The Covid-19 pandemic put a huge impact on the way we were working. Now, the concept of hybrid working is a popular trend globally, mainly due to the habit developed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, organisations and employees have slowly realised the benefits of hybrid working and have adopted this habit full-time. For example, companies have experienced a drop in their real estate expenditure due to this concept, and employees can now spend more time working from the comfort of their homes. A significant problem associated with this was the communication between both ends, and VoIP emerged as the ultimate solution. It made it easy and simple to communicate with co-workers, customers, contractors, and business partners, as well as communication between the office and the employee. The extensive use of this technology has improved it over the years, and now the shift is towards cloud computing or cloud communication.

UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONS COMMUNICATION

Before switching to VoIP technology, it is important to understand your organisation's communication science. The staff members can work from anywhere, but organisations will expect them to both place and receive calls anytime. They will also want them to use other communication channels and never miss a call. This is easily understandable, but another fact is that the calling patterns of different departments will vary significantly. For example, your sales staff's calling pattern will be different from the staff attending the calls in a customer care department.

Based on this, you can choose add-on tools and features like call forwarding, automated call response, virtual receptionist, call transcription, etc. The features you select should be useful for your organisation, and they must play a helpful role in smoothening your business workflow. Some workers will never get to use these features, but some will find all of them very useful. This challenge can also be mitigated easily by understanding your staff's calling patterns and habits even when the hybrid working mode is 'on'.

NEVER COMPROMISE WITH CONSUMER PRODUCTS

Video calls and video conferencing services like Apple FaceTime, Skype, WebEx, and Zoom became very popular during the pandemic restrictions and even today, they are used more for personal and professional use. Due to this, several VoIP service providers have also started offering their services as a bundle package for their TV and Internet. Experts comment that regardless of hybrid working or you work from anywhere, you should resist using such products for business communication. Several limitations are associated with these services, and they can cut down your workers' productivity. Moreover, you cannot trust the security and reliability of these free-to-use services. Business VoIP is the ideal solution in hybrid working as there are several backend features like auditing, call logging, and others that provide valuable data for your organisation.

UNDERSTAND THE REALITY OF MODERN-DAY NETWORKS

VoIP is undoubtedly the most advanced and helpful technology people use in hybrid working mode. But this is also a fact that it is vulnerable to poor network conditions. Moreover, web browsing and several other similar restrictions are also there. Maintaining the call quality will be challenging in a hybrid working environment, where an employee works from anywhere. Even in the LAN environment, it will be very hard to maintain call quality and even more when you use the same network for streaming videos or downloading massive files.

Before deciding about VoIP in hybrid working, you should understand that the network of every employee will not be as perfect as required for smooth and seamless VoIP communication. Organisations must also realise that not every employee will have total control over the network. Some may be working from home and some from a coffee shop or public Internet network. In this situation, VoIP calling and Internet-based calling will turn into a game of tin can telephone.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE SERIOUSNESS OF DATA SECURITY

When a public network or public Internet comes inside the hybrid working network, it becomes a risky game. Malicious actors, hackers, etc., can easily intercept or temper the server and steal your valuable data. Of course, all modern-day websites use encrypted protocols, but you must be very serious about the server's security. This should involve searching for a VoIP system that uses automatic end-to-end encryption. This means attackers will be unable to listen or spoof calls even if they somehow manage to disrupt the communication.

For additional security, you can motivate your hybrid working team to use VPN for VoIP calls. But the catch is that not all VPNs are VoIP-conscious and will need adjustments and some tweaking to deliver the desired call quality.

The last, very robust step is to forbid using personal phones for business calls as when the hybrid working staff starts using them, you lose control over the server's security.

CHOOSE BETWEEN CLOUD AND ON-PREMISE OPTIONS

Traditional PBX systems were monitored a lot before the arrival of the earliest VoIP systems. The software or the server in those VoIP systems was managed by in-house IT staff. The problem associated with this concept was that the systems were costly, and an entire IT team was needed for its overall management. The good thing about this concept was that the company had total control over the VoIP system and could manage expansions and service upgrades easily. However, hybrid working is trending, so the on-premise model has become ineffective and useless. Modern-day VoIP service providers have started offering their services where the server is managed entirely in the cloud. This has its advantages, like it is very cost-effective and the service provider is responsible for handling all the hardware and ensuring call quality. Moreover, upgrades are rolled out regularly to make cloud VoIP systems more advanced and easy to work with in hybrid environments.

However, it is worth understanding that the upfront cost will be lower than the on-premise systems cost, but the pricing per user per month will be on the higher side.

UNIFY YOUR COMMUNICATION

When selecting your business communication option, you can think beyond traditional VoIP. We all know that modern-day employees don't just do voice calling, and customers have also started avoiding this. Text messaging, video conferencing, and social media are all now used strategically for business growth and to simplify hybrid working. VoIP service providers have already understood this, and now they are integrating all these features in their platforms to make them broader and selling them as Unified Communications as a Service or UCaaS.

These unified platforms have taken multi-channel communication a step ahead as they integrate basic VoIP functionality with other features that your organisation needs. These unified communication platforms have become incredibly powerful, but you need to be very careful as installing and configuring them as per your organisation's needs will consume a lot of time and money.