Zoom was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Jose, California, with offices around the world. They have become a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Following stay at home orders throughout the USA and the world to combat the pandemic many people have turned to Zoom’s video conferencing solution to stay connected with loved ones, as well as serving the needs of schools and businesses. They have now introduced Zoom Phone to complement their existing video and chat services to create a Unified Communications offering aimed at Enterprises. Zoom Phone is the next-generation cloud-based phone system that integrates video, voice, messaging and conferencing into a simple to use phone system.
Zoom Phone works like other hosted VoIP phone solutions but with added features such as mobile app, SMS text for chatting with your customers, unlimited auto attendants, voicemail transcription, unlimited domestic calling and of course web meetings. With Zoom Phone, you can seamlessly replace your existing public switched telephone network (PSTN) and PBX solution and use zoom phone for all your incoming and outgoing calls with your customers and have a single platform to communicate, collaborate with your customers. Zoom phone system supports Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android apps.
Zoom Phone Features
All-In-One VoIP Solution
Enterprise-class features with a modern user experience to streamline voice communications. Zoom Phone is one of the best all-in-one cloud based systems that allow businesses to use a single platform to integrate everything including video, voice, messaging and video conferencing. When you integrate other zoom add-ons, then you will take the zoom meeting and conferencing to a new level.
Mobility
Listen to or view transcribed voicemail messages or recorded phone calls from any PC, desk phone, or mobile device. Seamlessly elevate a phone call to a full feature Zoom Meeting without requiring participants to manually join.
Centralized Management
Provides the administrator to have complete control and easily manage users with a centralized administration portal. Provision and manage users, monitor call quality and usage data in the Zoom administrator portal.
Completely Secure
The Zoom phone system is a globally distributed Zoom cloud platform that delivers secure HD Voice with enterprise-class reliability and quality of service.
Intelligent Call Routing
With the intelligent call routing and management option, you can never miss a call. Unanswered calls are efficiently routed and connected to other numbers.
Auto Attendant & IVR
The auto-attendant feature helps in decreasing the workload on your receptionists as every call is attended automatically and routed automatically to other number if not attended.
Voicemail & Call Recording
Zoom Phone system allows users to easily record all calls and read transcribed voicemails easily. Voicemail transcription allows you to easily manage voice messages from any device. You can listen to all recorded calls from your mobile phone, desktops and tablets. On-demand and full time recording, transcriptions and playback allows you to easily archive and retrieve phone conversations.
Out-of-the-box Software Integrations
Zoom Phone also provides options to integrate with various external applications such as Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Skype, Salesforce and more.
Pricing
Zoom Phone prices very well as a basic business solution if your organization doesn’t need video conferencing or a high level of support. A business user runs $15 per month plus the cost of a SIP phone such as Poly and Yealink. Typical rental on phones is $5.49 for a basic business phone on up to as much as you want to spend for the latest and greatest video screen phones. For a fully loaded user seat with Zoom Meeting and all features of a business user seat the cost is $30 or more. There are other quality solutions that less expensive such as GotoConnect but if you love Zoom Meeting, you’ll love Zoom Phone.
Overall
With so many people continuing to work from home or planning to move to a remote/in-office hybrid model in the future, the need for an official work phone isn’t as great as it once was. However the need to stay connected is more important than ever. There’s a shift in the business market toward a lighter weight phone offering that very much aligns to what Zoom is built around. It has a lot of appeal as people rethink their strategy and become more video-first, meeting-centric in terms of collaboration, and use a phone number in the domains of the business like sales and customer service in a much more limited and targeted way. Overall Zoom Phone is a solid business phone solution and if it fits your organization, you’ll be happy with it. The down side is that the solution is only 2 years old and has a lot of catch up work to do in terms of features and software development. So if you need a bullet proof solution with tried and true historical success I’d recommend GotoConnect, or RingCentral. At Agility communications we work with all 3 of these providers and can set up a free demo to show you the benefits of each.
