Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) converts the voice signal in phone calls into a digital signal that travels via an internet connection. Unlike on-premises VoIP, hosted VoIP provides your business with a complete phone system from a trusted VoIP provider over the internet.

So, what exactly is hosted VoIP, and how can your company benefit from a hosted VoIP provider? This article guides you through how hosted VoIP works, its most essentialt features, and its benefits.

What is a Hosted VoIP Telephony?

A Hosted VoIP Telephony is a VoIP solution offered and managed by a third-party provider. It starts with an IP phone that turns your live voice communication into data packets that travel to one of many data centers of the provider. The VoIP service provider then handles the conversion and data transfer to the recipient phone. 

How Does a Hosted VoIP Telephony Work?

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) converts your voice into a digital signal and sends it over the internet. A VoIP service provider sets up the call between you and the recipient. On the receiving end, the voice data is converted into the sound that you hear through your phone.

With a hosted VoIP telephony, your phones do not connect directly to an internal server, and they connect through VoIP servers securely hosted in the cloud. There’s no need for on-premise PBX equipment i.e., you never have to worry about maintenance costs, upgrades, or service downtime. A hosted VoIP service gives small businesses all the benefits of a PBX without any of the hassles.

Hosted VoIP Telephony Benefits

Below are six benefits of Hosted VoIP Telephony: 

Cost-Effective

If you are currently using a landline business phone solution, you can save big by making the switch. Hosted VoIP gives you all the features of a business phone plan such as unlimited calling, unlimited inbound faxing, voicemail to email transcription, advanced call analytics, etc. for less.

Business Tools Integrations

With hosted VoIP systems, you can integrate calls with existing business tools. Your business is most likely already using software to get things done. With VoIP, integration is much simpler. You can automatically sync call data with your existing CRM software. Hosted VoIP systems provide full support for your CRM and business apps such as Salesforce, Dynamics, Pipedrive, Zoho, and Zendesk.

Mobility

With the Find Me Follow Me feature on hosted VoIP, incoming calls can reach the right agent, no matter where they are. First, calls from customers automatically ring the office desk phone. If unanswered, it goes to the business cell phone and then the home number. 

Hosted VoIP also functions with business phone service apps. Agents can make calls on the go on any device with your office phone number. 

Supports Unified Communications

Unified Communications integrate all communication channels into a single dashboard. It can be game-changing for customer service, marketing, and sales.

This makes your staff more productive with everything they need in one place. They don’t have to check email, social media, voicemails, online portals, helpdesks, and more on separate platforms. 

Secured

With hosted VoIP, calls go through advanced encryption, offering a high level of security for any of your conversations and messages. Real-time monitoring is also crucial in hosted VoIP security. Even as the nature of security threats continues to evolve, hosted VoIP platforms maintain top-level security and are HIPAA-compliant. Customer support also gives you expert solutions when you have concerns. 

Advanced Call Center Features

Customers’ expectations have evolved in recent years. They expect the best agents to handle their issues any time of the day and have a seamless experience on whatever channel they choose to reach the business. Hosted VoIP provides businesses advanced contact center features to satisfy customers’ questions via email, phone, text, or other channels.

Hosted VoIP Features That Empowers Your Business

Not all VoIP service providers offer the same features. However, here are Hosted VoIP features to look for to empower your business: 

  • Call Routing: With advanced call routing, never connect a customer call to the wrong agent ever again.
  • Auto Attendant: An auto-attendant is a virtual receptionist that helps answer, escalate, and route all incoming calls without the need for a human. 
  • Business Text Messaging: SMS allows you to send notifications to customers or update your field teams.
  • Call Analytics: Hosted VoIP can record and process all sorts of call data for you to glean insight to improve your business. 
  • Call Forwarding: Never let a call remain unanswered. Forward calls received by office phones to mobile phones or other devices. 
  • Call Parking: Call parking feature lets you enable call waiting for a saturated team until the right person can take the call.
  • Call Queue: Call queue automates the distribution of inbound calls. 
  • Call Recording: Hosted VoIP can make it easy to record phone calls.
  • Call Transfer: This feature lets you move a live call from the original recipient (usually it’s you) to another person.
  • Custom Music on Hold: This feature plays audio files while your customers wait for a response. 
  • Unlimited Voice Calls: Look for VoIP services with unlimited voice calls (like ULTATEL!) and stop worrying about call limits. 
  • Voicemail to Email/Text: The voicemail-to-email feature automatically sends voicemail messages to your inbox so you can respond to customers faster.

The Bottom Line

Hosted VoIP services pose an ideal solution for small businesses looking to find an inexpensive and unified solution for communication needs. 
Here at ULTATEL, we offer hosted VoIP services with an enterprise-level system availability of 99.999% uptime. We conduct regular security testing and offer HIPAA-compliant hosted VoIP solutions, so you can focus on what matters: your customers.