Calling Plan or Operator Connect? | Microsoft Teams Phone System

Your company is looking into Microsoft Teams Phone System. But for the dial plan, should you company buy a calling plan from Microsoft, or use Operator Connect?

In this video, I cover whether Teams Operator Connect or Microsoft Calling Plan is better for your company.

Want my recommendations on the best Teams Phone provider? Ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your business is in the market for a new phone system and Microsoft teams phone system is one of the options you’re heavily considering. One of the questions you might be thinking of is, Hey, I’ve watched some of your videos, Mike, and I’ve seen some of the content out there. Should we purchase our dial plan directly from Microsoft and get a calling plan from them? Or should we get an operator connect provider? Which one should we use? well, I have a very strong opinion on this. I’ve been selling Microsoft teams phone systems since 2018 when it first came out. So I know which option your company should be doing. My name is Mike Smith. I’m the president of Aero com. Let’s put our heads together on this.

Reach out for my recommendations

you can listen to this video and that’s great. But if you just like my personal recommendation for your companies requirements, specifically knowing which operator connect vendor your company should be quoting reach out, send me an email or give me a call (714.593.0011). Send me an email. Give me a call. I’ve been a broker for all the major cloud phone system vendors out there for over 20 years, and there’s over 100 different operator connect vendors out there for you to choose from. And they’re not all the same. Some of them have a pretty bad reputation. Some of them have a niche that’s not a good fit for you, but the rep’s not going to tell you that. He’s going to say the service anyway. But reach out and contact me. Send me an email, give me a call. I will tell you which operator connect Vendors are the best fit for your company. If Operator Connect is the best fit at all. And if you’d like to video, hit the like button and subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss any of my weekly videos that I put out there. Also, let me comment down below. I’d love to hear from you. Ask me any questions I try to reply to every single comment that I have on my YouTube video, so reach out. Send me an email. I’d love to help you.

How big is your company?

Okay. The first thing when you’re evaluating, Hey, should we go with operator connect or should we go with Microsoft Direct for our calling plan? The first thing the first question I have for you is how many phone system users does your company have if you have under 20 phone system users? I usually recommend you buy the calling plan directly from Microsoft. The reason why is most operator connect vendors have a user minimum. They won’t even touch a company unless you have at least 20 or so phone system users. Under that, your only option is really to go to Microsoft Direct and buy your calling plan from them. Sometimes if you have a really small company, I don’t even recommend teams phone system. So it kind of depends on the situation. But sometimes if your company doesn’t have their own I.T department or you’re not very technical, if you have only like five employees or something like that, Microsoft teams phone system might not be the best fit. You might want to go with another cloud phone system option because as you’ll see in some of my other videos, like my review of teams phone system managing Microsoft teams phone system and setting it up isn’t really that intuitive and it’s kind of technical. So if you don’t have an I.T department, you might just want to go with a more user friendly option. But if your company has over 20 employees and you’re looking into 20 poisoning, 20 phone system users and you’re looking at the teams phone system, most of the time I’m going to recommend that you go with operator connect for your dial plan. And let me tell you why.

Same Price

The first reason is it’s going to be at least about the same price as Microsoft charges as you directly. So if you have like 20 employees, it’s about the same price as you going directly to Microsoft and buying a calling plan. But if you have hundreds or thousands of employees, it’s actually going to be lower priced. Then you go into Microsoft directly. I have a lot of customers reach out to me with hundreds or thousands of employees. That’s really my sweet spot is medium sized companies, medium to large size companies. And those companies always get a lot better pricing through an operator connect provider. Then go into Microsoft directly and buy a lot I mean, a lot less like thousands of employees. You’re looking at paying like 2 to $3 on average per month per user. If you have 20 employees, it’s more like 6 to $10 per month per user, which is about what Microsoft charges anyway. I think Microsoft charges now $11 per month for user for their calling plans. So you’ll still probably pay a little bit less by going with an operator, connect better, even if you’re a smaller company like 20, 30, 50 employees. But if you have hundreds of thousands, you’re going to pay a lot less for operator connect.

Unlimited Customer Service 24×7

Another advantage is along with that low price, you’re also going to get unlimited free 24 seven live customer support included. That’s not what you’re going to get. If you go to Microsoft directly, you’re not going to get Live Unlimited ad free support for your calling plans. So unlimited support. Obviously, companies are used to a little bit higher touch when it comes to supporting their phone system. In dial tone, you definitely want live support and operator connect. Vendors can supply that to you.

Installation help

Another big reason is installation help. Operator Connect vendors will assign a project manager to your installation and help walk you through the process. Really help you set up the whole project. You know, if you have hundreds or thousands of users spread across multiple locations, it sure is nice to have a project manager who’s done this dozens or hundreds of times and can tell you exactly how to do it when it comes to porting the numbers, when it comes to transferring every user over how to set everything up ahead of time, your call queues, your auto attendance programing, your user information, the operator connect, vendors have resources and they will give you a project manager that will be your one person to walk you through this project the entire time.

Analog support

Another big reason is Operator Connect Vendors will give you analog support. So if you don’t know this, Microsoft does not allow any analog signaling on their network. So fax machines, overhead paging systems, access devices that are tied in to your phone system, none of those can work if you buy your and plans from Microsoft directly. However, Operator Connect vendors do allow analog signaling on their network and they will help you set up 88 devices to convert the analog signaling over to IP, help you get all that stuff set up with the overhead paging systems and they do this all the time. So a lot more support for all the analog you have out there. And if you have thousands of employees or hundreds of employees, chances are you have some analog stuff out there that you need some help with.

Bolt On’s available

And the final reason why operator connect vendors are your best option is because theyoffer Boltons for the feature gaps that teams phone system has. For instance, teams phone system doesn’t have call recording won’t operator connect vendor can install call recording for you. They can also install things like SMS texting from your business phone numbers. They can also help you set up things like call center or an operator console, all types of different stuff that where a team has those feature gaps, operator connect vendors can come in and set up things like analytics for you so you can get for call analytics, for call reporting things that teams phone does not provide natively. Operator connect vendors can help you set up and provide plug ins within teams to do all those things.

Still confused? Reach out and contact me

So I’m sure you have more questions on teams phone system, especially if you’re a medium size or large size business, reach out, send me an email or give me a call (714.593.0011). Let me know if you’d like my recommendation on the best Operator Connect Vendors. Your company should be quoting. Send me an email. Give me a call. I love doing this stuff. I’m a broker for all the major operator connect vendors out there. There are over 100 different operator connect vendors, so you definitely need some help choosing which ones are the best fit for your organization. They all have a different niche and some of them have a good reputation, some of a bad reputation. So send me an email, give me a call. I’ll ask you a few questions about your company. Based on your answers, I’ll give you three four recommendations of which vendors you should be quoting. I’ll introduce you to those vendors, introduce you to the best salespeople to work with at those vendors. Oversee the quoting process to make sure you get the best pricing on your vendor of choice.

It won’t cost you anything

And the nice thing is, on top of that, my service is free to you. I don’t charge your company a dime for my broker services because the service providers, they pay me my broker fee. So because it’s free, there’s no excuse for you to at least not reach out and give me a call. Send me an email, see what I have to say. I’ll probably help you out. I haven’t met anybody yet. In all the years I’ve been doing this. That called me and said, You know what, Mike? I don’t need your help at all. Everything you said I already knew it never, ever has happened. So reach out. Contact me. I’d love to help you with this stuff, especially if you’re a mid-sized company. It’s the reason why I do these videos so that you get to know me a little bit and trust me and know that I can definitely help you with this stuff. So if you’d like to say thank you for any information you got on this video, that’s the best way to say thank you. Is asked me for some quotes. All right. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. So you don’t miss any of my weekly videos that I put out. And if you like the video like it ring the bell. Let me comment down below. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for watching and I’ll catch you on the next one.