That VoIP has many advantages over traditional telephony is clear. Crystal-clear calls, no longer being dependent on a fixed number or landline, the ability to work location-independently—the possibilities are endless. But if you’re still not entirely convinced, we’d like to present a top five of the most useful extras that a VoIP phone system offers.

VoIP Benefit #1: Your Business Number Anywhere

Because VoIP doesn’t work like classic telephony—with a number linked to a landline—but instead assigns your number virtually, using your business number is no longer dependent on your physical phone system or the device connected to it.

At the top of our list is the most commonly used option in VoIP telephony: call forwarding.

This means that every call can be assigned to a different device. This could be your landline when you’re at your desk, an employee taking calls on their laptop, or even a call center abroad. When you’re on the go, these incoming calls are routed to your smartphone. Outgoing calls can also always be made with these devices.

You can also flexibly adjust these settings via an app or a web portal.

Let Your Customers Choose

Large companies often work with specializations by topic, where not everyone can know all aspects of your business. Questions about an invoice are best handled by accounting, while product-related questions are better directed to a salesperson.

Second on our list is an option familiar to anyone who has ever called a provider or government service: the menu selection.

Based on a number of self-chosen selection criteria, your calling customer can outline their question and choose which department they want to be connected with. Based on this choice, automatic messages can even be shared, such as opening hours or references to a website with more information.

Because a phone has ten number keys, you can offer up to ten options in the menu. Based on the customer’s choice, the call can be automatically routed by the system to the relevant department, eliminating the need for a receptionist.

Call Recording

Third on our list is an option that is gaining popularity. With the increasing need for tangible or demonstrable records of meetings, notes from negotiations, or contact logs, the legal recording of calls is becoming increasingly important.

If you’ve ever called a company or organization’s helpdesk, you’ve likely heard the message, “This call may be recorded for training purposes.” With VoIP, you can also record your calls. These are stored securely in the cloud and can be replayed whenever you wish.

This has several advantages. By recording calls, you can document a customer’s purchase commitment, check whether your employees conducted a quality conversation and make adjustments if necessary, or use the best calls during staff training sessions.

Manage High Call Volumes

Sometimes your business, and especially your VoIP phone system, may face a high volume of incoming calls. Often, it’s not possible to temporarily hire more staff to handle these short periods or one-time peaks. For such moments, we highlight this VoIP feature: the queue.

A customer who can’t reach your business is an unhappy customer and could also be a lost customer. It’s therefore crucial that all calls are answered. A virtual queue ensures that all calls are received and that the caller has the option to wait their turn before being assisted by an employee. With VoIP, the capacity of such a queue is virtually unlimited, though we hope you’ll never need to test this.

If the wait time for your customers becomes too long, you can always choose to redirect calls to other branches or departments with a single adjustment in your app. Alternatively, you can activate a digital answering machine that forwards your customers’ recorded messages to a central email address.

Knowledge is Power

Fifth on our list of favorite VoIP features is a tool indispensable for any business: contact tracking.

While you can measure your business’s success by the number of customers you serve, the annual sales achieved, and the associated revenue or profit, the strength of your customer service and phone follow-up is measured using statistics.

VoIP has a significant advantage over traditional telephony in this regard. Since calls are digital, tracking and recording these contacts is a breeze. Every incoming and outgoing call is logged with standard details such as duration, number of transfers, wait time before the customer was connected to someone, who answered the call, and more. Using this data, you can always monitor peak times, identify the most frequent callers, or determine which department receives the most inquiries.

This data is securely stored in the cloud and can also be accessed offline for further analysis.

A Tough Choice

Anyone who has carefully reviewed this overview will undoubtedly have noticed that this top five includes far more than five useful extras. It’s difficult to make a limited selection from the overwhelming range of benefits offered by VoIP telephony.