“Just pay a monthly service bill and all the hassles of owning a PBX go away.” That’s the promise behind Hosted IP Voice solutions. Sounds like a good choice, but there are pitfalls to consider:

• How will the provider integrate your CRM database, so your employees can receive a “screen-pop” of essential information when customers call?
• Chances are you have worked out some special arrangements to accommodate your business, such as a call center, overhead paging in the warehouse, or call recording – to name a few. Confirm whether these will work in a Hosted Voice environment.
• If you rely on your “on-hold” recordings to keep customers informed and entertained when they get placed on hold, you need to be especially diligent in determining whether or not a Hosted Voice Service can integrate and support the recordings you’ve invested in.
• A service provider may use just one “soft switch” to handle all of their customers globally. If that system crashes, what will you do to stay in business?
• When all your voice traffic goes through one shared, hosted switch, how can the provider guarantee you will not be affected by a problem occurring with another customer?
• If quality of service – delay, echo, or dropped calls – becomes a problem, can you easily switch to another service provider?
• What happens if the service provider has financial issues and cannot pay its underlying carriers or falls in arrears?
• The FCC – the regulatory body that oversees the U.S. telecommunications industry – provides little supervision over Hosted Service Providers. The same is true of most state regulators. With no safety net, you need to do some serious due diligence before adopting Hosted Voice.

These are only a few of the issues that may arise with hosted phone service. CWPS offers reliable, secure, cost-saving premises-based solutions from industry-leaders. And as your trusted technology partner, we make sure your IP phone system keeps up with new technology, applications, and your people – wherever they may be.

Get more details on the pros and cons of hosted versus premises voice solutions… Contact the IP Voice experts at CWPS.