How Painful Is It to Change My Hosted VoIP/UC Provider?

How Painful Is It to Change My Hosted VoIP/UC Provider?

You deployed hosted Voice over IP (VoIP) or Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). It was supposed to be the best thing ever, but it’s just not working as expected, and now your employees and clients have had enough. Calls are being dropped, and voice quality is poor. Some callers can’t transfer or leave a voicemail. When you have a lot of calls to your customer support line, callers get lost in the queue. When you call your hosting provider for support, it transfers you offshore, where English is the customer service representative’s second or even third language. Features have not kept pace with what your competitors have implemented, impeding your business progress. You have suffered because of your provider’s upgrade process.

Whatever the reason, it’s time to make a change—and it doesn’t need to be painful.

What Are Your Top Priorities, And What Steps Should You Take When Selecting Your News Provider?

When you have identified the pain points of your current hosted service provider, you can develop either a request for proposal (RFP) or a prioritized list of must-haves, nice-to-haves, and bonus features you never had but believe would be of value to your firm. Some important decision points include:

• Do you re-purpose your existing IP phones, or do you need to upgrade?
• Do you already have a quality of service (QoS)–enabled broadband and VoIP-ready network?
• Do you have trunking and service issues—for example, will the bandwidth you’re currently getting require an upgrade to your service?
• What type of contract do you have, and what are the terms you want?

Preparation for Moving Service Providers

After you have identified the top pain points you will eliminate; made the key decisions about IP phones, QoS, and trunking services; decided the terms you desire; and have completed your RFP, it’s time to select from among the top providers. Always get three quotes, and determine which company culture and reseller representative will build a relationship with you to provide top-notch support and become a trusted advisor to your firm. During negotiations, ensure that the following preparations match the chosen provider’s services:

• Number portability
• Identification and assistance with call flows and auto-attendant configuration and setup
• Circuit or trunk availability and required capabilities
• Training of users and administrators
• Cost and needs analysis versus contract terms and quote
• Long-term support costs both onsite and remote
• Plan for cutover

Gotchyas to Watch Out For

If you have a complex call center with integrated applications, you may hit a snag or two during the transition to the new provider. The initial planning should ensure these call flows and queues, messaging, and call routing are covered in as much detail as possible. Larger contact centers can be painful if not properly planned.

Your firm may also have missed something in its planning. These systems are complex, so document your best practices and business processes to increase your chances of success.

Cutover Process and Plan 

Ease of the cutover is clearly critical to your business continuity. You must have number portability well planned and committed. You need call flows and voicemail set up in case calls can’t be completed until the cutover is finished. Your reseller or trusted advisor should be working closely with you on the entire cutover plan.

The best trusted advisors ensure from assessment to installation and turn-up that you are satisfied and that the service is providing what you’re purchasing. I’ve seen too many users with their messaging and auto-attendants configured improperly, voicemail not notifying the right people, call forwarding/find me, follow me not operating as advertised, hold music not working as expected, and so on.

Your excitement and enthusiasm should be running over as the cutover day arrives!

Post-cutover Follow-UP

 Different challenges exist for each installation of hosted VoIP. Make sure your supplier and trusted advisor (reseller of the chosen service) stay with you through the entire process, including post-cutover; otherwise, you’ll be stuck again in the future with subpar support and service.

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