VOIP Tech Chat → Selecting phones for small office...

Hello:

I am looking for recommendations for VoIP office phones. I [guess] (because I do not have any first hand experience with such phones) the my criteria would be:

1. The phones should have an excellent history of working correctly.
2. They should be able to 'deal with' up to 8 incoming calls.
3. They should not be the most expensive but they must reliably work as 'telephones'.
4. Maybe, they should be able to connect to head-sets, either corded or blue-tooth.
5. The phones should be available in Canada.

The office has 6 employees but will grow to 8.

Any recommendations or input on such phones would be appreciated.

Seems to me that Yealink phones would be the best choice, according people I dare to trust.
Do not know about availability in Canada, though.

What if after a while the office will grow to 10 people are they going to change all phones?
Maybe a different approach will be better with a PBX and phones who can deal with less calls, that will be a more flexible solution.

Excellent point.

Depending also on the type of business, it might be that not every employee is going to be on the phone at the same time.

2. It is very difficult for a single person to juggle eight active calls at once. Unless you have a very special set of circumstances, you could probably get away with phones that can handle three or four incoming calls at a time.

If you're interested in buying phones and service from a company which will pre-configure them for you, and offer technical support, I see that you are already familiar with AcroVoice.

We handle Yealink, Grandstream and Cisco. Yealink and Grandstream are both excellent, affordable products. Grandstream wins however because their support people are extremely accessible. Grandstream is tight small company headquartered in Boston with an excellent support staff based right there a stone's throw from Fenway Park. They have another support office in LA providing North American support into the evening. They usually respond to tickets within a couple of hours and are always helpful. Yealink is based in China. Good phones but support is a pain.

Oh, did I forget Cisco? Good. Forget Cisco. Over rated and over priced with unapproachable personnel. Polycom too.

One more thing - VoIP is very cool and cost effective - but it's tricky. If you don't believe me just read this forum. It's one thing if you're a hobbyist like many on this board. However you'll be miserable trying to run your business on VoIP if you don't know what the heck you're doing (and that includes do-it-yourself mail-order phone service from the likes of RingCentral or 8x8 or AcroVoice). I strongly recommend you spend a few extra bucks and hire an experienced professional who knows the tricks of the trade to get this going the right way for you. (I met a tech from Montreal last week at a Grandstream training session. He impressed me. I think I have his card somewhere. If you're interested PM me and I'll look for it).

Just my 2 cents as a small business telecom professional in New York (where small business owners get REALLLLLY miserable when they're miserable).

Obviously, and as usual, I am confused - see avatar.

Doesn't each phone have to be capable to handle with 8 calls?

If I have 8 lines and get 8 incoming calls, which phone will ring?

Doesn't each phone have to have a designated line to make an out-going call?

As I said, I am confused.

No. VoIP works more like a PBX system than a Key system.

With a basic key system every line is accessible from every phone. if someone is on "line-2" then "line-2" is lit on every phone. If you want to take the call just pick up line-2. Sounds like this is the kind of system you are used to.

With a PBX (especially a VoIP PBX), each phone is independent of the other. You might set up a ring group so that incoming calls ring every phone, but once someone answers the call it drops from the unanswered phones, freeing them for other calls. If the call is for someone else in the office then the person who answered can transfer the call to the intended party's phone. In this way, for an office your size, 3-line phones are perfectly sufficient.

Of course this explanation is very basic, but I hope it helps a little. See my prior post about hiring an expert.

Yes, I am familiar with AcroVoice and think that Trev is great.

To be honest, AcroVoice is my choice but the company wants to do it themselves to save money, which is not in great supply at the moment.

So the blind will lead the blind and stumble and fall and then get up and try again and then again and so on.

This is why I posted about 'easing into VoIP' so that we won't kill off the company's communications in one fell swoop.

No, it only has to be capable of the number that one person would reasonably be expected to simultaneously handle.Whichever phone(s) you want.That is a very expensive proposition. Unless you're an outbound call centre and expect to have all your staff on the phone at the same time, it's typical to have fewer lines (channels) than staff.To be brutally honest: I'd run, not walk, from this project, before you get too involved. Not because I think you can't do it - given enough time, you could learn anything you want. Because you'll become "the phone guy" for your friend's business. This is a commitment that won't end, and will end up becoming a massive waste of your time. The only way they'll save money is if you're working for free. That's not fair to you, and you'll never be able to pass the project off to someone else. Anveo and VoIP.ms don't provide the level of support that someone untrained needs, and no professional will want to work on someone else's project.

Back in the day, my introduction to VoIP was on a very similar project about six years ago. My experience was four years as a sysadmin and software developer. I was great at my job until then, but I knew nothing about DIYing an office phone system. In spite of my IT background, it was a cluster. Today, I know exactly what I did wrong, and I could do it properly in my sleep, but it's taken me six years to get where I am, and I still learn new things all the time.

tl;dr: This project may be much much bigger than you realize, on so many different levels.

That's foolish of your buddies.

Better to turn down the thermostat, dismiss the cleaning service, give up the water cooler, and turn the holiday party into a potluck dinner, rather than skimp on business phone service.

If you charge a fair price for your time, I can almost guarantee there will be no savings if they have any kind of call volume.

Is a potentially poor customer experience and frustrated staff worth saving $10-40 per month (as a complete guess not knowing your actual needs & call volume)?

They could do a 100% cut over to VoIP and be up and running the same day with our service as all the pieces will be delivered to their office ready to plug and play. They just need to be connected to the network, and if using our router, we'll even be able to monitor and tweak QoS settings to keep voice service consistent as part of the set up process.

No need to ease in to it if you come prepared. In fact, it'll seem much less kludgy if you dive in head first, in many cases.

BTW, if you'd like Yealink phones, we can source those for you and drop ship them out of Ontario. For our own service, we have thus far been supporting Aastra although that may very well change in a few months as we re-evaluate the market in the new year to determine if another brand (Grandstream, Obihai, Yealink) is a better fit.