A business phone system is necessary for all businesses. It improves customer experience, and provides the business an efficient way to route the calls and be cost-efficient. However, the business phone system can only give results when the system is running properly, and it is maintained by a experienced personnel. Like any other type of technology, over the passage of time, components and parts cease to function, and they need to be replaced. Depending on the type of system you have purchase, these replacement parts can either be very expensive or hard to find.
Support and Maintenance
Due to this, it is essential to support and have a regular maintenance of the business phone. Although replacing hardware is a vital aspect of keeping a small business phone system up and running, several other maintenance tasks should also be completed on a daily basis to keep the business phone system running at its best.
As technology has advanced, the operating systems and firmware versions needs to be consistently updated. Various performance issues may appear when additional features are added without upgrading the main components of the system. In several cases, advancements in the network technology can have a direct and heavy effect on the performance of Voice over IP (VoIP) enabled business phone system. In many cases, the system vendor will suggest you to upgrade the firmware on the core hardware components or they might even recommend that you upgrade your software to the latest version.
Upgrading System
If you intend to upgrade the software, it is important to know that the upgrade will come at an added cost as the expenses of labor for the upgrade will also be included in the total cost. When upgrading the firmware, if the system is covered under a maintenance agreement, the labor costs are covered under this agreement, and the business owner does not have to pay any additional costs. Firmware upgrades should be done periodically in order to ensure that the phone system is always running on the latest version. However, if the firmware is not upgraded frequently, the business may not be taking full advantage of the upgraded technology.
System monitoring is yet another way to ensure the finest performance, and to stay ahead of any potential issues. In many cases, when hardware begins to fail, it will trigger an alarm on the phone system. Using a software to monitor these alarms, an administrator can become aware of the potential problem and arrange ways to have the hardware replaced, before the system fails completely.
VoIP Issues
Most business today run the Voice over IP business system, due to which, networking performance is an important element in how well the system performs while making or receiving calls. By utilizing a phone number and VoIP phone service, several business are now running the VoIP phone system. Monitoring the network side should also be done with the VoIP technology in mind. The phone system also has various tools, which can help the system administer to pinpoint the cause of poor audio quality, which may also be related to network issues. These tools are directly dependent on the model of business phone system purchased, however, most of the manufacturers recognize that there is a need to have a way to monitor the VoIP traffic.