Everybody wants to save money. In this article, we will look at 5 ways to save money on your business phone service. We’ve seen customers save as much as 55%. Here’s how: http://bullfrog.net
1. Perform a telecom audit
This exercise can be done yourself or you can outsource it to a cost containment firm that specializes in reducing your telecom expenditure. The easiest step you can take is to make sure you are not paying for circuits or features that you are not using. Did you forget to cancel that T1 circuit or the dozen analog lines you no longer use? Are you paying for caller-id but your phone system doesn’t support it? Double check.
2. Consolidate services
Usually, if you have multiple services, consolidating them into one provider can usually get you a nice discount. Ever hear of the “triple play” discount? In a typical scenario, combining local, long-distance, and your analog lines, you can bundle and realize some savings.
3. Update your circuits
The days of having a phone line for each employee or even a digital PRI trunk from the telco are long gone. Newer technologies such as SIP allow you to connect to the telecom service provider over the Internet, removing the need for an expensive dedicated voice circuit (PRI).
4. Host your business phone service
With a cloud based phone system or hosted VoIP service, the service provider will simply ship you a phone, have you plug it in, and it will connect over the Internet to the service provider, allowing you to make calls over that connection. This would remove the need for a dedicated business phone service as it would be provided as part of the hosted service.
5. Service Provider Usage Reports
Daily, we see companies with excess capacity but having no idea. What that means is having more circuits than your system or office is designed for. You should ask the service provider for a report of your usage by hour, telling you the number of phone lines or channels you are using during the busiest hours of the day. You may be able to reduce the number of lines or channels you are paying for (this is the case more often than not). However, you will want to make sure you leave a little extra capacity so your callers don’t receive a busy signal.
