VOIP

Comparing Hosted VoIP Solutions

Businesses are turning to VoIP solutions for their communication to increase the effectiveness of their voice systems and save money. But with increased demand comes increased supply, and it can be difficult to wade through the many companies and services offering VoIP to find the best fit for your company. When looking for your hosted VoIP solution, you should be able to find one that fits your current needs and budget, as well as offers new opportunities to increase productivity. In this blog, we’ll discuss a few key things to consider when shopping for VoIP services.
Reliability
One of the benefits of a hosted VoIP system is its mobility, enabling users to make and receive business calls wherever and whenever they need to. This makes it all the more important that your phone system is working when you are. Outages can happen, so make sure that any VoIP provider you are considering has procedures to prevent them. Read reviews and references to see how good they are at responding to incidents, and determine from there whether or not the provider seems reliable. Remember: reviewers are more likely to comment on negative experiences than positive, so no news might be good news!
Included Features
To stay competitive, VoIP providers offer a variety of features that could significantly boost your phone system’s effectiveness. Features like the ability to migrate your current phone numbers, enhanced voicemail, and auto attendant are included free-of-charge in some plans, available at a …

7 Reasons You Might be Losing Customers

A business that is losing customers on a consistent basis is in trouble over the long haul. Customers are the lifeline of any organization. However, today’s business environment is characterized by high customer turnover due to stiff competition. If you’re losing customers and can’t figure out why, it’s time to take a good hard look at how you’re doing business.

1. Changing Too Many Players

Customers do not buy from companies but from people. Relationships are the lifeblood of a business, irrespective of its size. Therefore, to retain long-term customers, a company should not rotate salespeople, key contacts, or customer service representatives unless it has to. A business should foster any relationships forged by employees since they are rarely interchangeable.

2. Treating Existing and New Customers Differently

Offering incentives and discounts to only new customers may cause resentment among the existing ones. A business should think carefully about the carrots its offers new customers and ensure that it rewards existing ones equally – if not more. Although new clients have an immediate top-line impact, total sales to existing ones typically result in a greater impact on the business’ bottom line. And it’s always more cost effective to keep a customer than it is to earn a new one.

3. Focusing on Price Rather Than Value

Being a low-cost provider offers a competitive edge at first, but this strategy is difficult to sustain over the long haul. Instead, a business’ goal should be providing the best …

What a Local VoIP Vendor Can Offer

VoIP (Voice Over IP) can offer huge advantages to modern businesses. However, buying a VoIP phone system for your organization can prove to be a challenge. In addition to choosing between an on-premise and cloud-based VoIP solution, you also have to find the right vendor for the job.

Regardless of which VoIP service provider you decide to hire, having local support from them can make a big difference. It’s always a better idea to hire a local VoIP Michigan provider because of the following reasons:
1. On-site support from qualified technicians
When you buy VoIP services from a local vendor, you can count on getting the assistance of trained professionals on the spot. They will not only answer all your queries regarding system implementation but also suggest which solution (on-premise or cloud-hosted) would be better for your needs.

Great technicians will be able to guide you every step of the way so that you know exactly what you’re signing up for.
2. Work alongside your IT department
Working with a local VoIP means no more going back and forth questioning who is doing what to your systems. The skilled members of the VoIP team will work closely with your IT department so that everything goes smoothly.

The team will do their best to ensure that no outages or downtimes occur, and every part of your communication technology functions exactly as it should. Good things happen when the expertise of a local vendor and the experience of IT …

The Don’ts of Hosted VoIP Solutions

The VoIP industry has been on expansion mode for quite a long time now and is expected to grow even further. With the rise of smartphones, giving the desktop computer and laptops a run for their money, mobile VoIP has also made a profound impact on the corporate environment.

In fact, recent reports suggest that the global VoIP market will grow to $136.76 billion by 2020 from $70.9 billion, which was in 2013. While there are many reasons for you to be excited about the idea of implementing VoIP within your organization, there are a few things that you must avoid doing.

In this article, we’re going to talk about some of the absolute DONT’s of hosted VoIP technology. So, keep on reading!

1. Don’t ignore default passwords

Hosted VoIP solutions might be efficient, cost-effective, and secure, but it cannot protect your systems if you do not take the least bit of care. A lot of people don’t bother to change the default passwords that the manufacturer uses to quickly login and run tests.

These passwords, which are no more complex than “password” or “root,” can be found in the hardware documents publicly. Before the systems are put in their places, make sure you have changed these passwords to your liking. Otherwise, you run the risk of hackers getting access to mobile VoIP and stealing your data.

2. Don’t ignore outdated infrastructure

Very often, the cause of failing VoIP can be traced back to leaks in …

7 Security Questions You Should Be Asking Your VoIP Provider

As VoIP services continue to advance, more and more businesses are now switching to this cloud-based phone system to experience it’s myriad of benefits. However, the security aspect of this cloud-based system still remains a concern among experts as incidences of fishing scams, phone hacking, and data breaches are still prevalent.

If you’re a business owner planning to switch your organization’s phone system to VoIP, there are some crucial questions regarding security that you must ask a prospective service provider before giving the go-ahead.

1. What protection do they offer against fraud attempts, fishing scams, and toll fraud?
An efficient cloud phone system should provide protection against a wide range of fraud and scam attempts by encrypting traffic using reset default pins. Millennia Technologies frequently runs vulnerability scans to check for attempts at data breach or other security threats. They also have a Security Response Team to respond to suspected breaches and mitigate the risks immediately.
2. How do they handle a DNS attack?
In a DNS attack, hundreds and thousands of hacked computers spam their targets with data requests, forcing the server to eventually crash. A professional VoIP vendor should use a combination of firewalls, redundant servers, and continuous monitoring to ensure none of their servers get clogged.
3. Do they comply with federal guidelines?
Don’t sign up for a VoIP service unless you have checked their credentials and compliance with the required federal security guidelines. A reputable service provider like Millennia Technologies complies with all the necessary standards and provides the highest …

Mitel and The Boston Red Sox

Mitel and Millennia would like to welcome the Boston Red Sox to the world of Unified Communications. Yes, the 115-year-old baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, has chosen Mitel’s IP-PBX solution with integrated unified communications to carry forward the team’s communication systems.

This decision came after the organization felt that their existing telephony services, provided by Avaya, was starting to show their age with mounting costs of maintenance and failing reliability.

The club chose Mitel after deciding to explore modern telephony features to not only boost communications for staff but also improve their productivity and communication with the fans.
Why Mitel?
At the heart of the decision made by the Red Sox, there was a desire to shift towards a system that provides easy to manage solutions with little intervention from IT. So, the company began evaluating services offered by different vendors from the perspective of front office personnel, sales teams, season ticket holders, and even baseball scouting personnel.

Mitel eventually emerged as the ultimate choice because at the core of their design is a distributed architecture that is capable of delivering extremely secure network features across a multisite environment.

The telephony company’s key advantage aligned with the club’s desire to have easy-to-manage unified communications systems, and so this deal came to be. Brian Shield, vice president of IT for the Boston Red Sox said, “The goal for our new systems of communication is to improve efficiency and employee productivity, simplify maintenance, and reduce costs.”

He further went on to …

10 Ways Your Phone System Improves Your Customers’ Experience

Business competition in today’s economy is fierce. Your customers expect the highest level of care, and you and your staff need to be reachable, professional and customer-focused at all times – no matter where you’re working.

If that’s your business model, is your phone system supporting you and your employees like you need to support your customers?

Use this checklist to evaluate if your business communications give your customers the experience they expect from their chosen providers. Give yourself a point for every line you can check off. When you’re done, count your checks.
Reachability and Professionalism

Customers can access your sales staff anytime and anywhere, with mobile capabilities that direct incoming office calls to your sales staff’s mobile phones.
Outbound calls look professional, coming from the main company number, even when your employees are using their smartphones or other mobile devices.
Customer focus is enhanced by integrating your Outlook and CRM tools with your phone system to track conversation history with your client.
Employee productivity is increased by merging call records with customer records to improve sales trending projections and staffing optimization.

Employee Productivity

Employees can bring their own device and integrate it with your phone network.
Teamwork is made easy with voice and video calling, instant messaging and desktop sharing.
Employees feel secure that voice and data are safe, even in public hotspots.

Cost Effectiveness

Ongoing administration, such as adding a new employee, is easy vs. labor intensive.
Local support is available to train your staff to use features …

5 Reasons Why a Switch to the Cloud Should Begin with Your Phone System

As an increasing number of businesses are now adopting cloud-based solutions, not being able to do the same may give you the feeling of being left out. Apart from the obvious advantages that a cloud-hosted platform brings to business operations, this solution is also very cost effective, given the right vendor.

If you feel overwhelmed at the thought of the transition of your services to cloud, then it may be helpful to concentrate on one service at a time. Integrating your phone system would be a great way to begin as this segment of business operations is deemed to be relatively simple.

Still need more reasons as to why the switch to the cloud should start with the phone system? Keep on reading to find out.
5 Reasons Why a Switch to the Cloud Should Begin with Your Phone System
 
1. IT can build internal support for cloud
One of the primary advantages of the cloud-based phone system is that it can be deployed in a controlled manner. This means you get full control of choosing how many employees or workgroups take the benefits of this deployment. As a result, you can put the new phone system to test incrementally before planning for a major scale rollout.

This practice will allow the IT system to work around potential hiccups that may hinder the full-time deployment. Additionally, your employees will also have a good experience with the final rollout and more willing to embrace cloud-based applications in their daily …

Banking Card ATM

Banks and IP Telephony

In an increasingly competitive banking environment, customers desire nothing but the best. Banks must do everything within their capability to provide the best service possible. Since customer service can come in many forms, the banks have decided to focus on phone systems.

This is where the benefits of IP telephony come in with all the bells and whistles of internet-based communicative services. Financial institutions stand a better chance to improve their public communication with IP telephony than what they could have with circuit-based telephone network connections.
Banks and IP telephony – how they stand to benefit
Business happens fast when companies decide to move their communications to cloud systems. Financial service firms also reap the benefits of innovative cloud communication to improve their overall services and communication process.

Even though there are many ways in which banking can benefit from IP telephony, these are some of the most common ways this technology has affected banking:
1. No tolls and MAC charges
One of the common problems that many banks face even today pertains to adding, modifying, or removing an existing phone line (MAC) as the service provider has to be contacted in every case.  Phone companies charge based on each MAC and keep the bank waiting as they work according to their schedule.

This issue can be eliminated with IP telephony as the entire network can be setup in the cloud and scalable on-demand. There is no need to contact the service provider.  Nor wait for them to …

Millennia Technologies at The ShoreTelOne Conference

Millennia Technologies had the opportunity to attend the ShoreTelOne conference in Kissimmee, Florida at the Gaylord Palms Hotel and Resort December 5-8, 2016. The conference allowed for us to gain an enhanced understanding of new disruptive technology and the IP Telephony systems we implement. The conference served as an opportunity to learn more about future integrations, suggested verticals, and more about what is working when it comes to serving our customers the best way possible.

ShoreTelOne Conference Highlights:

With well over a 1,000 attendees, the ShoreTelOne Conference was a booming success.

Attendees learned about:

Strategic alignment opportunities with ShoreTel solutions
Networking with ShoreTel executives, industry analysts, customers, etc.
New ways to add value for customers
Actionable ideas for growing businesses into 2017 and beyond

Keynotes and Breakout Sessions  
The breakout sessions were hosted by ShoreTel reps speaking about specific verticals, new opportunities, disruptive technology and much more.

Attendees were privileged to listen to the CEO of ShoreTel, Don Joos, CMO, Mark Roberts, Senior VP, Eugenia Corrales, and even Guy Kawasaki, formerly of Apple, who gave a terrific speech on The Art of Innovation. The host for our keynotes was comedian Scott Bloom, which never allowed for a dull moment even between keynote speakers. The final night, ShoreTel hosted a 3 Doors Down concert where we had a chance to listen to some classic old jams, like Kryptonite.

 
Verticals and Technology

The $12B Disconnect in Healthcare which touched on the average 23% patient no-shows that take place in the U.S. and how having …

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Millennia Technologies is a full-service voice and data solutions company for midsize to enterprise customers. Specializing in UCaaS , CCaaS , Cybersecurity , IoT , Voice , Cloud , and more. Our passion is firmly rooted in showing clients how well-designed data solutions can significantly accelerate business operations, and then celebrating their goal-shattering successes.