Top Ten most popular Business Phone System Features
There are so many different business telephone systems available all with a variety of features. Raw have created our top ten business phone system features based on requests from our customers across a diverse range of industries.
Our list of business telephone system features and how they work, should provide you with an excellent starting point to help you discover which business telephone system features are relevant to you.
Ultimately, it will help you to set up your business phone system in the best way for your business and ensure you get exactly the business telephone features and the benefits they bring to your operation.
1. Time of Day Routing
Out of all business telephone system features, this is arguably the most important and can have the biggest impact on your business. This planning tool allows you to choose when, how and where your telephone number rings, when you receive a call.
Many businesses now operate varied business hours to accommodate customers. Time of day routing allows you to plan the route of your incoming call traffic and automatically switch between users at different times of the day.
2. Voicemail (including voicemail to email)
Just like your mobile phone voicemail, business telephone system voicemail allows callers to tell you exactly what they need even when they are closed or unable to answer. Voicemail saves unnecessary returning of calls and allows you to prioritise call-backs.
With the addition of voicemail to email, this means you can receive your messages and a notification of a new voicemail, straight to your smartphone. Allowing you to access your voicemail messages when you choose, means you will have no more missed messages.
3. Auto Attendant (IVR)
An automated attendant (AA) or IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is one of the business telephone system features that you will either love or hate.
AA’s allow you to transfer incoming calls to various extensions or departments specified by your caller without the intervention of a human operator.
An AA or IVR may also be known as a virtual receptionist and used correctly can save time for your employees and customers, allowing them to speak with who they need faster.
4. Transferring of Calls
This may seem obvious out of all our business telephone system features but this is normally the fundamental reason smaller businesses upgrade to a phone system.
If you are looking to transfer calls around your office, transfer a call directly to a member of staff’s mobile phone or even transfer to a remote worker’s mobile application, then these features and multiple telephone lines are a must.
5. Wireless (DECT or cordless)
Sounds simple, but adding DECT into your business telephone system can redefine the way you use your phone system.
This is especially true for customers with staff constantly on the move or customers with warehousing or isolated areas that can become cost prohibitive for office phone cabling.
6. Desktop/Mobile Application.
On our list of business telephone system features, the desktop and mobile application feature is one of the newest, but is a real productivity enabler.
The application allows you to make and receive calls from your laptop, smartphone, or tablet, whilst still displaying your main company telephone number to your customers.
This enables remote working, incorporating field engineers or site office into one business telephone system.
7. Music on Hold and Welcome Greetings
Professional audio branding, which includes On Hold Marketing Messages, Telephone System Messages and Call Centre Audio, creates the right first impression when customers call your company.
Customers, and more importantly potential customers, will judge your business on how you handle their call, and this includes what they hear while On Hold. Playing horrible tinny music, subjecting them to beeps or silence just isn’t the thing to do.
8. Call Queuing
The queueing allows an incoming call to be answered, played a welcome greeting, and then placed on hold without a human handling the enquiry.
Call queues are often used in call centres, but can also be used in normal office environments when there is not enough staff to handle the number of incoming calls.
While in the call queue, it is possible to play the caller’s pre-recorded music or messages.
9. Call Recording
Business telephone system features can also be used as a cost-effective way of training and developing your staff. The simple ability to playback and dissect a call together, can significantly improve your customer’s experience.
Staff can hear exactly how they sound and respond to callers. This is one of the most effective training exercises you can do and is a brilliant subject matter for staff development.
Call recording is also great for storing and being able to replay calls at a later stage. This works well for many industries or certain departments within the organisation.
Please note that it is illegal to record a caller without them knowing. This is why you will often hear messages saying, “please note that this call may be recorded for training purposes”.
10. Self-Administration Portal
Previously, any changes that you needed to make to your business telephone system features, would have had to done by getting in touch with your business phone system maintainer.
Many business telephone systems now have web interfaces that allow technicians to make adds, moves and changes to the business telephone system features. Many telecom companies don’t tell you about this because they charge for programming changes and want to continue to profit from you for many years to come.
At Raw, we believe that empowering users with our technology and allowing them to control their business telephone system, make their own experience much more rewarding.
We also have our technical support team who are available to make any re-programming changes for our customers who don’t want self-administration at competitive rates.
If you would like to book some time to discuss any of these Business Telephone System Features in more detail, please get in touch. Either complete our short solution finder or call us on 0345 121 0206 or email hello@rawcom.co.uk