Choosing a telephone system is often a nightmare for many businesses. There are so many features; so many manufacturers, so many vendors and outlets from which to purchase equipment and related services! How do you decide what to do and not make a mistake?
This guide should help. For your convenience, we have italicized features that are identified in this guide.
1. Take a look at the big picture:
The communications in your office consists of a number of things all of which need to work well and in concert together for you to have an effective communications infrastructure (CI) for your office. Those things include:
– Your local and long distance phone service – standard or Voice over IP (VOIP)
– Your Internet service
– Your cell phone service and equipment
– Your computer network with special attention to your email program (s)
– Your telephone system
Your goals here are:
- To have a communications infrastructure (CI) that will allow your office to operate as smoothly as possible. For many businesses personnel costs are the number one expense. Making sure your CI is set up to maximize efforts of the personnel associated with those costs are essential to your company’s bottom line!
- To have a communications infrastructure that will allow you to give the best possible service to your clients and prospective clients. In today’s very competitive world only organizations with excellent service stay at the top. Others either languish behind or fade way.
1a. After reviewing all of the below make up a flow chart:
Whether you’re a two line start up company or a one hundred line company that’s “been around since the Pilgrims arrived” a flow chart that incorporates all of the elements of your communications infrastructure will be a big help! Once you get a visual sense of how all of your communications flow in, out and through your business, it will go a long way toward helping you make the best decisions for what elements you need to have in your communications infrastructure and how you need them to make them work well for you.
2. Trust yourself!
Although you may not realize it and even if you’ve never shopped for a telephone system or any other part of your communications infrastructure before, you already know the things you need from that infrastructure including things your telephone system must do to allow your office to run smoothly and cost effectively. After all it’s your company! All you have to do is start putting those things on paper, organize them and go from there.
3. What you want to happen when a call comes into your office?
Do you want just one person to answer the call (such as a receptionist or operator), or anyone of several people? Or, do you want the telephone system to answer it (Automated Attendant)? If no one picks up the call immediately (within 4 rings is the generally accepted standard), then what do you want to happen? Do you want another part of the office to be alerted (Delayed Ringing), or do you wish to have the system pick it up? (Automated Attendant again)?
4. How do you plan to get the caller to where he/she needs to go?
Here are some options:
– Quickly have the call transferred to the correct extension
– Have the call handled by an operator who can then determine whether the person is at their desk and available to take the call (Voice Intercom) or page the person (paging)
– Do you want the option to have calls screened via automation or passed onto voice mail (Automated Attendant/Voice Mail)? Important note: During normal business hours a call should never be manually transferred to voice mail without asking the callers permission first!
– Transfer the call to their cell phone (external call transfer – usually a local or VOIP carrier feature)
5. What about interoffice communications?
Do you have areas where you may not have a specific person assigned but it would help improve productivity and quality of service by having a telephone (utility phone or utility station). One idea that we have found works well is to have one or more group cordless phones. A group cordless phone is one that’s not assigned to a specific person but is there for anyone to use who at for a while needs to stay connected to the communications infrastructure while moving around the office
5a. Warehouses storage areas, outside smoking areas:
Paging, group cordless phones or both
5b. Lunch, research, and waiting areas:
Paging, utility phone, or both
5c. Off-site (external) transfers:
Transferring calls to other offices, stores or staff working from their homes: Voice over IP (VOIP)
6. What do you want your callers to hear when you put them on hold?
Your options include nothing, a message system (Message, CD or MP3 on hold) or music Note: In the United States it is illegal to rebroadcast music with out a license. This means that hooking up a radio or stereo to you phone system is illegal. Likewise taking your favorite singers CD and tossing it onto a CD player attached to you phone system is also illegal. There are services out there that for a monthly fee will allow you to rebroadcast music that they have licensed. Our best recommendation is to consider an MP3 on hold. There easy to install, affordable, easy to make changes to whatever you want them to play and they almost never break!
7. Voice mail tips:
– Always make sure your auto attendant greeting includes your hours of operation
– Avoid voice mail jail! Make sure there is always a way for callers to reach a live person during normal business hours – usually by hitting zero.
– On individual voicemail greetings give a specific time frame (ideally no more than 2 business hours) within which they can expect a return call. Greetings that end with “I’ll return your call as soon as possible” or similar instead of indicating you’ll return their call promptly have come instead to mean” I’ll get back to you whenever I feel like it – if at all”. Such a message can easily be interpreted as a non commitment to excellence in service.
– Include an email address in all personal greetings.
– Include an alternative person contact in personal greetings (such as Sue at ext. 305)
– Activate the option to transfer the call to a cell phone or include your cell phone number.
– Message alerts by email: Set up voice mail notification to your email
8. What you would like to occur when you make an outgoing call?
Do you want:
– All of your staff to have access to all telephone lines, or
– Certain individuals allowed access to some lines but not others (Flexible Line Assignment)?
– Do you want ALL of your staff to be able to make calls anywhere or would you like to have limits on calling outside the office for some employees (Toll Restriction)? This feature, in particular, is not only a question of controlling long distance costs but one of improving productivity.
– Are you interested in giving individual staff members the capability of speaking on the phone without lifting the handset (Hands-free speakerphone)?
– Would a headset or cordless headset be useful to any of your people?
You may also want to track these calls for, among other things:
– billing purposes (attorneys for instance bill for the time they spend on the phone),
– individual productivity (how much time do employees spend on business calls versus personal ones )
– Or to asses the progress of a given marketing campaign.
If the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, you may want to consider adding a “Call Accounting System” to your telephone system or in conjunction with your computer network.
9. What type of phone does each person in your office need?
In item #7, we talk about considering the use of the “hands-free feature” and the use of headsets. Please keep in mind that the less sophisticated the phone, the less it costs. Consider the possibility of a phone system that allows you to save money by combining single line (residential) type phones along with full featured sets. Persons in your office who either take very few incoming calls or who (separately) make nothing but outgoing calls are very good candidates for “single lines phones. These phones will still have access to all of the lines in your phone system they just don’t have multiple line appearances and other features. They also cost less!
8a. Cordless phones:
There are instances where a given staff member may be always on the move and rarely at his or her desk. Cordless phones allow one to make or take calls anytime no matter where they are in the office. This is often especially beneficial for medical professionals who spend a lot of their time going from room to room or warehouse mangers that spend all of their time moving about the warehouse.
9. T-1’s, Voice over IP local phone carriers etc.
Here good tips to start with:
– Where are my customers calling from? Locally, regionally, nationally internationally. If it’s a combination of any of the above break down your calls by percentage. (50% local 40% national 10% international)
– Where do I expect or would like them to be in the next 12 months, 18 months, or 3 years?
– Do I need a toll free number? How about multiple tool free numbers?
– Where are my suppliers? These are the folks that bring to you the raw materials from and through which you run your business.
– Is caller ID important to my business?
– Do I have now or will I have in the near future staff – including oneself that may want to at some time work from their home or a remote location
– Do I have multiple locations or do I plan to in the next 12 months, 18 months, or 3 years?
– Where are my outgoing calls to?
– Do I have staff whose duties often or even just occasionally take them outside the office?
10. Other miscellaneous capabilities that can really increase productivity and enhance customer service include:
– Phone features such as speed dial, auto redial, one touch intercom buttons and display capabilities
– Caller ID Integration with your database program. This allows a caller to instantly see a given customers client profile to appear on the staff persons computer screen the moment they pick up the call.
11. Voice over IP telephone system or conventional phone system?
Chances are very good that if you have gone through all of the above you’re already leaning towards one way or the other. Here are some other things to add into your decision making process:
– In general Voice over IP (VOIP) is the wave of the future that’s here now. In our estimation most business will be switched over to it one way or the other by 2010. Why? Because it’s an easier and more effective way to merge the use of computer networks, cell phones and telephone systems.
– Checking your current contract with local phone service carrier is key. Some will force you to stay with your current type of conventional service until your contact expires which in some cases could be several years
– If you’re stuck in a contract for conventional telephone service you can invest in a VOIP phone system that can use your conventional lines right now and then switch to VOIP lines when you current local contract expires
– Standard telephone systems can use VOIP service via the use of adapters but you lose some its VOIP’s best features including the ability to plug your office phone in anywhere outside the office (where there is high speed internet) and use it the exact same way as you do in the office
– Conventional phone systems are great if you are on a very tight budget, you don’t want to lease a phone system and you just want something to hold you over for the next several years until you can dedicate greater financial resources to it. They also can be worth the investment if you feel you really are just going to need extremely basic capabilities now and in the foreseeable future
12. New or Used Refurbished equipment? If you have decided upon a Voice over IP telephone system the only option as this time is new but don’t be afraid to ask about refurbished. Any part of you investment that you can make using refurbished equipment will save you money. If you are buying a conventional phones system you’ll get great quality by considering used/refurbished and it will help your bottom line
Finally:
As far as manufacturers go, you’ll find below a list of manufacturers we recommend. While we can help you with products made by just about anyone, these are the manufacturers whose products we feel stand up to the demands of the marketplace.
List of Recommended Manufacturers
Allworx, Avaya – formerly AT&T/Lucent (Partner, Merlin Legend and Magix), Northern Telecom (Norstar), NEC/TIE/Nitsuko, Mitel Toshiba (DK products only –not CTS), Telrad, Comdial, Panasonic, and Vodavi.
Still have questions? Give us a call at 813-276-1666 and let one of our professionals assist you!
© Copyright 2007 JHB Telephony Services Inc. www.jhbtele.com