Steps to having ever-reliable VoIP service
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony systems are great for today’s businesses. They are more mobile, have greater functionality, and cost less than traditional landline phones. But as with any technology, VoIP is vulnerable to disruptions due to equipment failure, disasters, and cyberattacks. Follow these tips to make sure your VoIP system can continue to support operations despite unexpected circumstances.
Choose your provider wisely
When evaluating VoIP systems, you must verify your provider’s service level agreements. Ask them about their security and availability guarantees, and how they’re able to achieve them.
Partner with the firm that can host your VoIP systems in facilities that are safe from local disasters such as flash floods or earthquakes. Your provider should also use advanced network security services to protect your calls.
Invest in VoIP monitoring services
Before implementing any of the two VoIP continuity solutions that follow, install a third-party VoIP monitoring service to keep tabs on the status of your phone system. This will identify all network issues disrupting your phone system, so you can resolve them quickly.
Have a backup broadband line
Because VoIP solutions are dependent on internet connections, you should have a backup or alternate internet service provider (ISP) in case your primary network goes down.
Ideally, one ISP will be dedicated to your VoIP service, while another supports your main computer network. Once you’ve installed both networks, you can then program them to automatically transfer services to the other should one network fail. Thus, if your main phone network goes down, your VoIP solution switches to the other network so you can keep working.
Of course, subscribing to two separate ISPs will increase your internet expenses, but if you perform a cost-benefit analysis, you’ll find that the cost to maintain both is far less than the cost of significant downtime.
Route calls to mobile devices
With a cloud-based VoIP solution, you can choose where to receive your calls with call forwarding — a feature that automatically reroutes incoming calls to other company-registered devices. This is an excellent feature for enabling staff to receive calls when they’re out of the office on a remote assignment, working at home, or when your main office is hit by a local disaster or network outage. Thanks to call forwarding, your employees can continue working from their mobile devices as normal.
To benefit from this feature, make sure to register all employee mobile devices to your VoIP system and configure such devices to receive rerouted calls — and don’t forget to set policies for remote working. You should have rules that forbid staff from connecting to public Wi-Fi networks, as this can put them at risk of VoIP eavesdropping.
Test your continuity measures regularly
There’s little value in VoIP continuity and disaster recovery strategies if these end up failing when you need them the most. Test your VoIP service and check whether contact details are up to date, call forwarding features are routing calls to the right devices, and your backup internet service works. Ultimately, your goal is to find flaws in your strategies and make the necessary adjustments to avoid potential hiccups from occurring in the future.
If managing VoIP is too time-consuming and complex, call our professionals today. We design, implement, test, and monitor powerful, disaster-proof VoIP phone systems to ensure your communications are always online.