not prioritize call quality pass along a number of frustrating issues to their customers, including latency (a short time delay after one person speaks but before the other person hears it), jitter (garbled or scrambled voice), and packet loss (periods of silence or robotic-sounding voices).
Anything less than carrier-class voice quality discourages collaboration, hampers productivity, and, whether directly or not, negatively affects your business’s bottom line. Fortunately, leading providers provide solutions that ensure the best call quality.
Choosing the right cloud phone provider
Voice quality can be overlooked with all the bells, whistles, and additional “must-have” features that seem to come with today’s cloud phone systems. Fortunately, you only need consider a few fundamental attributes:
1. Enterprise-grade quality
In your evaluation process, consider reports from independent research firms to determine whether a vendor backs up its claims for enterprise-grade quality of service for voice. And don’t forget to make sure their voice communications solution can scale without losing any sound quality.
2. Monitoring and analytics
Best-in-class providers provide a comprehensive monitoring system that includes reports on call quality. Monitoring features should help you understand the overall health of your cloud phone service and compare call quality trends across locations, regions and offices. What’s more, these reports should enable you to anticipate and diagnose call quality issues impacting your global users and to troubleshoot potential problems in near real time.
3. Expertise
Technology is just one part of the equation. An experienced service provider should offer a team of experts and service technicians to help you identify, diagnose and resolve issues before, during and after implementation.
Insist on superior call quality
Putting up with dropped calls, static, and overall poor voice quality just isn’t necessary. Not with today’s leading cloud vendors. Your business needs a reliable cloud PBX solution to support your employees and your bottom line.
Find out how RingCentral delivers impeccable call quality to more than 350,000 satisfied customers.
Originally published Feb 25, 2019, updated Sep 12, 2024