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Basic Telephone System Features Print E-mail

                   Basic Telephone Handset Features

Business telephone systems can be equipped with literally hundreds of features for purposes such as switching calls and directing traffic.
Market research indicates that most companies will only use 5 to 10 percent of their telephone features. Instead of comparing system features on a one-to-one basis, you should examine how your phone system will be used in your organisation. To avoid wasting time trawling through the hundreds of features available, limit your search and evaluation to only those options that will improve efficiency and work-flow for your business.

All systems have the absolute core features of call hold, transfer, pickup and paging through the phone or external speakers. However, the user boundaries for these features does vary from system to system so when you have narrowed your selection to two or three vendors, make sure you have a live demonstration of the operation of these and other features you require.


Buyers Guide Tip: Bring a Heavy User
Bring along a heavy telephone user from the office to demonstrations and vendor visits when researching, as they can often highlight poor user functionality that is evident on some telephone systems.



Some of the other features that are standard in many systems and can be of great value to many organisations include:

Conferencing

Conferencing holds obvious benefits for many businesses, can minimise travel times for meetings and are invaluable to international businesses. Features do vary widely, and it's important to consider how often your staff need to make conference calls, as well as how many different people need to call in. If the conferencing features you need aren't readily available in a system, there are other options for conducting teleconferences that you can purchase separately. Ask your dealer.

Direct InDial

The majority of business calls a company will take are from people it deal with regularly. InDial uses ISDN technology to allow individual staff to have their own dedicated number so that these calls can be made direct to their extension without having to go via reception - saving valuable time as well as energy. In conjunction with voice mail, in dial provides significant benefits to many businesses.

Least Cost Routing (LCR)

This feature automatically selects the most cost effective outside line for any number dialed from your office. For instance to minimize your phone bill, you may have all your long distance calls with Optus, all calls to mobiles with Primus and international calls with another network provider. LCR will automatically pick the correct (lowest cost) carrier for each call type.

Auto-attendant

An auto-attendant is the recorded message that answers your phones and instructs callers how to reach the person or department they are looking for. If you have a high volume of calls or provide after hours support, this may be important - or you may value having a real person answer every call. If auto-attendant is relevant to your business, look closely at your needs as functionality varies significantly between products.

Music-on-hold

Music-on-hold is fairly self-explanatory - in most systems you have internal music source(s) or simply plug in a source of music to your system. Find out more in our Message On Hold Buyer's Guide.

Night/Holiday Service

This feature automatically assigns a different ringing plan for after hours, weekends or holidays. This allows for options such as directing calls to a courtesy message that your business only operates during business hours. Alternatively, if you provide 24x7 support, calls can be automatically screened and directed to service technicians as required.

Ring Groups

Many organisations have a single number for groups such as accounts, sales or service. This feature allows calls to these organisational groups to be set up with different ring options for the phones within a group. For instance, all phones could ring or one phone could ring 3 times and if it is not answered the next nominated phone in the group could ring and so on.

Tracking Calls (SMDR)

SMDR or Station Message Detail Recorder can provide details of all telephone calls, both internally and externally, made from every phone connected to the system. When used with Call Accounting software, It provides a tool to analyse the calling patterns within your company to identify operational inefficiencies and to reduce overall call costs.

Toll Barring/Class of Service

With this feature it is possible to limit access to international, long distance or mobile calls to staff who require such access as part of their jobs. If class of service is important, have a good understanding of what your requirements are as some products provide more sophisticated implementations than others.

Speed Dial Directory

All systems have the capability to store hundreds of frequently used numbers. Most products allow you to associate an alphanumeric name with the number so you can easily find using dial by name directory service. With caller ID, some telephone systems can display the name of the calling party if their number is in the speed dial directory. A feature to look for is whether the phone system allows you to import your phone directory from applications like Excel as this can save a lot of time in both set up and management of your speed dial numbers.


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