Our church has been forward thinking for a long time. For example, we were live streaming our worship services before most churches, we were early adopters to cloud technology, and we were able to work remotely long before it was common. So, when the pandemic hit in March of 2020, we were well-prepared and didn’t have to make many adjustments.
However, one of our systems was way behind... the system we used for phones and video meetings. Unfortunately, when the pandemic began, we were still using old-school phone technology, and we weren’t really doing many video meetings at all. This created an immediate challenge for us. When everyone was working from home, it was almost impossible to use our church’s phone system, forward calls to our cell phones, or even check our office voicemail. We knew that it was time to upgrade.
I did some quick research, and we signed a contract with an international company that provided this technology to us, and it was a game changer. Once we had this set up, we were able to truly work remotely without hurting our ability to connect and communicate. Having a cloud-based system for phones and video meetings allowed us to make and receive work calls, easily check our voicemail, and conduct video meetings from anywhere in the world.
Since that time, technology has rapidly advanced and it keeps getting better and better. We are now using Zoom for our phone system and video meetings. It’s easy to manage, easy to use, and very affordable. And, we don’t even have physical office phones anymore. Everything is done through the Zoom app on our smartphones. It’s great!
If you are still using an old-school phone system (you know, the ones with phone lines from the phone company) or if you are still trying to figure out the best way to do video meetings, let me encourage you to make the switch. There are several companies that are worth considering. But, in my opinion, Zoom is the best and the easiest to use. And, if your experience is like mine, it is actually cheaper to be a Zoom Business Plus customer than it was to be a customer with our local phone company, and we get so much more for our money.
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