This is one of the most commonly asked questions about our PIPPA hosted phone system. Put simply, softphone is a way of making office phone calls without a handset!
One of the most popular products we have at the moment to support with remote working is our PIPPA hosted phone system, which offers all the advantages of your office phone, but works wherever, whenever, and however you need it to. As well as working via a ‘plug and go’ handset which you can use at your desk, or at home, PIPPA also comes with two ‘virtual’ options – through your desktop PC or laptop, or through an app on your mobile phone. The latter solutions are referred to as a ‘softphone’ option, and although they provide the external appearance of your office phone system to your customers, offer huge flexible working advantages including easy deployment and lower costs.
One of the most common questions we get asked is “What is a softphone application?”, so we thought we’d give you all the details…
It’s a fancy word for software…
Yes really! Nothing more, nothing less. We are used to thinking about phone systems as physical equipment or hardware, picking up a handset to answer the phone at our desks, or using our mobiles to make and receive calls. The softphone software replaces all that, achieving exactly the same thing – a telephone call – but you can make the call via your PC, or an app on your personal or business mobile. It means you don’t need to buy more hardware for your teams to use at home, and it can make their personal mobile appear and behave like your office phone, protecting their personal equipment.
So, what are the advantages of using softphone?
- It can complement your existing phone system. None of us expected to have to move all our teams to home working, and even as we’re allowed to return to work, it will be more common for employees to ask for working from home days for example. This means you don’t have to replace your whole office phone system in the short-term, unless of course you also want to take advantage of all of the benefits of a hosted phone system!
- It is more cost-effective. CapEx expenditure to provide your teams with a handset in the office and a handset at home is likely more than you want to spend. Either way, with PIPPA, you can lower the cost of CapEx investment by:
- Utilising the Plug and Go handsets, which means your team can take their handset with them, wherever they go
- Opt for softphone only or a combination of softphone and handsets to allow your teams to make use of existing hardware.
- It can be rapidly rolled-out. It’s as simple as setting up the users, porting any numbers and downloading the software, then your team is good to go. That means you don’t need to spend weeks waiting for hardware to arrive or an engineer to install it, making the roll-out much more effective.
- You can control all the diverts, forwarding and greetings yourself. The software comes with a portal through which you can manage out of office, call diverting, call answering, greeting messages and anything else for your system, wherever you are.
- Your team will thank you! A lot of employees are expressing concerns over the costs they are incurring on behalf of their employers, using their own devices to make calls or deliver workloads. Although they can still use their personal devices, the softphone application allows calls to be made through the company, using the company number, even if it is from a personal mobile device. This protects their privacy, as well as ensuring they don’t need to use their own minutes and texts. There’s even an instant messenger system to keep them in touch with their colleagues.
- It’s feature rich. The PIPPA system goes beyond just an office phone, offering instant messaging, video calling, conference calling and the like. This makes it an all-in-one solution for many businesses, managed under a single, fully-itemised bills.
So, there you have it! If a hosted phone system with a softphone application sounds like it will solve a number of your challenges, speak to our team on 01453 700 800.