By George Bardissi, President Bardissi Enterprises
Are you ready for the next generation phone system? As many industries have already discovered, the phone industry has gone networked based. What do I mean by that? I mean that the connection between computer networks and telephones has been bridged! So what do you need to know?
First, all of the features that a regular PBX analog system has are already integrated in a network based phone system. These features include but are not limited to multiple phones with individual extensions, the ability to transfer calls from one phone to another, voicemail, auto attendants, paging and so on. Some people might ask what more could you want out of a phone system? Well, let’s find out.
Network based phones systems run off of a technology called VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). Many people have probably heard of this term before. This technology is very powerful and here is why. Some of the added functionality of a network based VOIP system takes a phone system to a whole new level to bring you features such as the following:
You can gain greater mobility by being able to use your mobile phone as an extension. Wait, what does that mean? It means exactly what I said above; imagine someone calling into your company line and dialing your extension. That call will get forwarded right to your cell phone. Now on top of that, what if you need to transfer that person while on a call, on your cell phone, to someone else in your organization? Your cell phone, while receiving calls from your office phone system, acts like a regular phone sitting on your desk in the office… meaning you have the functionality to transfer calls to someone else in the office by just hitting a few keys on your cell phone!
By George Bardissi, President Bardissi Enterprises
Are you ready for the next generation phone system? As many industries have already discovered, the phone industry has gone networked based. What do I mean by that? I mean that the connection between computer networks and telephones has been bridged! So what do you need to know?
First, all of the features that a regular PBX analog system has are already integrated in a network based phone system. These features include but are not limited to multiple phones with individual extensions, the ability to transfer calls from one phone to another, voicemail, auto attendants, paging and so on. Some people might ask what more could you want out of a phone system? Well, let’s find out.
Network based phones systems run off of a technology called VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). Many people have probably heard of this term before. This technology is very powerful and here is why. Some of the added functionality of a network based VOIP system takes a phone system to a whole new level to bring you features such as the following:
You can gain greater mobility by being able to use your mobile phone as an extension. Wait, what does that mean? It means exactly what I said above; imagine someone calling into your company line and dialing your extension. That call will get forwarded right to your cell phone. Now on top of that, what if you need to transfer that person while on a call, on your cell phone, to someone else in your organization? Your cell phone, while receiving calls from your office phone system, acts like a regular phone sitting on your desk in the office… meaning you have the functionality to transfer calls to someone else in the office by just hitting a few keys on your cell phone!
Let’s say someone calls your office and leaves you a voicemail on your company line. What happens if you’re out on the road all day? Some people call the office multiple times a day to check their voicemail. Well, with network based phone systems, you can have the system send an email to you with the voicemail attached to it so that you can have your email and your voicemail all in one spot!
What else can I get from a network digital phone system? Well what if I have employees working out of home offices or individual locations? No problem! You can take a handset and program it to connect to your office phone system over the Internet. Not only will all calls to and from that phone, in a remote location to the office, be free but due to the VOIP technology, that person in the remote location will be able to accept incoming calls and make outgoing calls from that phone as if they were sitting in your office while the person on the other end of the line won’t know the difference!
I am not even done yet! Let’s say you have multiple offices with several employees across different areas. If you install a phone system in each office you can interconnect each phone system and they will work seamlessly with each other over the internet. The entire system will simulate one large phone system in which all the phones will work with each other! Ok what does that mean? Let’s say you have an office in Philadelphia and another office in New York both with a networked phone system. You could simply press any extension number from either office and the system would talk to each phone as if the phone where in one location!
Many of these systems also give you an on screen display on your pc on top of your actual phone that gives you even greater call functionality such as recording any phone call you may be on at any particular moment! You could even have the system automatically record all phone calls going in and out of your phone system. Even better, you have the ability to have detailed call statistics and reports from your system at any time! These features are usually automatically built into your system at a fraction of the price it would be to add it to a traditional analog PBX phone system.
There are two more features definitely worth talking about. The ability to monitor phone calls is very important for many companies in order to analyze the customer experience and interaction with their company. Networked based phone systems will give a supervisor the ability to listen to any phone call without any party knowing, coach an employee during a live phone call which means a supervisor could say something to an employee on the phone with a client without the client hearing anything, or barge into a phone call that may have gotten out of hand so that both parties on the phone could hear what’s going on!
The last feature that I felt was worth talking about was the ability to conference call! Have you ever had to have more than 3 people in a conference call but that was the most your regular phone allowed for? Network based phone systems can come with the ability to have multiple party conference calling. Most times you would have to distribute a conference code and even a conference password so your client could call a number and conference in with you. With some digital phone systems you have that ability already to conference anywhere from 12 to 30 people, depending on your system, without having to pay for another service to provide the ability for you to do so with the same conference code technology!
It is amazing where technology is going and how far things have advanced. I must say that computer and network technology has really given many industries solutions and avenues to grow well past their previous landmarks and create new and exciting functionality which can be added to existing business network solutions currently on the market. In this particular case, network technology has taken something that was very basic and expensive and provided a cost effective and robust solution. If your company is in the market for a phone system I would highly recommend looking past analog and going straight to a networked VOIP based system.