Lumen Next-Gen Voice vs. Zoom Phone

[CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP is] good for environments that require tried and true SIP services, where high-quality voice is a requirement, and backed by a large, global company, with global footprint. CenturyLink voice is also well-suited to environments that want to use MPLS to interconnect their offices, as the same voice circuits can be used for data as well; however, the circuits are relatively expensive, even as far as MPLS goes, and watch out for Lumen's "fees" that often aren't included when you see their quote. Also beware if you require a rapid turn-up or have a very small or inexperienced staff, as MPLS with BGP deployments are great once they're up and running, but can be complex to design and implement.

Incentivized

I think it works well for offices that have multiple locations. Being able to give each person and office their own extension makes it easier for colleagues to connect with each other, plus it's a costs savings for each of the offices

Incentivized

• Reliable service
• Supports wide range of key features
• They do have high levels of support where you can receive real answers

Incentivized

• Transcribes voicemails. Great for those verbose folks that leave long voicemails.
• Loud and clear volume quality! Great in a busy office with lots of people talking.
• Easy to keep track of who has called me. Has Caller ID which is helpful.

Incentivized

• Lumen-Centurylink has suffered from many noticeable outages in the last few years - this is a blow to their reputation that they still have to recover from.
• Lumen-CenturyLink does not peer well enough with OTHER carriers - they depend on their own network to give you SIP, which means less true redundancy.
• Lumen-CenturyLink needs a better customer portal/interface to handle failover, see the real-time status, etc.

Incentivized

• We needed to link each of our team members' personal emails to the Zoom account so we have to filter VM notifications out of our personal accounts.
• It'd be nice if you could set business hours through the webpage to include a lunch break so that you don't have to manually go in to edit.

Incentivized

Integrated into our network. System wide access. Staff are comfortable with the product

Incentivized

Zoom Phone has a very sleek design which makes it very easy to operate and use both in the setting up of and interacting in a meeting space. That being said, certain features can seem a bit crowded while trying to screen share or display video which somewhat defeats the purpose of the application as compared to a standard conference call.

Incentivized

SIP service support is definitely improving. A few years ago I would have rated them a 2. Now a 7. But, Lumen still needs a better portal experience to report and see a real-time status. Also to manage SIP failover functions in a WYSIWIG/GUI interface. When Lumen's network breaks in a larger outage, there are long hold times and support is not good.

Incentivized

Support have been great during the time for implementing Zoom Phones to our team of 50 people. There were times where they kept supporting us through links but more and more we had actual people getting back to us via emails so we are very happy overall. The product is so great, too.

Incentivized

I have found a better solution is to run two different carriers through SD-WAN (such as Bigleaf or Velocloud MSR) and use a provider like BCMOne (formerly NexVortex) to manage the SIP. BCMOne/Nexvortex is an AWESOME SIP provider with better planning, deployment, and technical support. When paired with redundant internet paths on SD-WAN (BigLeaf or Velocloud) a very resilient solution is created.

Incentivized

Price point was about the same but Zoom included more features for the price. Also the ISO mobile app was better. We were also about to drop Calendly and save some money using the native Zoom app.

Incentivized

• Faster learning
• Increased numbers of calls
• Organization of calls

Incentivized

• Zoom Workplace has had a positive effect on out business by combining meetings and phones in one place.
• The collaboration has been better with our staff being hybrid.
• The Zoom Workplace platform has been more that I expected to pay, but the customer service is outstanding.

Incentivized