Problem with search results

“Best phone systems reviews” are filling up the search results on Google , Yahoo, Bing and any other search engine you might use to search for a new phone system for your business.

The truth of the matter is: there is no “best” phone system out there.

Best phone systems reviews are pointless. They are just a marketing scam.

And how, you may ask, do I know all this? I’ve been working with phone system implementation and support since 2005. In addition, I continually bring in house many manufacturers phone systems for our own analysis. Our companies main focus is to bring the the most promising platforms to our customer base.  Believe me, I know modern business phone systems better than any of these, so called, “reviewers”.

Reality

Allow me to explain. It will take but a few minutes …

1. Did reviewers use all the “best” phone systems in their own business? No. They wouldn’t have time to do it, it takes a month or more to truly begin to understand what a particular phone system has to offer and what are the shortcomings. And there will be shortcomings because there is no “perfect” phone system.
2. Do these reviewers have knowledge of the reliability of all these business phone system solutions? No. The only people who know how stable the phone systems is are technicians who are supporting these particular solutions.  I doubt they are talking to and giving any feedback for these “reviewers”.
3. Do these reviewers keep up with phone system market changes? No. We see ShoreTel declared a best call center solution but it’s an outdated protocol and now is being sold to Mitel and will be non- existent within a year as Mitel will push to migrate the ShoreTel base to their cloud solution. We also see Avaya awarded best “on premise” phone system. Avaya declared bankruptcy January 2017. They are trying to re-org but Avaya is also proprietary and have a long haul back.
4. Are these reviews representing providers with cutting edge features like WebRTC and support for video on mobile devices? No. They are promoting solutions that sell “dial tone” to customers with a limited set of features.
5. Do the reviews try to educate a potential buyer on how features can be useful and what to look for in a business phone system? No. In general customers are not sure of what features will be useful for his or her business and how to take advantage of these features to contribute to the business success as they haven’t experienced the latest features before.
6. Reviews are presenting various manufacturers “self-configuration portal” of the phone systems as an advantage. In fact, this is a huge problem. Average business administrators or even IT personnel  know very little about how to properly configure a phone system. And by proper configuration I mean the one that allows the customer to take a full advantage of system features while avoiding common configuration mistakes.
7. No attention is being payed to true cost of ownership ( TCO ) and the price of the manufacturers extended warranty, software upgrades and VARs maintenance contract over the years. Hints are being given that what you get is priced “competitively” where , in fact, we see pricing being 20-50% higher then what would be expected.
8. Quick search on Google looking for problems with these “best” phone systems shows a common trend: as soon as system is sold and installed or contract is signed, providers lose interest in customers and support is lacking.

Conclusion

Every business is different, every company has a set of obvious requirements and expectations when they purchase a new phone system. Also there are always many assumptions that need to be discussed and considered in order to find the best match.

So, what would you do to find a good phone system at a reasonable price? I bet you are looking for something that would meet all your requirements, have the latest features and future-proofed as much as possible and of course, affordable.

Call us. Vatacom has been installing and supporting phone systems since 1996 and have 2 phone systems to offer. Each of our offerings are available as a cloud solution or premise based solution. I’m sure we have what you are looking for.