Many smaller businesses forgo a phone system because of cost. The following are some reasons and phone system features that should help prove the value of owning a phone system:
Sharing Phone Lines: When you have a phone system multiple users can share a number of phone lines, they don’t need to have their own individual phone line. Sharing lines helps reduce costs.
Auto Attendant: Auto attendant automatically answers incoming calls and provides callers with a menu of extensions and dial by name options. Most businesses can forgo the cost of employing a receptionist to answer and distribute incoming calls.
Automatic Call Distributor: If you’re operating a business that receives incoming customer service or sales calls, you probably want to be able distribute those calls equitably. Automatic Call Distributer can allot your calls in a number of different ways to assure that there is an equal allocation of the workload.
Follow Me: Your employees can be located and receive calls on a number of different devices, including wireless, portable, home phone or another extension in the business.
Voice Mail: Instead of paying a monthly fee for voice mail from the phone company, a business can purchase voice mail functionality with their phone system. Voice mail, as a feature of a phone system, allows for incoming calls to be directly forwarded to a user’s voice mail box, or a caller to hit a key to be transferred out of a mailbox to another extension or the receptionist.
Call Recording: Allows for the recording of all incoming and outgoing calls. This feature can prove valuable in the event of a lawsuit or customer dispute and for training purposes.
Call Presence: A receptionist or manager can determine the presence of an employee or colleague, which could improve customer response time.
Web Portals: Hosted phone systems come with web portals that give administrators to the ability to turn on and off call forwarding, change hunting sequences or move phone extensions, etc.