While recently visiting a customer I mentioned that it was not in his best interest to continue running his company, which relies on staff transacting thousands of dollars in business per day, with his old phone system. He replied to me ” they work just fine why should I replace them?”
I immediately pictured how much lost revenue and pain this business owner would suffer when his heavily used 8 year old phone system started giving him problems, or worse yet, broke down completely. I tried to explain to him why not making plans to do this was overwhelmingly not in his best interest —when he jumped on another phone call and waived me out of his office.
Fact is this business owner’s attitude is typical, and unless he, and others like him, change their thinking about this, a major cost will be paid.
Here’s why:
- The expected life for a non VOIP phone system made before 2008 is about FIVE (5) years
- In contrast, most new phone-software driven systems can be expected to last 10 years or more
- The technology for older phone systems have more in common with Ronald Reagan than they do with Bill Gates
- The ability for those old phone systems to provide the type of personalized customer service that today’s consumers expect compared to the new systems of the present is dramatic
- New phone systems, when set up properly, will never miss an incoming phone call – even if power or internet is lost. With older phone systems if power or internet access is lost even temporarily, incoming calls are lost as well
- Remote access and maintenance features means much less need for onsite technical time thereby reducing costs and providing much faster turn around for programming and any additional changes, as well as for many repair problems.
- For older systems the average minor repair call costs is around 200.00 per call. For major problems, that jumps to around $2000.00. Down time to fully repair an older phone system can be anywhere from 1 to 3 days
- Lost revenue due to missed or unanswered calls has been estimated in the US alone to be in the 10’s of billions of dollars
Other major costs associated with keeping an old phone system are related to a poorer quality customer service. Things like:
- the ability to transfer customer calls to staff cell phones so your clients can get the immediate assistance they require to keep them happy even if staff is away from the office
- customers hate busy busy signals, which they’ll get with an old system; with a new system, incoming calls that would normally get a busy signal get answered and automatically placed in line for next person available
- old systems don’t include mobile phone apps that will allow out of office staff to make calls using office phone lines from their mobile phones. Customers like this better and staff like the security of not having their personal cell phone numbers to people they may not know that well
I understand the old way of thinking, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”: this sounds like a very common sense, Ben Franklin way of thinking.
But to show how it will actually hurt your business, here’s a few common rationales for not updating, and the facts that support the opposite:
“Its going to cost me thousands of dollars to upgrade my office phone system and I don’t have that now…”
- most small businesses can lease purchase a new phone system for under $100 per month and even as low as $50 per month
- if the old system goes down, those thousands of dollars I mentioned that it will cost to get your equipment working again must be paid on the spot
- by upgrading now one can budget for this in the most cash flow friendly way possible
- if you move from standard phone lines to IP phone lines the cost of those phones most times will drop by 50% or more and those reduced costs alone can pay for the new system plus with money left over
“I think the new VOIP technology is less dependable…”
- That is no longer the case – in fact the exact opposite is true because (at least with the carriers that we use) the VOIP service providers will automatically detect power outages and the like – then reroute incoming calls to a cell phone or similar device that is actually more reliable than standard phone lines!
Now you know why using that old phone system is just not the right thing to do for your business.
If you would like to know more about some new and creative things we at JHB can do to
help you get out of that old phone system please visit this link https://www.jhbtele.com/blog/?p=576