10 Essential Business VoIP Phone System Features
With more and more companies dropping the their Plain old Telephone service (POTS for short) in favour of VoIP systems, identifying the essential VoIP features and understanding how your company can benefit from them is as important as the technology itself. Many companies often overlook certain features of VoIP and think purely on the feature they originally needed. VoIP services offer companies functionality that many businesses overlook. Take a look at the list below to make sure you are getting the most out of your VoIP services.
Intercom / Door Entry System Integration
A sometimes very essential VoIP feature, integrating your intercom door entry system will enable you to have a 2-way conversation with your visitors, and should you be in a good mood, you can then let them in from your desk. On top of that, as VoIP and SIP technologies have advanced, so has the integration of Video Intercom systems, which allow you not only to talk to your guests, but see them as well, which will give you visual confirmation that your visitors are who they say they are. This can be a very useful feature for example for a jewellery store who need top-notch security.
Auto Attendant
One of the often overlooked core benefits of Business VoIP, the Auto Attendant feature enables businesses to set up professional greetings and announcements for incoming calls. But the auto attendant is much more than just greetings. Combined with an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system, this feature of VoIP enables callers to choose the extension or department appropriate to their needs, there greatly improving your call flow management processes whilst simultaneously ensuring your calls are dealt with correctly at the 1st time of asking. Another benefit is being able to play greetings in multiple languages which inform your callers about a variety of important aspects, for example promotions, business hours, national holidays or up coming events. What this means for businesses is quite simple - they will automatically give the impression of being more professional as well as being much larger than they actually are.
Music on Hold
“Silence is most definitely not golden”. There is quite possibly nothing worse than hearing that dreaded on hold tone or even worse silence. The “Music on Hold” feature may seem a nice to have feature, but if your company has to regularly put callers on hold it is an absolute must. With this essential VoIP feature you decide which music your callers listen to, but please, for heavens sake, choose something decent and not some horrid “Lift Music”.
Voicemail to E-mail
Ever listened to your voicemails and then had to scramble to find a pen and paper to note down the names, numbers and addresses contained within, only to have to listen to the voicemail again as you didn’t have time? This essential VoIP feature will transcribe your voicemails into written format and then send it direct to your e-mail. This will enable you to read your voicemails at your own leisure and help you organise, store and search their content at a later date, which is simply not possible with your actual audio Voicemail.
Call Screening
Now this really is an often overlooked essential VoIP feature, that has advantages that many simply do not think about, but are actually quite useful. How it works is that your VoIP system will let you look at the callerID and then decide how to handle the call. Let me give you an example, we all know how annoying those repetitive sales calls can be, then you simply reject the call or should say someone close to you be calling you on your business line, you can divert the call to your mobile and then talk more privately with the freedom to move away from your desk and not in front of all your colleagues.
DND - Do Not Disturb
So got a busy day, with that deadline for that report due for the boss by the end of business today? The last thing you want is someone to call and take up your precious time just for a chat. With DND, you can temporarily block incoming calls to your phone as well as having the option of setting up how these calls will then be handled. For example, you can decide whether the calls should be sent to voicemail or redirected to a colleague. This can be a very handy feature when you have meetings, conferences or like above that all important report to finish.
FollowMe Call Routing
In today’s business world, the workforce is becoming increasingly mobile and by combing FollowMe call routing with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept, you can have a list of your numbers which you can then tell your VoIP phone system to contact you on before the call is sent to your voicemail. For example, you can set up the system so that your office phone rings 3 times before it tires your mobile and after the 6th ring, the system could try your HomeOffice phone. Once your VoIP system has tried all the numbers on the list, it can then send the call to voicemail.
The benefit of this is that it increases the availability of your staff, reducing the risk that they may miss that all important phone call no matter why they are. An additional benefit of such functionality is the ability to control and reduce expensive mobile phone bills for remote or mobile workers, such as field sales. FollowMe call routing also ensures consistency between remote workers phone numbers, as they will now be able to also have an office extension number which they can take with them no matter where they are.
Call Conferencing
Most people have been involved in a conference where it has all become just a little chaotic, with people talking over others etc. With the often overlooked advanced features of VoIP’s conferencing capabilities you can regain control over such conference calls through using features such as muting and un muting. Other useful tools include the ability to send invites, set up conference call room passwords for increased security and so on.
In Call Coaching
Got a problem customer with whom an agent needs some help? With in call coaching or whispering as it sometimes known, supervisors, sales managers and trainers can help other agents by whispering in on a call without the caller knowing that they are there on the call. Of course you can also let the caller know you are there, if you so choose, or are required to do so. This allows you to help other agents while the caller is still on the phone and not after they have hung up, by offering tips and advice on how to deal with certain scenarios. Also a very useful tool for training purposes as well as monitoring the in-call performance of your call agents. Perhaps more suitable to call centre solutions, but also a useful tool for any company that has a large volume of either incoming or outgoing telesales.
Call Reporting
Ranging from detailed user call history for the phone suite to more in depth statistical analysis, Business VoIP can help you analyse your call data like never before. Meaning you can better understand where and when to direct your resources using call log histories over a period of time. Moreover, the same tool can be used to provide team leaders or supervisors with a current real time statistics about your incoming and outgoing calls, helping them react more effectively and efficiently to spikes in call volumes as well as call duration, origin, cost and so on.
To find out more about pascom’s VoIP Solution and how we upgrade business communications, please visit our website.