Small Business Owners, Do You Know What VOIP Is?

Our names are Tom Mitt and Jake Polzin, founder and president of TBG Technologies, an IT support company since 2004.

Do you know what VOIP is? Maybe you know it as “Internet Phone” or just “Digital Phone.” It is quite simply the most important advancement in phone service since cellular phones were developed. And it is now easily available for small businesses. I mean really small, 5 users or even less.

Why is this a good thing for small businesses? Because it allows you to have a presence even when there is no one in your office. It also allows you to have calls chase you down, in case of an emergency. It gives you total control of your communications with features that up until recently were only available to companies with deep pockets.

So, what are these miraculous features? Let’s start with the most important one, portability – the ability to have a phone wherever you have an internet connection. Not that long ago, your office phone was connected to a phone jack in the wall. The office manager’s phone had to be plugged into the jack in the office manager’s office. The receptionist could only be connected to the jack at the reception desk. And the president’s phone could only be in the president’s office. But what if the president changed to a different office (that great corner office they have lusted after for so long)? Before VOIP, a technician had to come out and rewire the jack in the new location.

With VOIP, all you have to do is unplug the phone from the network jack in the old location and plug it into the network jack in the new location. Done. No technician required, no expensive service call, and no delay.

There’s more! You don’t even have to be in the same location at all. You can unplug the phone at the office, take it home, and plug it into your home network jack. Boom! Your phone works there just as if you were in the office. As long as you have an internet connection, your phone will work.

Great thing about the internet – it does not know about geography. For the most part, the internet in your office is the same as the internet in your home or anywhere else. Of course, there are exceptions (there always are), but even those can be overcome easily.

The pandemic forced companies to find new tactics that allowed them to operate and provide their services within the restrictive guideline the disease required. VOIP allows your business to operate when your staff is not able to come into the office. Why does your receptionist have to be in the office when they can do the exact same thing from their home?

Another great feature is the ability to have your phone system handle calls without you even being involved. An auto-attendant can help callers connect to the exact person they are looking for. For example, our system is programmed to answer a caller and present some options. The first one allows the caller to get right to a technician in case of an emergency, like a failed server. No need to explain the issue to a receptionist who then passes it on to a technician who might not be available at that moment. The emergency option goes right to an on-call tech who can deal with the problem.

For those companies that prefer to have a human answering the phone, an auto-attendant can provide a backup in case that human is not available (lunchtime, break, etc.).

The list of features is long – much too long for this short post.

But one feature that is specific to TBG Technologies is the fact the TBG provides the support for our VOIP systems. We know our customers, and we know their systems. We program your VOIP system initially and we maintain it for you. Need to add an extension or remove one? We take care of that. One could say “we make phone systems, behave!”

In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting educational information so you’re able to become the best business owner you can be. We’ll touch on backups, anti-virus, internet safety, cyber-attacks, ransomware, the cloud, email safety, and others.

Tom Mitt is the founder and Jake Polzin is the president of TBG Technologies, located at 11300 W. Greenfield Avenue, West Allis, Wis. 53214. Tom can be reached at toomas@tbgtechnologies.com and Jake can be reached at jake@tbgtechnologies.com. www.tbgtechnologies.com We Make Technology Behave.