86% of SMBs to explore new business phone services within three years
With news buzzing about details from Google’s phone service reportedly being leaked two days ago, business journalists have taken to writing about the benefits of business phone services, a topic too often overlooked. With financial savings, availability of a local number for international presence, transcription of voicemail to texts and more, business VoIP services today provide numerous opportunities to increase productivity and efficiency. However, these intelligent features are often not being put to use.
Last March, Allworx Corp. released a survey exploring the use of business phone systems by Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs). The study revealed a lack of awareness regarding widely available technology trends in business phone services, particularly relating to advanced phone features, in contrast to the SMBs’ needs. Indeed, the survey also revealed that, despite the rise of digital communication, 74% of SMBs said that voice communication remained extremely or very important to their business operations with the top three phone features most used listed as: 3-way calling (60%), intercom (42%), and conference call bridges (41%). However, intelligent telecommunications terminology such as IP telephony, hosted PBX, SIP trunks or Unified Communications remained unfamiliar to the vast majority of SMBs.
The study also revealed that nearly one in two SMBs planned to assess a new business phone service in the near future (86% within the next three years). For those exploring new options, Nextiva, ranked last March by Fit Small Business as the best overall small business phone system, may be today’s best choice. With a VoIP business phone solution that is technically self-installed (phones are sent to the client’s location to be set up in house) and a personal account representative to assist the setup process from beginning to end, Nextiva provides the technical advantages of a professional install without the extra cost.
At an average of less than US$30 per user per month, Nextiva offers unlimited United States calls, local and 800 numbers, free-of-charge professionally recorded phone greeting/automated assistant, conference calls and online fax. In addition, Nextiva is one of the few stable business VoIP companies in an industry known for its high volatility that can provide consistent service and support.
US-based Nextiva, Inc. is a cloud-based VoIP communications company founded in 2006 that offers services for SMBs in the United States.
The Allworx Corp. survey was conducted by Hanover Research and was fielded among 427 capital equipment purchase decision makers at businesses with 5-499 employees across 22 vertical industries from the United States.
