Business communications have evolved rapidly over the past few decades.
Not long ago, landline phones were in many businesses and households. However, landline usage has declined every year since 2004, and more people have turned to mobile phones and VoIP for personal and business use.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) simply requires a high-speed internet connection to make and receive phone calls. You can use VoIP on your mobile phone, desk phone, or computer, which makes VoIP an attractive option for businesses.
In this article, we’ll list more than 40 VoIP statistics that explain why more businesses are upgrading to cloud communications, starting with market size and adoption.
VoIP Market Size And Adoption Continues to Grow
VoIP first gained popularity in the 1990s and began to see impressive growth by 2005. Its market growth shows no signs of slowing down, especially as remote work becomes more commonplace and businesses seek solutions to support their distributed teams.
In this section, we’ll provide statistics that reveal VoIP’s growth since the decline of landlines.
70% percent of American adults, and 83% of children, lived in a household without a landline at the end of 2022
This figure has tripled since 2010. People have been steadily moving away from traditional landlines since 2004. The rise of mobile phone usage and VoIP technology has made landlines more obsolete by the day. If this trend continues, landlines could face the same fate as CDs, VCRs, and other technological relics.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics
The VoIP services market is expected to reach $108.5 billion by 2032
Research shows VoIP’s growth is driven by low maintenance and setup costs, requires minimal staff support, better reliability, and has robust features.
Businesses are quickly realizing that they need more than just phone calls. VoIP supports features like video conferencing, unlimited calling, analytics, and more. All without the price and infrastructure of a PBX service.
Source: Future Market Insights
The global UC market is expected to register a CAGR of 17.4% from 2023 to 2030
Unified Communications (UC) is the integration of business communication and collaboration tools under a single platform. These tools include a virtual phone system, video and audio conferencing, team chat, team presence, and file sharing.
With UC, employees no longer have to use disconnected, fragmented technologies to communicate internally and externally. This leads to cost reduction, improved productivity, support for remote employees, and improved customer experience. It’s no wonder why VoIP and UC are seeing such impressive growth.
Source: Grand View Research
The global mobile VoIP market is projected to reach $327.5 billion by 2031
The pandemic has shown us how much work can be done on the go and in the palm of your hand.
With more businesses adopting remote work policies, they’ll need a solution that allows their distributed employees to communicate with customers and collaborate with their teams via smartphone apps on iOS and Android. Unsurprisingly, the mobile VoIP market is seeing a massive uptick.
Source: Allied Market Research
More software buyers go with VoIP than any other type of voice service
Software buyers use voice services like Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI) less frequently than VoIP.
Here’s the breakdown:
- VoIP use – 36%
- POTS use – 24%
- PRI use – 11%
- Cellular use – 8%
The same study lists lack of scalability, aging systems, lack of PBX applications, lack of call routing functionality, and cost of current phone systems as the top five reasons that drive software buyers to look for a new solution.
Source: Software Advice
The cloud-based contact center infrastructure market is expected grow by 26% from 2024 to 2029
Features like auto-attendant, call queuing, and advanced call routing makes VoIP a natural fit for cloud-based contact centers.
These features allow contact centers to reduce overhead costs and resolve inbound calls faster and more efficiently. This also provides a better customer experience for incoming callers.
Source: Mordor Intelligence
Businesses Are Moving to the Cloud
In the previous section, we learned that more businesses are moving their phone systems from on-premise to the cloud.
In this section, we’ll put into context just how many businesses and organizations are moving to the cloud, along with some of its benefits.
82% of businesses reported cost savings when they moved to the cloud
Moving to the cloud could pose a number of benefits, especially to small businesses. Some of these benefits include lower setup, maintenance, and operating costs, more flexible payment options, increased mobility for remote workforces, and improved collaboration. It’s no surprise that cloud telephony is rising in popularity.
Source: Microsoft
85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first principle by 2025
More and more teams aren’t just moving to the cloud, but are building entire processes that are only possible with the flexibility that comes with it. The cloud offers a number of benefits that simply aren’t available via legacy processes and now organizations can move faster than ever with these advantages.
Source: Gartner
94% of businesses saw an improvement in security after switching to the cloud
In addition to cost savings, businesses could expect more robust security out of moving to the cloud.
Security features like call encryption, around-the-clock network monitoring, single sign-on, and data compliance are a few of the many benefits of switching to a cloud communications service, especially if your business deals with sensitive customer data.
Source: Salesforce
As of 2023, 50% of enterprises already have workloads in the cloud, with 7% planning to move additional workloads to the cloud in next year
Enterprise businesses are adopting cloud solutions for more than just cost savings.
Digital transformation (63%) and artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities (50%) are among the top reasons why enterprises move to the cloud. Although, 2 out of 3 IT professionals have expressed security concerns about cloud adoption.
Source: Statista
Almost half of government organizations use cloud services
SMEs aren’t the only ones moving to the cloud. Nearly 50% of government organizations today are realizing the major benefits of cloud-based services.
In most cases, cost savings and increased efficiency are the two main drivers behind the shift. Although, data sovereignty remains a top concern with governments, as they don’t want to store data outside their borders.
Source: Gartner
The Rise of Remote & Hybrid Work
Remote work, or telecommuting, consistently rose before COVID-19. In 2020, more businesses adopted work-from-home policies for the first time ever and were seeing the productivity and cost benefits of having a remote workforce. In 2023, companies of all sizes prepared for return to office, and some even offered a hybrid work environment.
Technologies like VoIP, video conferencing, and team presence have made remote and hybrid work more manageable.
In this section, we’ll provide statistics that show the rise of remote work and how businesses and their employees can benefit from it.
Remote employees top 40 hours/week 43% more than on-site workers
Managers new to telecommuting may worry that their remote employees could work less. However, a recent report by Owl Labs found that remote employees often stay on the clock longer than their on-site counterparts. One of the driving reasons for this is that remote employees find it harder to unplug after work hours.
Employees working too long of hours could face potential burnout, one of the most common remote work challenges today. As a manager, you should be proactive in capping hours and so burnout doesn’t set in.
Source: Owl Labs
Over 38% of companies have staff that work from home
Every workplace should focus on communication — especially those with remote employees.
Regardless of where your employees work, if your workforce isn’t communicating regularly, they won’t be on the same page. And, since you’re not able to keep an eye on what they’re working on, it might be too late to stop your staff from working on something that isn’t quite right.
Trends indicate that an increasing amount of time is being spent working remotely, or in some mobile format. In fact, over 29% of companies have staff that remotely work from home, with a further 20% catering to employees working on-the-go.
Source: Nextiva
On average, remote employees worked 1.4 more days every month, or 16.8 more days every year, than those who worked in an office
Remote employees aren’t just working longer hours. They’re working with greater productivity levels, too. With more time on their hands, remote employees are more likely to spread their work throughout the day – leading to a more flexible schedule.
Source: Airtasker
More than 4.7 million people work remotely at least half the time in the United States
The data is there — Remote employees work longer hours, take less time off, and are often more productive throughout their workday. Unsurprisingly, remote work and flexible hybrid policies are becoming more popular in businesses of all sizes.
Our recent State of Business Communications Report found that more than 1 in 3 businesses have remote employees. This number will surely rise post-COVID-19, so your business could benefit from tools enabling remote workforces.
Source: Apollo Technical
59% of business professionals use at least three devices at work
Think about how many tools are in your communication stack. You might have a desk phone, cell phone, and desktop app (like Slack) to stay up to date with work.
In practice, that might look like answering a call from your boss on your cell phone while you’re working remotely, while using a desktop project management tool like Trello to communicate with coworkers async.
Source: Nextiva
The Cost of VoIP May Surprise You
Going with a VoIP solution can help you reduce your business phone bill, improve call quality and reliability, streamline customer service, and unlock robust features that aren’t available with legacy phone systems.
In this section, we’ll provide statistics on why VoIP costs may be worthwhile for your business.
Companies can reduce phone costs by up to 50% with VoIP
While the percentage of savings can differ from business to business, VoIP can reduce monthly phone costs for several reasons.
One of the main reasons is that VoIP uses the internet to make and receive phone calls, as opposed to landlines, which require on-premise wiring. Setting up and maintaining a landline can be expensive. With VoIP, the setup and operating costs are much lower.
Another reason is that all calls are charged with landlines. With Nextiva, you’ll get unlimited VoIP calls in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. This makes VoIP a great option for small businesses trying to expand their reach.
Source: TelZio
VoIP can help small businesses reduce startup costs by up to 90%
The last thing you need to worry about when allocating budget for your startup is how much your business communication system will cost now and in the long term. With VoIP, you don’t need to worry about expensive installation, maintenance, and upkeep.
Your phone, voice, video, and messaging are all hosted in the cloud and managed by a VoIP service provider, which frees your mind for more important business for your startup.
Source: Startupnz
60% of business professionals face a crisis at least once a month due to communication issues, with a staggering 14% saying they occur weekly
Poor communication costs businesses a lot of money.
53% say email is a black hole for important messages. Every week, 16% of workers miss information shared in emails, and 6% say they’re overwhelmed by the number of emails in their inbox, which often leads them to miss important things.
The average office worker receives 121 emails per day — not to mention the barrage of phone calls and text messages they’ll need to respond to because they’re using several devices.
Source: Nextiva
The price of VoIP services may go up by 3% over the next five years
This small price increase isn’t too significant compared to the cost-savings and value VoIP can provide to your business. Businesses can manage their VoIP spend by finding the best pricing model for them. These models most often include tiered pricing, pay-per-user, and fixed pricing.
Source: Spend Edge
Cloud-based contact centers resulted in a 15% reduction in IT personnel costs
Moving your contact center to the cloud can reduce the amount of IT support needed to manage on-premise hardware and other components.
Cloud service providers deliver and maintain their solutions, which means your IT staff can spend less time focusing on the infrastructure of the contact center and more time on other tasks.
Source: TeleTech
UC saves employees an average of 30 minutes per day
With everyone working under a single platform, communication moves faster and more efficiently throughout a business. Businesses that have made the move to UC spend less on their technology stacks and have improved internal collaboration and streamlined business processes.
In addition, businesses that use integrated voice and video conferencing with UC reported a 30% cost reduction in conferencing tools.
Source: Network World
Customer Service & Call Centers
When customers call your business, they don’t want to be stuck on hold, bounced around to the wrong departments, or have their calls dropped. Call centers looking for better reliability, tracking, and more robust features are upgrading their business phone systems.
In this section, we’ll provide VoIP statistics that reveal why more call centers are considering cloud-hosted solutions.
83% of companies lost a customer, missed a major deadline, or terminated an employee due to a communication issue
All three of these events are significant for a business. Poor communication can upset or confuse a customer, cause roadblocks in work productivity, and affect employee performance. Communication and collaboration don’t have to be separate with the right tools.
Source: Nextiva
60% of customers prefer to contact businesses by phone
After finding a local business online, six in 10 customers prefer to pick up the phone and contact them directly rather than deal with live chat, email, or online contact forms. Phone calls are followed by email with 16%, and 15% of people who visit the actual location of the business
These inbound calls can add up for small businesses, especially during busier seasons. Having a business phone service in place can allow businesses to streamline their call routing and have customers reach the right departments faster.
Source: BrightLocal
61% of customers have stopped doing business with a brand due to poor customer service
It pays to have poor customer service. If your phone service is unreliable and hinders how quickly a customer can connect with the right departments, you run the risk of losing customers.
In the same survey by Microsoft, 59% of respondents said they had higher expectations of customer service than they did in the previous year. So, if you’re not actively improving your customer service systems, then you’re falling behind.
Source: Microsoft
76% of businesses offer support outside of traditional business hours
The standards for customer service are higher than ever before. Your customers aren’t just looking for higher-quality support but support that is accessible at most hours of the day. Going with a hosted contact center is a great way to bring that flexibility to your customers.
With features like intelligent virtual assistants (IVA), self-service voice response, and automated workflows, your support agents will be more productive, and your business will have greater availability for customers and prospects.
Source: Hiver
86% of customers expect conversations to shift harmoniously between communication channels
There is more pressure today to provide cohesive support across multiple channels, such as omnichannel. Without proper omnichannel implementation, a business risks fracturing the customer experience.
According to McKinsey, most customers consult with three to five different service channels when trying to resolve a problem or get support, and 86% expect to shift harmoniously between those channels. Contact center solutions are able to consolidate these channels in a single view for your agents, which means no conversations go unanswered.
Source: McKinsey
51% of people say a business needs to be available 24/7
Customer expectations are at an all time high. Companies need to make it easy and convenient for customers to reach out for help. Some businesses choose to have all support channels open 24/7, while others offer limited options to make off-hours coverage easier and more efficient. This way you can properly staff your contact center without spending too much on additional representatives.
A common way businesses accommodate 24/7 support is to work with a global team to meet specific shift windows. For instance, calls and emails after 5 pm in the U.S time zones can be moved to Asia and Europe to cover each shift during “normal business hours.”
Source: Influx
By 2025, AI will power 95% of all customer interactions
AI is playing an increasingly important role in customer service, and its role will continue to grow over the coming years. Technologies like AI-enabled chatbots, voice assistants, and Advanced Interactive Voice Response (IVR) will make up a bulk of the interactions with customers.
To put a financial data point to this VoIP statistic, Gartner anticipates conversational AI will lower labor costs by $80 billion in 2026.
Source: Gartner
Important VoIP Features
By now, it’s clear that VoIP can lead to cost savings and reduce monthly phone bills, but the variety of VoIP features adds value to your business. This section will provide stats on some of the top VoIP features today.
Companies that use contact center analytics decreased Average Handle Time by 40%
Average Handle Time (AHT) is a common call center metric that measures the average length of time it takes for reps to resolve customer service inquiries. High AHT may point to an issue in customer service scripts or signal that reps need more training.
Contact center analytics have helped businesses reduce their AHT by sifting through call logs and pinpointing call incidents. Managers can apply analytics by reworking customer service scripts and identifying common customer complaints.
Source: McKinsey
87% of people use a mobile phone to communicate at work at least once per week
With more people away from the office, it makes sense that they would use their mobile phones to take work calls. With a VoIP mobile and desktop app, employees can move calls from their smartphones, laptops, and desk phones without any interruptions or hiccups.
For employees that are often on the go, an approved business phone app is key to secure and professional team communication.
Source: Nextiva
62% of contact centers use IVR or self-service speech solutions for customer service
IVR, short for Interactive Voice Response, is an automated phone system with call routing capabilities. While auto-attendants use a phone’s dial pad to route callers to the right departments, IVR does this through voice recognition. For example, a caller could say, “I’m trying to reach the support team,” and IVR would use this vocal cue to route the caller.
More contact centers are using IVR because of its self-service convenience for callers. It’s also a way for contact centers to gather important information ahead of each call.
Source: Forrester
76% of calls go unanswered if they’re from unidentified or unfamiliar phone numbers
People everywhere are receiving more robocalls and spam calls. Hiya saw an 850% jump in scam calls during COVID-19, the calls were related to stimulus checks. In a time where people have diminishing trust in picking up their phones, it’s important for your business to use caller ID, one of the more basic but important VoIP features.
Caller ID further legitimizes your business when it comes to external outreach, and prospects will have added confidence when picking up their phones. Conversely, 65% of calls with a business name on the caller ID were answered.
Source: Hiya
77% of businesses plan to use video conferencing as their primary method of B2B interaction
Real-time communication, like video conferencing and live chat, has surged over the past few years as more businesses embrace remote work policies. These technologies support a collaborative work environment, even when teams are distributed.
Source: Finances Online
59% of employees use a desk phone every day
It’s worth noting that 22% of respondents reported never using a desk phone at work, but 70% use a desk phone at least once a week.
The communication tools being used today won’t be the same ones we’re using in five years. With more employees equipped with laptops and smartphones, they don’t necessarily conduct all of their business interactions from their desk. An increasing number of companies are simply choosing to go without them.
Source: Nextiva
60% of smartphone users have called a business directly from a Google search
Google visitors looking to connect quickly with a business are likely to tap the business phone number that shows up in search results. Knowing this, your business should go in and add a number for customers to reach.
With VoIP, you can get access to toll-free numbers featuring a special area code that doesn’t charge callers, like 800, 888, 877, and so on. Toll-free numbers can increase the credibility of your brand, give you a national presence, and have call routing capabilities. You can also track incoming calls from different marketing campaigns with toll-free numbers.
Source: Google
VoIP Security & Compliance
Security is important for any business, especially when it comes to internal and external business communications. In this section, we’ll provide VoIP statistics on the current landscape of cyber threats and how it relates to your VoIP phone system.
The global average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over 3 years
It’s worth noting that the U.S. has the highest average data breach cost. Data breaches are surefire ways to lose customers, consumer trust, brand reputation, and potential legal issues depending on the type of data exposed. When it comes to industries with compliance requirements, like healthcare, you need solutions that are capable of protecting sensitive data.
51% of organizations are planning to increase security investments as a result of a breach, including incident response planning and testing, employee training, and threat detection and response tools.
When researching a VoIP or UCaaS solution, look at reliability, compliance, security, and accreditations. Service providers like Nextiva work diligently to protect business communications data.
Source: IBM
Nearly 1 in every 6 adults in the U.S. fall victim to scam calls
This translated to $10.5 billion lost in 2018, and the U.S. continues to be on the list of top scammed countries.
Scam calls are getting more intricate and more frequent by the year. They are a type of social engineering attack where the scammer builds relationships with their victims, so they think it’s a genuine call. The victim is then more susceptible to handing over sensitive information. Research shows that 62% of businesses experienced a social engineering attack in 2018.
Source: TrueCaller
SIP accounted for over 51% of the security event activity analyzed in 2016
SIP, short for Session Initiation Protocol, is one of the foundations of real-time communication tools today. It is commonly used for VoIP phone calls, video conferencing, and team messaging. Because of this, SIP is also the most commonly targeted VoIP protocol.
Security Intelligence found an upward trend in attacks targeting SIP. If your business is considering upgrading to VoIP, you must ensure that a service provider follows security best practices. Encrypting Wi-Fi connections, enforcing strong password policies, and deactivating inactive accounts are among these best practices to consider.
Source: Security Intelligence
1 in 4 public Wi-Fi hotspots lack encryption
A reported 25% of Wi-Fi hotspots in the world are insecure. If you’re using your VoIP phone over an unencrypted Wi-Fi network, you run the risk of eavesdropping. This is essentially when hackers can listen in on business phone calls in real-time or via call recordings, like voicemail.
Through eavesdropping, hackers can collect information on your business and your customers, so your employees should use their VoIP phones on encrypted networks. Your business should also enforce VoIP security best practices.
Source: Kaspersky
VoIP Service Providers
If you’re looking to upgrade your business phone system with VoIP, you’ll likely compare service providers and weigh their differences, asking questions like:
How are their customer reviews and ratings? How expensive is their service? What kind of support can you get? Do they offer a free trial?
These are all great questions to answer during your research. In this section, we provided statistics from U.S. News on the best business phone systems to provide more clarity to the questions above.
As you can see, there are a lot of choices for VoIP service providers, which is why you should also compare features, reliability, and security in addition to the data above.
Source: U.S. News
Upgrading Your Phone System with VoIP
In this long layout of VoIP statistics, we learned that the VoIP market is growing rapidly.
We learned that more businesses are realizing the cost and security benefits of moving to the cloud. By moving your business communications to the cloud with VoIP, you become better equipped to support a remote workforce.
We also learned how VoIP could bolster your call center and improve customer service. We discussed some of the top VoIP features right now, like auto-attendant, video conferencing, IVR, and mobile and desktop apps.
We shed light on the importance of securing business communications data, especially if you’re in an industry with compliance requirements. Finally, we provided data on the best VoIP providers today based on customer reviews, ratings, pricing, tech support, and more metrics. It’s no surprise to us that Nextiva tops so many critics’ lists.
Businesses save up to 60% on their phone bills. We provide a world-class network and physical security. We have a 99.999% service uptime. Our customer reviews speak for themselves. So, if you’re ready to upgrade your business phone system with VoIP, let Nextiva help you along the way.
Check our pricing to get started with Nextiva.
