Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

I don't understand why everyone doesn't use VoIP. It's certainly cost effective, and the advantages are numerous and fairly obvious.

The one drawback, in my experience, was the shake-down period, when the modem didn't quite work the way it was supposed to, I had a lot of dropped calls, etc. Once we got that squared away, everything was/is fine.

I would also note that not all VoIP providers are equal, and some seem to be incompatible with others. We had two different suppliers at first, and part of our start-up problem was that they couldn't coexist on the same cable line without some re-programming.

And customer service issues are another factor to consider. We had a lot of calls back-and-forth getting the billing right, getting adjustments for lack of service, etc. One supplier kept us in voice-mail-jail every time we called, while the other one had someone on the phone in less than 30 seconds every time. (Ah, the wonders of a call center in India or the Philippines.)

Good luck. I'm going to be interested in following this thread. Thanks for asking the question.

hi telemoxie

surely VoIP is a cost effective way of telecommunication, and is replacing regular wire-line telecommunication.

currently VoIP is the most preferred medium of long-distance calls around the world. whenever you are calling from any pay-phone using a international calling card (i.e. from carriers like IDT), most calls are routed through VoIP. this is a booming business in almost every part of the world.

one example to using of VoIP as a marketing tool, rather a CRM tool is off-shore call center in India or Philippines etc (remember those debate of american job outsourcing!!).

a prospective solution can be any company is setting up its regional call center (i.e. Asia Pacific) in any country (i.e. Malaysia) and then allowing all the subscribers/customers to call a local number in each country of that region to be routed through VoIP to that call center.

like you said telemoxie, you can always have individual numbers for individual campaigns through VoIP. VoIP based service providers like Vonage may help you in this regard.

if you happen to need any solution based on VoIP here in Bangladesh, please feel free to contact me. looking forward to go through this thread!!!

cheers!!

from my own stan point there are three things that make VOIP worth exploring for small business:
1) the ability to establish a local office anywhere.. An local phone number in Washington DC for a Chicago based company... it makes them seem much larger
2) the ability to work from anywhere.. anywhere you have a solid internet connection.. Home, Vacation Home in Galveston, Son's house in Cedar Rapids, Etc
3) ability to recieve voicemail via email. of all the features I would insist on, this is it. There is power in being able to save voice mails in the same folder as previous emails, letters, and other communication.