SIP Trunking: VoIP Line Replacement

You may have heard the term SIP trunking or SIP trunk thrown around by tech heads. The fact is it's not a friendly term and most business owners, managers, or decision makers have a clue or care to have a clue what a SIP trunk is. Simply put, a SIP trunk is a VoIP telephone line. It allows for one concurrent phone call to come either in or out of your office.

The reason this VoIP telephone line is called a SIP trunk is because "SIP" stands for Session Initiation Protocol, which is a specific type of VoIP. In essence you could call a SIP trunk a VoIP trunk. Now the word trunk in this case means line; however, the word trunk was invented because there are 2 types of phone line services: analog and digital. There are analog lines which we have all been used to having in our homes and offices where you have an actual copper pair wire and that copper pair wire has just one telephone number that belongs to it. With lines you cannot receive multiple calls on one telephone number because there is only one line that actually belongs to that telephone number. This is why line hunt groups were invented so if line 1 was tied up the phone call would jump to the next line in the group and so on. Now, what is a trunk? The difference between a line and a trunk is that a trunk is digital. It is not associated with a specific telephone number, and it does not come in to your building on a copper pair. It comes into your office via your internet connection. The beauty in this is that lets say you want to move your operations. With a regular phone line you would have to call your common carrier, and schedule a move where the carrier would have to come to the new location and install new copper lines. You'd have to wait for them to come out and then you'd have to pick a very specific day for this all to happen, making it almost impossible to move seamlessly. With a SIP trunk, all you need in the new location is an internet connection and you are all set! The digital world is a better, more flexible world!

So when you hear the word SIP trunk, just think of it as a digital phone line, or a VoIP phone line.

Critical VoIP features: Monitor, Listen, and Coach

The ability to monitor, listen, and coach live phone calls is imperative to any business who wishes to improve the quality at which their team operates. How can a manager or owner possibly know if his or her team is missing opportunities or representing the business in a manner that is just not good for business? How can a manager or owner expect to be able to make a new hire and trust that new hire to deal with customers at the level that is expected without the ability to monitor calls? The answer is pretty simple: it's physically impossible!

Could you imagine if a baseball team all practiced in isolation without being monitored by their coaches? The team would be horrible, and never improve. That is what will happen to your team if you do not monitor it. You can only run your business at the maximum level of efficiency if you have the best tools to operate with. If your business phone system does not allow you to keep control over your team, then it's simply not good enough! Kick it to the curb, put it on ebay, or keep it in a closet for a rainy day, but do your business and your customers a favor, and get some phones that actually allow you to improve your team's operations.

With the advent of VoIP phone systems and the hosted pbx, many businesses are left without this feature and then they realize they've signed some sort of a long-term agreement and can't even upgrade! This is a sure fire way to shoot yourself and your business in the foot. At Xpander, we recognize all of this! It's crystal clear to us. That is why an Xpander VoIP hosted PBX offer these features and more, all without any sort of contract or binding agreement. It's a thing of beauty, and all businesses should enjoy it!