Cloud Phone System
If you want a fast, high-quality communications system that can be accessed remotely, gives great value for money, and will scale with your business, a cloud phone system is a sensible choice. Book a Vonage demo today to see how Vonage Business Communications can benefit your business.
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Cloud Phone System Features and a Whole Lot More
Vonage Business Communications is a cloud-based unified communications platform that offers a whole host of cutting edge tools and features:
Intuitive Admin Portal
Vonage Business Communications offers an intuitive admin portal that shows you the state of your phone system at a glance. It makes call management easier than ever.
Automatic Call Distribution
Automatic call routing is a must if you experience high call volumes. Automatic call distribution gives you a slick, streamlined phone service which gets customers through to exactly the right person without being passed from employee to employee first.
Call Flip
Call Flip is a handy feature which allows you to swap a call from one device to another. For example, you could start a call on your smartphone and flip it to your desktop if needed.
Virtual Receptionist
A virtual receptionist, also known as an auto attendant, helps streamline and manage your call system. How? By providing callers with options to easily route themselves to the right member of your team. You can also change settings based on schedules, departments, and availability. It’s an easy-to-use feature to boost customer experience.
Local Business Number
Our cloud phone systems allow you to pick your own business number. So you can inspire trust in potential customers with a phone number with your choice of area code. Plus, if you already have a number you don’t wish to lose, you can also usually port it over to Vonage.
International Number
If you have overseas customers, an international number will give you a global presence and make it easier for them to reach you, while helping your Virtual Receptionist to more efficiently route those international calls.
Voice and Video Conferencing
Voice and video conferencing are a must for a modern business. With a good UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) platform, you get in-built conferencing capabilities with a great selection of features.
Call Park
With Vonage’s Call Park feature, you can keep a call live while making and receiving other calls. This is very handy if your caller needs to leave the call at any point.
Queue and Hold Features
Being able to queue callers and put people on hold is a great help during busy times. It helps to ensure that every caller is heard, without the frustration of back-and-forth call transfers.
What Is a Cloud-Based Phone System?
A cloud-based phone system (also sometimes known simply as a cloud phone) is a telecommunications system based in the cloud rather than upon the network of copper wires that makes up the traditional landline system.
In practical terms, this means you can use a cloud-based phone system to make and receive calls over the internet. You don’t need to be plugged into the landline network; you simply need to be able to access the internet.
The best modern cloud-based phone systems usually come as part of a UCaaS package. UCaaS stands for Unified Communications as a Service, and it’s a popular, cost-effective, and flexible way to get a top-of-the-range communications system.
Vonage Business Communications — and its add-ons — can offer a cloud-based phone service accompanied by multiple other communication channels, including email, SMS, and live chat.
VBC is the world's most flexible cloud communications application
Security and compliance
Secure communications that meet your industry’s regulatory requirements. See VBC Security & Reliability
The 99.999% claim is based on Vonage's average up-time and/or availability.
How Do Cloud Phone Systems Work?
Cloud phone systems use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology to transfer calls over the internet. It works by transforming your voice into digital signals, sending those signals over the internet, and converting them back into audio in real-time.
The process is as fast as (and often faster than) making a call over traditional telephone networks. It’s also reliable, especially when making international calls.
Platforms like Vonage Business Communications can be accessed through a simple business phone app, making it simple to use over any network.
Cloud Phone Systems vs. Traditional Telephony: The Differences
Which is best, analog or digital phone systems? Here are some of the key differences between them:
- Remote calling. If your business phone network is based upon a landline system, you need to be by (or at least very near) your landline extension to make and receive calls. With a cloud business phone system, however, you can log into your business phone network from anywhere with an internet connection.
- Less hardware. Landlines are hardware-intensive. They need a lot of copper wire and clunky handsets, not to mention phone desks for your operators. But all you need to operate a cloud-based phone system is a way to log onto the internet.
- Multi-device compatibility. You can use your cloud phone from any internet-enabled device, including smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. Landlines are much more limited in device compatibility.
- Future-proof. Landline systems are on their way out. Telecom companies are actively stripping out copper landline wires and replacing them with fiber-optic cables. In many European countries, the landline signal is being switched off completely in the very near future. So, for a future-proof telecommunications system, UCaaS is the way forward.
The Business Benefits of Cloud Phone Services
Cloud phone systems bring a lot of benefits for business. Here are just a few:
Flexibility
Being able to work remotely is a huge advantage for modern employees, but it’s hard to offer flexible hybrid/remote work when you’re reliant on a landline system.
With a VoIP cloud phone system, your business can make and receive calls anywhere, any time. This gives you the flexibility to do things like adopt a hybrid/remote work system, or improve productivity by making and taking calls on the go.
Cost-Efficiency
Cloud phone systems are very cost-efficient. You often see savings in almost every area, from hardware to the cost-per-call rate.
Because you pay a flat fee every month (some advanced features are extra), businesses with high call volumes can often see a significant reduction in phone fees when switching to systems like Vonage Business Communications, and the savings increase as you scale.
It’s also a very cost-efficient way to scale your phone system or even move premises. Rather than having to install new phone hardware in new offices, you can simply log into your cloud phone system from your new location.
Similarly, if you want to expand your telecoms system, you don’t need to go through the disruption and the expense of installing new phone extensions. You simply log into your account and add new users.
Extra Features
While landlines can be linked to software, it’s never a truly efficient way to do things. A UCaaS system like Vonage Business Communications doesn’t just offer reliable, cost-efficient calling. It’s a fully integrated communications platform, from which you can manage and operate all of your comms channels.
As UCaaS solutions are themselves software, you can get a whole host of smart, digital features built right into the system itself.
Extra features you can add to and use within your Vonage solution may require an additional charge, depending on your plan. Some of these features include automated call routing, analytics, call flipping, and more. Visit our pricing page to learn more.
Integrations
One of the best things about cloud-based phone systems are the number of integrations they can offer. Integrations allow you to streamline not just your communications, but also things like data collection, marketing, sales, and customer services.
Vonage solutions integrate with popular CRM platforms including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics. By integrating your CRM with your phone system, customer service operatives can quickly pull up things like customer details without having to hop between different platforms.
Similarly, you can feed data from your telecoms system to your central databases, so that everyone can see data on (for example) common problems and queries at a glance.
That’s not the end of the integrations offered by Vonage, either. There are also deep and useful integrations with productivity, communications, and other solutions like Slack and Microsoft Teams. What’s more, the integrations are usually an easy install — sometimes with just a single click — from our app center.
Competitiveness
A cloud phone system for small business enables small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to become more competitive in their marketplaces. It gives access to premium features at a low cost, while boosting flexibility and cost-efficiency in ways that help ramp up employee productivity.
Features like virtual receptionists can help small businesses build better relationships with customers through improved experiences.
You can also scale a cloud telephone system more easily. You simply add more users to your account, or go up a platform tier.
All in all, UCaaS systems are a great way for small and medium sized businesses to improve their business outcomes and gain a competitive edge.
UCaaS and Cloud Phone Systems Are the Future of Business Communications
UCaaS and cloud phone systems are a far more sensible choice for forward-thinking businesses than sticking with legacy systems. With Vonage Business Communications, you can take advantage of the benefits UCaaS can offer.
From a wealth of tools and features to cost-savings, Vonage can help take your business to the next level. Book your demo today or reach out to an expert, and discover how a cloud-based business phone system can benefit you.
FAQs About Cloud Phone Systems
A traditional phone system relies on a network of copper wires. In order to access it, your phone handset must be literally plugged into this network, meaning that your flexibility and mobility is very limited when operating a traditional setup.
A cloud phone system operates over the internet, which means you don’t have to be in a fixed location to use your cloud phone system. You can access your cloud phone system anywhere with an internet connection.
VoIP stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol.” Essentially, VoIP is a protocol that allows you to make and receive calls over the internet. Cloud phone systems use VoIP to route calls.
Vonage provides a high-performance, VoIP-based cloud phone system that allows you to make and receive calls anywhere with an internet connection, and on a compatible device.
You can use a cloud phone system with any internet-enabled devices, including smartphones and tablets. This is one of the big advantages of a cloud phone system.
A cloud phone system does not restrict you to your landline. Instead, you can access your cloud phone account on devices with internet access, giving you a lot more flexibility when it comes to your communications strategy.
Cloud phone systems are very cost-effective. Depending on the provider you choose, you can get a reliable system with plenty of extra features for a generally lower cost-per-call than a landline phone system.
Vonage Business Communications offers plans at various price points, and the savings increase as you scale tiers.
It’s also worth noting that a good cloud communications platform doesn’t just give ROI on cost-per-call. It also gives you the flexibility and scalability you need to both reduce your overheads and boost your productivity.
The features you need in a cloud phone system will vary depending on your business model, but there are some features that all cloud phone systems should have.
As part of a cloud-based phone system for small business, call routing (perhaps managed by a virtual receptionist) is a huge benefit, especially if you experience a relatively high volume of calls. The ability to get a local area code can also be very useful when making sales calls, as customers may be more likely to answer calls from an area code they know rather than a random number.
An intuitive admin portal is essential for good call management. You should also look for a system that integrates with other tools and platforms, such as your CRM. This makes it a lot easier for your agents to pull up and pass on essential information to other teams.
Above all, you want a cloud phone system that is high quality, safe, reliable, and cost-effective. To find out how Vonage Business Communications can provide all of this, schedule a conversation today.
It’s easy to start using a cloud phone system with a provider like Vonage. Vonage’s solutions are simple to use, and it doesn’t take long at all to be trained on our system. So, setting up and starting with Vonage is as simple as creating an account, signing in, and making your first calls.
If you have a larger company, you may find it a bit more time consuming to get started, as you will have to add more people to your account and train them in how to use the system. But it’s still a relatively quick and easy process, especially when compared to the expense and disruption of setting up a new landline system.
If you do have any issues with set up or adoption, Vonage offers a wide variety of services to help. Customers can access the support they need, in whichever way best suits them.
That might mean accessing the knowledge hub of on-demand resources for self-service or utilizing 24/7 chatbot assistance for questions. Or, it may mean calling a support phone number, creating cases within your VBC account, or exploring a community forum that allows customers to share tips and ideas on using Vonage.
A virtual phone number can be generated for you when you subscribe to Vonage. However, if you prefer, you can also leverage an existing number. For this, you must login to your Vonage Admin Portal and complete a Letter of Authorization (LoA).
