Having a small business phone system is one thing – getting the best out of it is something quite different and this is where you can take advantage of our expertise in getting the right business telecoms solution for you..
At its most basic, a business phone system could be one line with one or more handsets connected to it, coming into your office over what’s called the PSTN (public switched telephone network) but few businesses today could operate on such a simple system.
Fortunately, office telephone systems are available that can incrementally grow the level of sophistication provided as your business grows and evolves.
Voicemail
Little is more frustrating to a customer than a phone ringing out unanswered or constantly engaged. Using an answering and voicemail service could make the difference between securing and losing a client.
Call routing systems
You may happen to be out of the office but want to pick up calls on your mobile. Your office telephony system can automatically be set-up to re-route calls to your normal office number so that they ring on your portable.
Conferencing
Travel is expensive, time consuming and not particularly environmentally friendly. Yet getting several geographically dispersed parties together for a meeting is frequently necessary.
The small business phone system can help reduce the number of journeys to meetings by using conferencing – ie. linking several parties together on the one call.
If you have access to some form of high-speed internet or phone connection, conference calling can also include video links so that all parties can see each other.
Selection systems
If you have a larger volume of inward calls, the sheer time spent asking each caller for their customer number, order number and personal details, can be very time-consuming and ultimately tedious for your staff.
It is possible to use a small business phone system that collects this information from your customers directly through keypad selections once their call has been automatically answered. This can then link directly to your PC systems so that your staff can see the customer’s information automatically appear on their screen as they pick up the call.
VOIP
The days of seeing staff desperately trying to balance a handset between their cheek and shoulder while they tapped into their PC, should have disappeared with the arrival of headsets.
Yet PCs and telephones have converged ever closer. VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) now means that even a small business telecoms system is capable of interfacing with the internet and receiving or making calls through that route as opposed to the PSTN.
This may result in call cost reductions and allow integration between phone and information sending services such as electronic client billing etc.
Sophistication doesn’t equal high cost
The small business phone system today isn’t always easy to distinguish from the systems operated by the very large corporate world. They offer a power, flexibility and capacity that would have been undreamt of by the small businesses of even a few years ago – and typically at an affordable price!
