VoIP Internet Telephony

Excel4Business uses Skype's VoIP service to ease communication with clients

What our clients say

Tim Hill
ENERGY Sean Murphy
CONSULTING Elaine Petkovsek
EDUCATION
I wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed working on this project with you. Everyone loves this worksheet. Our pricing has never been so standardized Julie Hui, Chief Financial Officer of Pumpman Inc

In order to provide a flat rate to all our clients, it is important that we do not incur any significant overheads on our consulting time, at the point of delivery. In other words, we should be spending the same amount regardless of whether we are developing a spreadsheet, or talking directly to a client. This means we attempt to minimize our phone costs.

As with much of our service, we use internet technologies to keep costs down. So instead of making and receiving calls through cellular networks, we make our calls using the internet. The traditional argument against VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is that it ties a user to an internet connection and workstation. Fortunately those barriers have now been removed.

Skype

You are probably already aware of Skype. The internet phone service has over half a billion users and continues to grow. It allows e.g. a UK consultant to call a US client's cell phone for less than $1.50 per hour. Although we provide local consultants where possible, this is sufficiently low that we can offer free consultations to clients regardless of location.

We can only use Skype because it provides a high quality, reliable channel through which calls can be conducted. It's also worth noting that Skype take commercial security seriously, so client confidentiality can be maintained.

One of the issues with Skype used to be that you would have to talk through a headset attached to a computer, and so didn't have the flexibility to talk to clients whilst out and about. This problem would be partially solved by next generation smartphones, but there would still be a degradation in call quality in areas of low signal.

Our more reliable solution is to use Skype-to-go. This gives you a regular landline number you can dial in order to access your Skype account. Effectively we use old technology to send our call to a data center with a more robust internet connection. The call then proceeds over Skype as pre usual. Using this solution means we have no issues with call quality.


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What our clients say

Tim Hill
ENERGY Sean Murphy
CONSULTING Elaine Petkovsek
EDUCATION
I wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed working on this project with you. Everyone loves this worksheet. Our pricing has never been so standardized Julie Hui, Chief Financial Officer of Pumpman Inc