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Calling through Microsoft Teams
If your company already works in Teams, it makes sense to make calls there too – not just internally, but with real phone numbers to the outside world.
For your staff that means: one application instead of two. No separate phone software, no second contact list, no question of whether a colleague is reachable via Teams or via the extension right now. The call lands on the computer, the mobile, or the desk phone – wherever that person happens to be working.
This is the cleanest solution if your call-routing needs are manageable: extensions, forwarding, a cover rule when someone's out. For many offices that's entirely enough.
Cloud phone system – when you need more
Once calls need to be routed in a structured way, Teams alone reaches its limits. That's when we deploy a standalone cloud phone system – with its own software or desk phones, independent of Teams.
That makes sense once you need things like:
- Call queues and hunt groups, where several people can pick up a call.
- Announcements and menus – "press one for sales".
- Time-based rules that automatically route calls differently outside office hours.
- Statistics on how many calls were answered and how many weren't.
- Integration with your software, so the customer record pops up when the phone rings.
- Call recording, where it's permitted and required.
What else is connected to your phone system
This is where switchovers most often stumble. An old, grown phone system almost always has things connected to it that nobody thinks of at first in the project:
- the door intercom and door release
- the fax machine a customer or an authority still insists on
- the alarm system that dials a number in an emergency
- the lift emergency call
- the card payment terminal at the till
- DECT phones in the warehouse, workshop or practice
There's a solution for each of these, but it needs to be worked out beforehand. That's why at the start we take stock of what's actually connected to the system – not just the workstations.
Your phone numbers stay your phone numbers
You keep your number range. The numbers are ported to the new provider, your extensions stay the same, and letterheads and business cards remain valid.
Porting does need lead time, though, and a fixed date that the outgoing provider agrees to. That's the part of a telephony project that can't be sped up – so we schedule it early and plan the rest around it.
No good telephony without a stable connection
Once you're calling over the internet, voice quality depends on your connection. That's the reason some companies have had bad experiences with VoIP – usually it wasn't the telephony itself, but the network behind it.
So we check whether your connection can handle it, make sure voice traffic gets priority over downloads and backups on the network, and discuss what should happen if there's an outage. Calls automatically failing over to mobiles can be set up – you just need to plan for it beforehand.
These network questions are the same area where we also plan your IT security. One advantage of having both in one place: voice quality and network segmentation are the same piece of work.
Provider choice and costs
We're not tied to any provider. Which one makes sense for you depends on your calling patterns – how many extensions, how many simultaneous calls, how much goes abroad, how much goes to mobiles.
We look at exactly those numbers before making a recommendation. For existing contracts, it's almost always worth a look: phone contracts are rarely reviewed, and rates that were good five years ago usually aren't any more. If you have a quote on the table, we'll check it in our Quote Check.