Perhaps you’ve heard the term softphone but aren’t quite sure what it means. Maybe you know what a softphone is but don’t have a firm grasp of how it could benefit your business. Fortunately, in either case we have you covered.
Put simply, a softphone acts as a phone interface and allows you to place and receive VoIP calls directly from yourPC. A VoIP service provider handles the actual VoIP phone service and calls to and from the softphone are routed over the service provider’s network. Using a softphone offers organizations several substantial benefits over old style PBX, including:
- Reduced telecom costs: Making VoIP calls with a softphone significantly reduces the cost of making long distance and international calls. Because the technology allows businesses to bypass traditional phone companies, those organizations are no longer forced to pay exorbitant rates for those long range communications.
- Easy use and management: With a softphone you simply use the keypad on your screen and punch in the phone number with a few mouse clicks. When you receive an incoming call, the phone interface comes to the front of the screen and displays the incoming call on the screen of the phone. So if you use a softphone in combination with a headset, you never have to divert your attention from your screen by picking up a receiver. Furthermore, managing a softphone is incredibly simple, as it can be done through a single configuration interface.
- Robust feature set: Best-in-class softphones offer all the phone features a business could need. This feature set includes but is not limited to:
- Web conferencing
- Extension portability/one number capability
- Chat
- Unified messaging
