Your phone system is often the first impression a customer has of your business. When calls drop, ring to the wrong person, or go unanswered after hours, it costs you business. This buyer's guide covers what Virginia businesses should look for in a business telephone system today, and the questions to ask before you sign a contract.
Your Main Options
Most business phone systems fall into three groups.
- Traditional landlines. Phone lines from a telephone carrier, often connected to an on-site phone system. They're familiar but expensive to expand, and many carriers are retiring the copper networks they run on.
- Hosted VoIP. Calls travel over your internet connection to a phone system hosted in a data center. You get modern features without maintaining phone hardware in your office.
- On-premises IP systems. A VoIP phone system installed in your office. This gives you control, but you're responsible for maintenance, power, and backups.
For most small and mid-sized businesses, hosted VoIP offers the best balance of cost, features, and reliability. Our comparison of VoIP vs. landline phones goes into more detail.
Features That Matter
A modern business telephone system should include the basics without expensive add-ons:
- Auto attendant to greet callers and route them to the right department
- Call routing and forwarding to send calls to the right person, location, or cell phone
- Voicemail available 24/7, with messages you can check from anywhere
- Extension dialing so anyone, including remote staff, can be reached with a short extension
- Mobile integration so employees can use their business line away from the office
- Call queues and ring groups so busy lines don't go to voicemail
- Number porting so you keep the phone numbers your customers already know
Think about how calls flow through your business today, and where they go wrong. That tells you which features matter most.
Reliability: The Question Most Buyers Forget
Features are easy to compare. Reliability is harder, and it matters more. Ask these questions about any system you're considering:
- Where is the phone system hosted? Look for redundant servers in a professional data center.
- What uptime does the provider commit to? There's a real difference between 99.9% and 99.99%. Our guide to what 99.99% uptime means explains why.
- What happens if your office internet goes down? A good system forwards calls automatically to cell phones or another location, so customers still reach you.
- What happens during a power outage? Phones and network equipment need battery backup to stay up.
Is Your Network Ready?
VoIP call quality depends on your internet connection and network. Before switching, check bandwidth, latency, jitter, and whether your network can prioritize voice traffic. Our VoIP network readiness checklist walks through each item.
Many call quality problems that get blamed on the phone system are really network problems. That's why it helps when the same team supports both.
Remote and Hybrid Teams
Many Virginia businesses now have employees working from home, at other offices, or overseas. A business phone system should treat them the same as people in the office: same extensions, same caller ID, and the same ability to transfer calls. If you work with offshore staff, confirm they can be added as extensions on the same system.
Switching Without Disruption
Changing phone systems shouldn't mean a day of missed calls. A careful switch looks like this:
- Document your current numbers, call flows, and voicemail boxes.
- Request number porting early, since it can take time to complete.
- Configure and test the new system and phones before the switch.
- Schedule the cutover outside business hours.
- Test inbound and outbound calls on every line before your team arrives.
Key takeaway: Choose a business phone system on reliability and support, not just features. Ask where it's hosted, what happens during an internet outage, and who you call when something goes wrong.
Local Support Matters
When a phone system fails, you need help fast. A local provider can respond quickly, understands the carriers and internet providers in your area, and can come on site when needed. Ask how quickly the provider responds to service requests and whether support is available on weekends.
Questions to Ask Before You Sign
- Where is the system hosted, and is it redundant?
- What uptime do you guarantee?
- What happens to our calls if our office internet goes down?
- Can we keep our existing phone numbers?
- How do remote and offshore staff connect?
- How will you switch us over without interrupting calls?
- Who supports the system after installation, and how fast do you respond?
How One Solutions Can Help
One Solutions provides business VoIP phone systems for Northern Virginia businesses from our office in Vienna, VA. Our SIP-based phone servers run on failover clusters in our Beltsville, MD data center with 99.99% uptime, and calls forward automatically during local internet outages.
Features include 24/7 voicemail, call routing and forwarding, mobile integration, and extension dialing for remote and offshore staff. We install with our zero-downtime process and support your phones, network, and IT with a one-hour response guarantee.
Call (703) 263-8500 or request a consultation to talk about your phone system.