Salt Lake City Business Phone Systems
Enter your Salt Lake City zip code and tell us your users, sites and call volume. Providers along the Wasatch Front quote hosted VoIP, SIP trunking or a new PBX and you compare.
Call centers changed this market
Utah has long been a place for call centers and customer service operations, and the valley around Salt Lake City is where many of them sit. West Valley City, Taylorsville, Murray and West Jordan have large office buildings full of agents on headsets. Local providers here see a lot of queue and recording requests, so push them hard on both. If you run a team that lives on the phone, take advantage of it.
Ask to see the supervisor view in the demo: who is on a call, who is waiting, how long callers hold, and whether a manager can listen in or step in. Then ask about reports you can export. A phone system for a service floor is really a reporting tool with phones attached.
Healthcare, banking and the university
University of Utah Health and Intermountain, with its medical center in Murray, run clinics across the valley. Clinics, imaging centers, billing offices and specialty practices are scattered across Millcreek, Holladay, Cottonwood Heights and Midvale. They need secure voicemail and fax that still works. Midvale and Murray have older strip-center medical space where cabling is a headache, so check that part of your quote.
Banks and financial firms have offices downtown and in the south valley, and they bring the compliance questions you see elsewhere: call recording, and who can get at it years later.
Downtown, the Church and the old buildings
Downtown Salt Lake City is organized around Temple Square and the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which brings along nonprofits and law offices. Many sit in older buildings where adding a second carrier takes planning. Ask the building manager which providers are already in the building before you ask for a quote, because that decides which circuits you can order.
Streets around Temple Square fill during General Conference weekends and cell service nearby gets crowded. A business there should not count on staff forwarding calls to mobile phones that weekend.
South Jordan, West Jordan and the growing south
The south end of the valley has grown quickly for years. South Jordan and West Jordan have corporate offices, medical campuses and new business parks, many wired with fiber from the start. Further north, Bountiful has professional offices and small retail with a more traditional mix of dental practices and insurance agencies. A provider based in Salt Lake City will reach most of this without a travel fee. In a newer park, hosted phones mean nothing gets installed in your space beyond handsets and a switch.
Warehouses, the airport and the inland port
The northwest side of the city, near the airport and the freight yards, is full of warehouses, trucking offices and distribution centers. A lot of these companies are small, with an office of five people and a yard of drivers. They do not need much, but they need it to work at five in the morning. A simple hosted plan with a ring group that moves from dispatch to an on-call phone, plus a way for customers to text the main number, covers most of it. Ask for after-hours routing that someone other than the owner can change.
Construction firms across the valley share the same pattern, since most of the calls come while the crew is on a roof or in a trench. A mobile app and good voicemail to email beat a desk phone nobody sits at.
Winter air and earthquake risk
Winter inversions trap cold air and haze in the valley, and big snowstorms close roads for a morning. The more serious issue is the Wasatch Fault, which runs along the east side of the valley. A large quake there is a known risk, and phones are part of planning for it. A hosted system keeps running if your office is damaged, and calls can forward to cell phones. An on-site PBX stuck in a damaged closet does not. This is the best argument for hosted in Utah, and it is worth putting to every provider.
Comcast and Lumen serve much of the valley, and some cities have municipal fiber options. Ask each provider what circuits are available at your address.
Choosing a system
- Call centers and high volume offices: hosted with full queue reporting and recording.
- Small medical or dental practices: hosted with fax to email and mobile app.
- Warehouses and trades: hosted with ring groups, texting and an app for people in the field.
- A hospital department or large plant with an older PBX: SIP trunking now, hosted later.
Seats, rates and growth
Ask what is in the monthly fee and how long porting will take. Ask who handles E911 for each building and for home workers. Then ask how many users you can add in a day, since a fast-growing company can double headcount in a year. A contract that fixes your rate for a short term and lets you add seats at the same price is worth more than a small discount.
Silicon Slopes is south of Salt Lake City proper, but plenty of its companies have an office in the valley. If that is you, skip the desk phones and put the money into good headsets and a better internet connection.
