The Symptoms  – Help!  My on-hold recording warbles like a wounded canary!  If your customers are kvetching over the aches and pains of listening to your wobbly, distorted on-hold recordings, it’s time to seek medical help.

The Causes – The growing number of professionals who conduct business on the move is part of the affliction, along with the rapid exodus from traditional landline phones to more mobile technologies that rely on the strength of broadband to function.

To cope with the massive communications overload, cell towers are constantly switching between multiple cell phone conversations every second, which can make recorded music sound wobbly, distorted and the speech content almost impossible to understand. It’s an epidemic. And, depending on how busy the local towers are with calls, they’ll reproduce music reasonably well when call traffic is very light. Other times, because of heavy traffic or poor reception, the on-hold messages themselves will sound freakin’ awful.

The Cure – On Hold Advertising has the Rx for the common hold and will make your recording sound awesome! We custom produce all kinds of voice media with no music, just highly professional voice talents. Or, we can spice it up with catchy rhythmic backgrounds specially created to workaround the nuances of cellular connections.  For more tips on making the most of telecommunications marketing to keep your customers happy, and maybe a little less insane, visit us at onholdadvertising.net.

If you have ever tried to decide on a new hosted business VoIP solution for your company, then you have most likely run into, and been frustrated by some of the “gotcha’s” that VoIP company’s use to get you to consider their service above all others. Even when you have narrowed it down to just a few options, you have likely struggled to perform a   comparison of VoIP services that helps you make a final decision.

So what are we talking about here? Well here are just a few that come to mind and please add a comment below if you have run into any others that have caused some level of frustration:

Tiered Per user Pricing! – You spot an advertisement that states “Business VoIP service from $19.99 per month” and you immediately get excited and take a look. It turns out that the $19.99 price is only available to companies that want more than 50 lines and you only need 10 lines for your small business. Actual price for 10 lines turns out to be $34.99/user/month.

No Detailed Pricing on Website! – The aforementioned tiered pricing models are actually fairly common and it is great when the VoIP provider’s website clearly states these pricing tiers. There are some providers that do not even list tier pricing information and you need to get on the phone and as such become part of their sales funnel to just get a ballpark price.

Premium Features are NOT included!– Did you know that getting an auto-attendant in addition to business VoIP service can often cost you in the region of an extra $24.99 per month? Did you know that some VoIP companies will charge you an extra fee if you want numbers ported? Did you make sure that the “cool” VoIP feature that you have heard about is even available from the provider that you are about to sign with? The answer to these questions is quite often “NO”, and when you start to add these premium features to you service at a later date, the big savings that you made by switching to VoIP in the first place, slowly start to erode.

What does a Feature actually do anyway? – Believe it or not, there is often different terminology used for the same VoIP feature by different service providers.  The common features (call forwarding, call hold, etc)  are typically named the same but when it comes to more advanced, or premium features, the same feature can often be called something completely different. An example of this is “call pass”, “call flip” and “single number reach”. All of these do pretty much the same thing but are named differently by providers.

Are Smartphone apps supported and what do they actually do? – Functionality and availability vary from provider to provider. Most Smartphone apps are an extension of the in-office solution and create a virtual presence for the user. Others are stand-alone extensions that require an additional payment. Additionally, some of these apps will support VoIP calling via Wi-Fi while others will use cellular minutes for every call.

Does the provider support the Phones I already have? – If you already have IP phones, make sure the new VoIP provider that you are considering can actually support them, as otherwise you could end up with a hefty upfront cost that could have been avoided.

The good news is that there are actually a lot of providers that display this information very clearly on their websites and make it relatively easy to understand what the pricing is, what features are supported and what any extras will cost. The bad news is that it will likely be somewhat painful to perform a proper comparison by simply pulling up two or three provider websites on your screen.

Some options that can help with this comparison are:

1 – Call each provider and request a custom quote and full feature list with detailed pricing for any extra features. If a provider can’t deliver this quickly then you might want to ask yourself why.

2 – Use a 3rd party website that lists the providers that you are considering and check to see if they have a feature comparison tool.

3 – Avoid all the research and comparison and just go with your gut. Not the recommended approach but it can save you time and get you up and running with a business VoIP solution quicker. You may pay the price later though.

Regardless of any potential hassle or confusion, VoIP is still a great option for phone service that every company should be considering.

With an estimated 45 percent of Americans now using smartphones (66 percent for those under 30), it smartphones are starting to bleed into the enterprise. And now some businesses are beginning to evaluate whether they can manage their phone system needs directly from a smartphone.

But before jumping directly into managing your business via smartphone, you need to ask yourself a few questions. For instance, what if you want more than one employee to be responsible for responding to your company number? Or, how should you handle call recording, phone routing and other services you traditionally associate with landline service?

In this article, I’ll summarize research from Software Advice contributor Kelly Lindner. She recently shared her insights on strategies for deploying smartphones for business, as well as pros and cons for transitioning to this type of business phone system.

To PBX, or Not to PBX?
Companies with three or fewer employees can usually get by just using their smartphone network to run operations. But larger organizations might instead opt for a “virtual” private branch exchange (PBX) – a call routing and management service – to unite their mobile-device empowered workforce. In this model, one employee’s number is designated as the main line, and other individuals provide their numbers to customers as needed.

Or, companies can leverage products such RingCentral or Google Voice to provide a main line, that routes callers to individual smartphones using business extensions. As an added bonus, when an employee calls from their mobile phone, these PBX systems will show the main line on recipient’s caller ID. Some of these Cloud-based services also offer call recording, voice transcription and other business-focused services.

The Pros of a Smartphone-Run Business
The first and most obvious benefit is customer accessibility. If employees are reachable anywhere – in or out the office – customers are less likely to have to wait on hold, or for their messages to be returned.

“Having a landline tied us to a specific location and was presenting a barrier to connecting with clients. … Now we don’t have to run back to the office to check messages,” said Stuart Randell, a virtual PBX user and head of business strategy at Code & Company Inc.

A smartphone-run business also has advantages for employees. They get to use the device they are most comfortable with. Also, business owners realize savings (though sometimes small) compared with traditional VoIP-based systems.

The Cons of this Telephony Model
There’s nothing worse than hearing that dooming beep indicating your phone is about to lose power. Loss of battery life is a huge negative to using smartphones only for your business. You depend on workers to keep their phones charged, and chargers close by. But we all know it can be easy to forget to plug and recharge your phone.

Additionally, cell networks are not always dependable in certain locations. This connection is particularly at risk during a natural disaster. And, generally speaking, voice quality in any condition can be fickle.

What advantages and disadvantages do you see with using PBX-enabled smartphones over traditional VoIP? Join the conversation by commenting here.