BT Cloud Voice

[Dave O'Sullivan]

After a soul destroying hour and a half on the phone to BT about a bill, the Cloud Voice system has been suggested as a way of reducing my business bills.
Anyone have any experience of this?

Cheers

[jwillans]

Hi Dave - No direct experience however I have brought in a comms consultant who is helping us adopt new technology around unified comms including telephony. The view he gave on BT was that they were essentially reselling other vendor products and they were a generation or so behind best in class. The class leader (based on Gartner etc and his experience) is Ring Central who do look rather good. Hope that helps.

[ViperStripes]

Sounds like classic BT. You have an issue, so lets sell you a new contract.

Looked at BT Cloud recently for a client. Could save in that instance 50% by getting a cloud system with another provider.

What size annual spend are you talking about currently with BT?

[StuS]

This week we but have just finished a contract with BT and their cloud based system. Absolutely appalling, half the functionality away from the office didn’t work.

Everything seems to be email or mobile for us these days aowe are going to manage with a single line with answerphone to the office.

There are plenty of other VoIP offerings out there that will probably be better than BT.

[Dave O'Sullivan]

Sounds like classic BT. You have an issue, so lets sell you a new contract.

Looked at BT Cloud recently for a client. Could save in that instance 50% by getting a cloud system with another provider.

What size annual spend are you talking about currently with BT?

Its £154 per month for 5 lines with 4G back up over a 5 year contract - which seems a long time.
Trouble is, I'm already in a contract with them so I guess I'll be hit in the nuts if I simple cancel and move elsewhere.
When did it get so hard to have a bloody phone line?!

- - - Updated - - -

This week we but have just finished a contract with BT and their cloud based system. Absolutely appalling, half the functionality away from the office didn’t work.

Everything seems to be email or mobile for us these days aowe are going to manage with a single line with answerphone to the office.

There are plenty of other VoIP offerings out there that will probably be better than BT.

Thanks for the insight. Nearly all our stuff is based onsite so hopefully that won't be a massive issue.

[Dave O'Sullivan]

Hi Dave - No direct experience however I have brought in a comms consultant who is helping us adopt new technology around unified comms including telephony. The view he gave on BT was that they were essentially reselling other vendor products and they were a generation or so behind best in class. The class leader (based on Gartner etc and his experience) is Ring Central who do look rather good. Hope that helps.

Cheers,

As mentioned above, I'm in a contract with them. That said, I'll still have a look around.

[Carlton-Browne]

We've just been stiffed by them at work (at least our account manager got fired in the process which was vaguely satisfying). Their predilection for 5 year contracts is pretty much an admission that they're useless and the business model is to trap customers. Anywhere else in the two regions I have responsibility for I expect to sign 12 month contracts with the exception of Germany where it's 24.

[mart broad]

One of the things that my years in business prior to retiring taught me was never ever deal with BT

[ViperStripes]

Ask BT what your contract end date is for each and every line and for each service like broadband AND for the call package, they are likely to all be different. But after the 1st year BT’s termination charges aren’t too bad compared to other providers.

[Dave O'Sullivan]

Ask BT what your contract end date is for each and every line and for each service like broadband AND for the call package, they are likely to all be different. But after the 1st year BT’s termination charges aren’t too bad compared to other providers.

They're phoning back today so I'll ask, thanks.