Cloud voice has become crucial to the future of business communications in 2024. It’s not just the various benefits that flexible, scalable, and agile cloud solutions offer driving adoption. Increasingly, companies of all sizes are being forced to reconsider the “future of voice” to adhere to changing working styles and evolutions in the wider communications landscape.
With BT preparing to switch off the PSTN network for UK companies and consumers by the end of 2025 and countless other countries already moving to the cloud, business telephony upgrades are now essential. Companies can no longer afford to maintain legacy equipment, just because they want to avoid a comprehensive “digital transformation”.
The question is, how do you choose the right cloud voice solution for your business in 2024 to ensure you’re ready for the future of voice?
Step 1: Assess Your Cloud Voice Requirements
Before looking at vendors offering solutions for the future of voice, assessing your current strategy and goals is essential. Examine the existing phone systems your business uses and your requirements for specific voice features, such as:
- Mobility: Does your voice solution need to support mobile connectivity, 5G, and business SIM cards to empower remote or distributed teams?
- Voice controls: What kind of telephony controls do you need for call routing and management, hunt groups, call forwarding, recording, and call transfer?
- Existing software: Does your voice solution need to integrate with existing communication and collaboration software, such as Microsoft Teams?
- Hardware: What types of hardware do your teams use for voice communications, from desk phones to tablets, smartphones, and headsets?
- Global reach: Where do you need to access phone numbers, virtual numbers, and licenses to ensure consistent communication worldwide?
Answering these questions will help you identify the type of voice solution you need and the features that will be most crucial to your team. It can also help to determine which existing solutions you can migrate into your new voice solution.
Step 2: Address Security and Reliability
As demand for cloud voice and innovative communication solutions grows, so does the need for comprehensive security and compliance strategies. Companies leveraging the cloud for internal and external communication need to think carefully about everything from call and screen recording to how data is managed and processed in the cloud.
When comparing your cloud voice solutions, ensure you clearly understand the regulatory standards you need to consider, from HIPAA to GDPR. Think about the encryption solutions you can leverage, access controls, and other security features to protect your consumers and your business.
At the same time, ensure you can rely on your cloud voice provider to deliver a consistent level of service. Check for uptime guarantees, failover mechanisms, and quality assurance tools you can leverage to ensure your voice system operates smoothly.
Step 3: Prioritize Excellent User Experience
A major benefit of embracing the cloud for the future of voice is that it can significantly improve user experiences. Cloud voice solutions give teams more freedom to access the features and technologies they need wherever they are, often on any device. They can even be integrated with your team's productivity and collaboration tools, like Microsoft Teams.
An excellent user experience is crucial to driving adoption of your new cloud voice solutions, improving productivity, and minimizing efficiency issues. Ensure your cloud voice offering is flexible enough to use across all devices and operating systems and has intuitive controls.
