Rethinking the role of phone: how Zoom Phone makes voice communications seamless in a collaboration-centric world

We know that phone calls are still the cornerstone of many business interactions, which is why getting it right is so important for your business. Modern-day voice communication needs to go beyond basic phone functionality – it needs to be seamless, flexible, and reliable. And whatever phone solution you choose, you’ll need it to connect to broader communication platforms. Phone-first providers like RingCentral often offer solutions that aren’t optimized for flexible, multi-channel solutions.

RingCentral phone solutions may not have all of the parts needed for you and your team to have the true asynchronous collaboration that you need in today’s flexible work environments. For example, RingCentral:

• Requires fees for 911 emergency calls, compliance, and administrative cost recovery.
• Has a smaller global reach than Zoom, with fewer countries native PSTN and customer-peering.
• Requires you to buy the same tier of features for everyone in your organization, even if they don’t need it. 
• Provides limited BYOC options at a greater cost, with less flexibility. Zoom allows you to keep existing carrier relationships with less hassle.

RingCentral phone solutions also don’t fold into a collaboration-centric, broader architecture that fosters agile, asynchronous work. Services you may need, like conference rooms, contact centers, team chat, and video meeting solutions have to be added onto RingCentral solutions, taking away your ability to consolidate your communications into a single platform. Although their solutions stand on their own, RingCentral implementations can also have a higher total cost of ownership than Zoom Workplace, according to a 2023 Metrigy UCaaS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Study, commissioned by Zoom:

• RingCentral implementation costs 27% more than Zoom implementation for organizations of fewer than 2,000 employees. 
• RingCentral customers’ internal IT staff-managed operations also cost 168% more than Zoom customers’ IT staff-managed operations for similarly-sized organizations.

Both Zoom and RingCentral offer an SLA-backed uptime guarantee, but it’s possible that something goes wrong between the cloud and your location. SLAs don’t often cover that, but Zoom has a plan for that with Zoom Phone Local Survivability (ZPLS), provided by Zoom Node: 

• In the event of a network connectivity issue, it offers robust functionality that goes beyond internal calling and 911 emergency calls. 
• With a capacity of up to 5,000 users per module and global availability on a variety of devices, you can provide critical support to your people with a phone system that can continue its core functionality.
• If the Zoom app is unable to connect to a Zoom Phone data center due to an outage from a carrier, storm, or natural disaster, the ZPLS module helps the organization minimize revenue loss, maintain internal communication, and establish on-site safety with survivability that lasts several days.

Even though the majority of your work happens on a screen, you might not be thinking about the windows on that screen–and how many times you go between them. According to a study published by the Harvard Business Review, the average person switches between applications nearly 1,200 times each day. That’s the equivalent of four hours per week, or over five full work weeks each year, for each employee at your organization. That’s time you and your colleagues could be spending doing other things.

Clunky, legacy technology binds you to the past, while sucking up the resources you need to take on the future. As you face a tough economic landscape, you need agile, modern technology that also makes the most of your tight budget. 

If you’re being asked to justify your IT spending, it’s time to explore how you can consolidate your phone system with other communication solutions. That’s where Zoom Workplace comes in. Our all-in-one offering brings together phone, team chat, whiteboard, meetings, and third-party integrations into a single AI-powered user experience so you don’t have to waste time — or money — switching between apps. Trim costs, get more done, and make the most of your communications, no matter where and how they take place.

Learn more about Zoom Phone, our cloud-based phone solution.