Enterprise VoIP Buyer's Guide: Top 10 Systems for 2023

What is Enterprise VoIP?

Enterprise VoIP is the highest grade of voice over IP telephony services specifically designed to fit the needs of large-scale organizations. With Enterprise VoIP systems, organizations can easily scale the service up or down to add or remove lines without the lengthy and costly process of traditional legacy telephony.

Large businesses achieve powerful connectivity thanks to features designed specifically for enterprise use such as advanced call routing, call analytics, and mobile phone clients.

Enterprise VoIP can be implemented via a cloud phone service provider to handle all of the heavy lifting, an on-premise system to keep total control in-house, or a combination hybrid service.

Benefits of an Enterprise VoIP Phone System

Real-time Scaling

Enterprise VoIP is ready to grow or contract when you are. If you have a hiring frenzy or a huge layoff period, VoIP can scale up or down on-demand with a click of a button.
You never have to worry about paying for a service you won’t use or lack of preparation for a spike in demand.

Empowering and Managing a Remote Workforce

Both apps and IP phones can connect to enterprise VoIP phone systems, to get all the services you use at your desk. You’ll even have the same outbound caller ID.

Enterprise VoIP providers allow you to purchase phone numbers around the globe and assign them to users based anywhere in the world. Establish a local presence in new cities or countries, or unify a widespread workforce.

Improved Call Center Supervision

With tools like analytics, call center monitoring, and AI-support tools like audio transcription, cloud-based VoIP systems enable supervisors to keep tabs on large teams of agents. Supervisors can monitor queue status, check agent activity, and even drop in on live calls to listen or take over.

Employee Engagement

A VoIP phone system offers a variety of tools that make employees’ lives easier. Team chat, file sharing, video meetings, and whiteboards help employees collaborate and communicate. CRM integrations help employees access customer background and context, for better service. Routing and queueing help navigate calls to the right agents, so they spend less time dealing with frustrated customers.

Insight-Driven Decision Making

Supervisors can use a VoIP phone system’s call logs, analytics, and historical reports to notice trends and make informed decisions. Call logs provide insights about agent performance and call volume patterns, which can drive smarter staffing decisions. Analytics about channel usage helps administrators make decisions about outbound campaigns and which channels to utilize when communicating with customers.

Key Features of an Enterprise VoIP Phone System

The below features are important to a well-rounded enterprise VoIP phone system.

Multiple Communication Channels

In addition to VoIP calling, cloud-based phone systems usually offer other communication channels. While not every VoIP provider offers multiple communication channels, look for the following in advanced plans:

• SMS: Users can text each other and customers, including group texts, automated follow-up surveys, and bulk texts
• Team chat: An internal collaboration tool that lets teammates send 1:1 messages and start team threads, including file and image sharing
• Video conferencing: Video meetings with up to hundreds of team members, with interactive tools like screen sharing and editable whiteboards

AI Support Tools

Enterprise VoIP software often includes built-in artificial intelligence that assists live calls, team video meetings, and supervisor monitoring.

AI does more than voicemail transcription. Some providers include AI-based real-time call transcriptions, which detect customer sentiment and conversation topics to provide agents with suggested responses. VoIP phone systems may offer live captions during video meetings, with advanced tools like automated meeting summaries.

Analytics

Enterprise VoIP phone system applications usually include analytics and reports, which track call center metrics and KPIs about user activity, call volume, and more.

Monitor these KPIs in real-time, over custom historical time frames, and for particular users or locations:

• Call volume: Inbound and outbound calls by time of day and day of the week, queue wait time
• Channel usage: The amount of activity across channels
• User performance: Each user’s average handle time, number of calls per day, call resolution rate, and more

Advanced Call Routing and IVR

Advanced call routing utilizes several tools to help callers reach the right agent or queue. Features like interactive voice response (IVR) provide self-service options for callers to indicate their queries. Skills-based routing matches inbound callers with the best agent to suit their needs. Business hours and custom ring styles consider each agent’s availability when selecting where to route the call.

Integration with Third-Party Apps

With VoIP, you’re relying on the internet. That means you can integrate and sync with other cloud-based services like CRM services, social media, collaboration apps, recruitment, accounting, and email.

How to Choose an Enterprise VoIP Provider

Here are the major factors to consider when shopping for enterprise VoIP systems.

Evaluate Your Phone System Budget

When switching to an on-premise VoIP system, expect initial startup costs. In the case of enterprise VoIP, you may need to buy new phone systems, upgrade your modems or routers, or pay to keep your number.

However, cloud-hosted VoIP systems only have one startup cost: the monthly subscription. These VoIP phone systems often include a wide variety of features and communication channels, bundled into a monthly subscription plan. Further, VoIP providers frequently offer unlimited calling areas that span the United States and Canada.

Examine the unlimited calling areas and features that various VoIP providers offer, and compare each provider’s pricing plans. Choose the subscription plan that provides the balance between features and cost.

Determine the Features and Channels You Want

Each enterprise VoIP solution offers a unique suite of features:

• Routing features like IVR, call queues, ring groups, skills-based routing, and more
• Communication channels like voice calling, SMS, team chat, and video meetings
• Collaboration tools like file sharing, whiteboards, and team threads
• Analytics and reports like sentiment scores, call volume, activity insights, and performance metrics

Before you choose a provider, consider which features you want to prioritize in your next phone system. You may want a collaboration platform with multiple communication channels, or you might prioritize supervisor support tools like analytics and call center monitoring. Or, perhaps you only need a simple phone system with basic routing features and call controls. Choose a provider that offers the features you want, without the features you don’t.

Consider Your Company Structure

While choosing an enterprise VoIP provider, consider your company’s remote status, structure, and makeup:

• Number of employees and locations you have
• Remote, in-person, or hybrid offices
• Where your employees are located
• Plans to upsize or downsize your workforce

With this in mind, look for a VoIP phone system with the flexibility to meet your needs. For hybrid and remote employees, consider a cloud-hosted system due to its flexibility. Similarly, geographically dispersed teams–or those who plan to expand in the near future–should favor a cloud-based phone system, which simplifies purchasing new virtual phone numbers and adding new users across the globe.

Ensure You Have Sufficient Bandwidth

VoIP telephony can take up a lot of your bandwidth, clogging the network with a constant flow of uploaded and downloaded data packets.

To support enterprise VoIP telephony, make sure your router has quality of service (QoS) settings. QoS can prioritize certain data, devices, or users–such as favoring VoIP and video data–over data like emailing and web browsing. Setting QoS priority helps ensure that VoIP calls have the network bandwidth they need, even when the local network gets congested.

If your router is outdated or you frequently experience latency, you may need to purchase a new router with enough bandwidth. Look for a router that supports WiFi 6, or 802.11ax.

Know the Difference: Cloud Hosted vs. On-Premise vs. Hybrid

There are three primary types of enterprise VoIP setup: cloud-hosted, on-premise, and hybrid.

Cloud-Hosted VoIP

With a cloud-hosted VoIP phone system, the VoIP provider houses and maintains all the phone system hardware: servers, data centers, connection to the PSTN landline, and everything else.

A remote-hosted system conveniences the user because you don’t have to manage any hardware. Employees and administrators just log in to the VoIP app and begin making calls.

Cloud-hosted VoIP systems typically offer subscription-based pricing models bundling a wide variety of digital phone system features: routing, call queues, collaboration features, and multiple communication channels. Adding and removing users takes just a few minutes, and companies can purchase and assign phone numbers from throughout the world, making it a scalable and flexible system. Cloud-hosted VoIP phone systems are a great choice for remote companies or those that want a wide variety of communication channels.

On-Premise VoIP

An on-premise PBX system utilizes a hardware IP PBX box, which you manage onsite in a room or office and connects to the internet and PSTN landline. While these systems require maintenance, they can support advanced features and hundreds of users.

On-premise IP PBX boxes support features like call recording, call monitoring with whisper and barge, voicemail and voicemail-to-email, call queues, ring groups, and routing. Administrators can set up IVR systems and routing call flows, with a greater amount of privacy and control over the features you want in your phone system. Plus, once you buy the equipment, on-premise VoIP systems often have low operating costs.

This makes a great option for companies that have an established office and want VoIP calling but don’t need too many advanced features.

Hybrid VoIP System

A hybrid system is a mix of cloud-hosted and on-premise VoIP systems. Hybrid enterprise VoIP is designed for businesses that have existing TDM infrastructure providing value to the company. The existing analog lines will be integrated into a VoIP system while new buildings and mobile phones will be able to access the cloud.

This is best suited for older buildings that do not have Ethernet plugs available in every office. It’s also useful for a large business where it’s not practical to replace every phone with an IP phone. One common application is to have internal communications in an office continue to use the existing legacy PBX while connecting the different sites via IP.

A company with established offices in many different countries would benefit most from this type of solution.

Questions to ask a Prospective Enterprise VoIP Service Provider

Here are the best questions to ask when choosing an Enterprise VoIP provider.

What are Your Calling Rates?

Many VoIP providers offer unlimited calling within the United States and Canada–but some offer a larger unlimited area that includes Mexico. Further, some providers offer unlimited domestic calling for companies based outside the US, and some offer unlimited calling areas that span dozens of countries.

Each provider also has unique international calling rates. Consider where your company calls most frequently, and the rates your provider offers for those areas.

What is The User Interface Like?

Most enterprise VoIP providers offer a web- and mobile-based app, which users access in order to make phone calls or use other features. Some interfaces feel spacious and intuitive, despite offering a wide variety of collaboration, multichannel, and collaboration features in one dashboard. On the other hand, some VoIP apps feel outdated or overwhelming, with a dashboard that’s either lackluster or overcrowded with features.

Ask your provider for a demo, free trial, or product screenshots that give you an idea of the interface’s usability.

What Advanced Features Do You Offer?

While most VoIP providers offer basic features like call controls and voicemail, enterprise VoIP providers differ in the advanced features they offer. Consider some of the options below when examining your providers’ features, to find a phone service that offers the bells and whistles you want.

Other advanced features to utilize:

• Analytics: After a few weeks, your analytics portal will have gathered some useful insights about call volume, channel usage, agent activity, and maybe even customer sentiment
• IVR and IVA: While IVR is a relatively basic feature, IVA systems enable you to provide customers with a conversational text-based self-service menu
• Call queues: Once you have routing set up, organize agents into ring groups or call queues–to help organize inbound calls and make it easier for agents to see who’s waiting

What is Included in Each Pricing Tier?

While most cloud-hosted VoIP providers offer a wide range of communication channels, routing features, and collaboration tools, many providers arrange these features uniquely among their pricing tiers.

For example, some providers offer call queuing in their most basic tier, while other providers offer advanced analytics or AI-based live-agent support. Some providers include video in their most basic tier, while some reserve video meetings for higher-tier plans. When you choose a provider, examine each of their pricing tiers to find one that suits exactly the features you want.

Why Your Company and Not Another?

When looking at the offerings of different enterprise VoIP providers, several could share 90-99% similarity. You can expect most of the same features, a similar price point, and hopefully good customer support. But the devil is in the details.
In that 1-10% difference, you’ll find exclusive features, a special graphical user interface, or an app that no one else has. Ask what makes them stand out.