With today’s telephony infrastructure and the system changing along with the evolving technology, businesses and organizations find the need to adapt and switch to a more advanced telephone system. The latest we have today supports both VoIP and mobile, which makes business operations relatively easier, smoother and much faster.
However, the right features of a phone system greatly matters in achieving your business’ full potential. Below, we outline some of the top features you should look for when considering of switching to IP PBX system.
1. Call Transfer
Today’s phone systems come with real-time call transferring feature that makes it possible for co-workers and clients to find you on your mobile device or other available contact devices. This feature will let you customize the settings to help you ring all your devices simultaneously or with your own choice of sequence. If you can’t be reached on all devices, your phone system will automatically direct the caller to your voicemail.
2. Call Waiting
When you’re on the phone, call waiting will discreetly notify you in the background that there’s an additional incoming call. This feature will let you decide on the action to execute for the additional caller—whether have someone else to take the call, put the caller on hold or send the second caller to your voicemail while you finish your current conversation.
3. Do Not Disturb
This feature is pretty self-explanatory. It simply allows you to stop receiving incoming calls for a certain amount of time, which is especially useful when on a meeting or doing something really important.
4. Call Conferencing
The ability to conduct video or voice meetings with multiple employees or clients across different locations is a defining feature of a modern management that’s facilitated by a reliable phone system with call conferencing capabilities. This will show your company’s professionalism and your business’ flexibility when it comes to operational matters. These calls can be conducted through softphone apps on a PC or via table-top IP phone units.
5. Voicemail Transcription
Voicemail transcription is among the modern features in business IP PBX systems. It allows you to transcribe voice messages into SMS and send it to you via e-mail. It helps eliminate waste of time trying to catch up every instruction stated through voicemail. Another advantage, since transcribed voicemail is sent to your e-mail, you can respond to the message from any of your mobile devices.
6. Auto-Attendant
An auto-attendant is the core of a business phone system. It’s the part of the call that greets the callers, provides them with list of options and routes to direct them to the correct department or extension depending on the option they key in with the phone keypad. Auto-attendants become a necessity even with the smallest of organizations, particularly those that do not have employees dedicated for reception roles.
7. Record Features
Call recording is another important feature for businesses. When you’re able to record calls, you can improve customer retention and satisfaction. This feature creates an audio file that you can retrieve afterwards from the system server and have it archived, shared or reviewed.
8. Security
Security is a requirement for all businesses, big or small. This is because clients and potential business partners always want to transact with safe and secured environment, limiting hackers and malicious people from accessing critical information. Many business phone systems today are cloud-based, meaning company data is safe as these systems are equipped with firewalls.
9. Call Logging and Analytics
Most IP PBX systems only provide basic call logging feature, keeping a record of all incoming and outgoing calls, as well as the date, time and duration of every call. However, for a more reliable system, your PBX system should have the ability to sort call logs by type and duration and be able to download call logs into an excel spreadsheet for more detailed recording.
10. Control Over Active Calls
This control feature lets supervisors and managers to listen in on calls, give suggestions to employees especially trainees and join in on an on-going call. With this feature, it’s more convenient for administrators to monitor employee performances, making it easier to achieve customer satisfaction.
Running a business and ensuring that your business operation runs smoothly can be a real challenge. However, investing in an IP PBX system equipped with some of the outlined features, it should make your work easier and more manageable.