VoicePro 
How To Automate Your Business Phone System
for an Improved Company Image
You can purchase your own phone system or subscribe to a hosted PBX service. Here are the pros and cons.
An Automated Attendant is your front-end entry to your business. It shows your caller the direction and provides an image of your business to your caller. First impressions make a difference with how well your caller will appreciate what you can do for them.
If you are considering automating your phone system with a menu of options for your callers to select, it is important to keep in mind the structure of your company and the logical order of your departments and personnel. This will help organize the front end that your callers experience, as well as the way your personnel use the system for in-house and external calls.
What type of phone system should I use?
You can purchase your own phone system or subscribe to a hosted PBX service. PBX stands for Private Branch eXchange, which means your own phone system network. There are two methods that hosted PBX services use to connect you with your callers, and here are the considerations to help you decide.If you purchase your own equipment, you need to have the appropriate number of phone lines to support the call volume you expect to have. For example, if you have 10 extensions and half of your personnel are on outside phone calls all at once, then you will need five phone lines coming in from your phone company. Furthermore, if all five lines are in use, then the next caller will get a busy signal. The VoicePro is a good system for small offices that don't have a large volume. This is because they handle up to hour phone lines simultaneously.
Hosted PBX services, on the other hand, can handle a large volume of callers. So you never have to worry about busy signals. And you can combine multiple office locations under one PBX with one main phone number.
Hosted PBX services connect your callers to you by forwarding their calls to your office,
your cellular or your home phone numbers. One that we recommend is
iTeleCenter. They have three basic
plans. 100 minutes per month for under $9.97, 700 minutes for $24.97, and unlimited service for $49.00 a month.
You still need to have telephone lines to receive your calls. The service provides you with a toll-free or local number that your callers will dial. You can choose that number immediately right now. Or you can transfer your existing number to the service if you want to continue using it.
As an alternative, you can simply forward your main line to the toll-free number that rings into your hosted PBX service. But keep in mind, in that case, that you can't make any extensions ring back to that main line. It will just loop back to the PBX again.
Outbound calls are no problem. When you make outbound calls from your phones, you are not going through the service and therefore are not being charged by them for your outbound calls.
iTeleCenter gives you a free 14-day trial with up to 100 minutes included.
There are also hosted PBX services that use VoIP. That's Voice Over the Internet.
Phone Power is one of them.
All hosted PBX services include features such as on-line call logs in real-time, voice mail and fax mail to e-mail.
To use broadband PBX services you need to have a broadband Internet connection at each location where you plan to have extensions. It's done my attaching am adapter to your broadband modem. Then the telephone connects to the adapter instead of the phone company's phone jack. Broadband PBX services give you an advantage when you have locations out of the country because each extension is virtually a local extension no matter where they are. They can dial any number in the USA as a local call. And you can have local US phone numbers assigned to those extensions so that callers from the USA can call them without incurring international charges.
Installing Your Phone System
When using hosted services, no equipment needs to be purchased or installed. You can get right to work on designing and programming your phone system's automated attendant.If you have a large company, the cost of acquiring your own equipment can run high, not to mention the cost of installation and maintenance. This is when a hosted service may be a better choice. But you need to compare the cost of equipment to the cost of usage. If you have a lot of usage (talk time) then you may save in the long run when you buy your own phone system.
When you purchase a phone system, make sure you have a qualified installer who understands the equipment and your needs. Some systems require proprietary telephones and you will not be able to use existing phones. So check on this too, as it may increase your cost and make present equipment, such as fax machines, obsolete.
Smaller companies with up to four incoming lines and no more than 12 extensions can use simple but powerful systems such as the VoicePro, which supports existing regular telephones and fax machines. Wiring is easy, using standard phone jacks, and programming is straightforward...done through any touch-tone phone, with easy-to-follow instructions.
Proper Menu Structure
It is very important to present a clear and structured menu of options for your caller. Otherwise they will become frustrated if they can't accomplish what they called about in a short time with no hassle. You want to point your caller in the right direction. You don't want to give your caller confusing choices.When you design your phone menu (the list of options your caller hears to select departments, personnel or other information) a quick, orderly and easy-to-follow menu is mandatory. How do you go about planning the proper structure for your menu? The trick is to analyze what most of your callers are calling about. What are their needs and what do they want from you. Then include this in your phone menu options.
Another thing to consider is how well your particular customers know your company. Do they routinely contact specific personnel? Do they know the extensions? Do they know the last name of your personnel? Or do they just have a vague idea of what department they need to reach? Knowing this, you can design your phone menu to match the needs of your customers.
If you have many people calling with a common question, or needing information about your products, make that part of your phone menu...such as "Press 5 for information about our widgets."
If your customers need printed documents, then place these in your phone menu for easy access without waiting for your personnel to take the delivery info and send it out. Instead, for example..."Press 6 to receive an instant fax of our event schedule."
Your phone menu can have options that ring direct to departments or personnel. Or sometimes it may be beneficial to play a personal greeting before connecting, so your personnel can record important information to be played before the caller connects or leaves a message. Decide how each extension should work in this fashion to get the best use out of it. Proper use of extensions will also relieve your personnel of unnecessary phone conversations, which keeps them from completing their other tasks in time. This is a huge cost savings.
If your customers know your personnel by name, then it is helpful to offer a dial-by-name directory. The caller is instructed to dial the last name on the phone's keypad and the call is then connected. But you need to keep this up to date. If you let a person go or add others, you need to keep your phone directory up to date. Nothing could be worse than offering the option, and then letting the caller get a wrong or dead connection because your personnel is no longer working there. So just let me know when changes are required and I'll do it for you.
As a security measure, to be sure you don't lose important callers, it is helpful to always give a caller an option to get to an operator by pressing zero. Your operator may be your receptionist, or someone who can help callers who need guidance.
Phone Menu Standards
It is customary to place departments in the menu and assign extensions for personnel. However, based on your specific needs, you may place people in the menu. The difference is that when you have people in the menu, you are telling your caller to press 1 for Sally or 2 for John, etc. You are giving your caller an idea of the size of your company. This is important if your callers know whom they want and just don't know the extension number. But you can always allow Dial-By-Name, instead, by making that one of the menu choices.An automated attendant is also useful for allowing your callers to listen to important recorded information without needing to locate or wait for a live person. Common questions can be answered this way with Message-Only Mailboxes or Voice-On-Demand. These are great for providing business hours, directions to your office, listing job offerings, and answers to any other frequently asked questions.
Many people are in a rush and some callers don't have the patience to listen to automated phone systems. You don't want to lose these potential customers and you definitely don't want to frustrate them. The solution is to always provide menu option zero. Many people try that first if they are in a rush. The best is to let option zero ring to a live attendant, someone you have available to take and handle general calls. At the least, you can always make option zero go to a mailbox with a greeting offering a prompt return call. But then do it. Don't let a new customer, or anyone, wait to be called back.
When Personnel Are Unavailable
Your personnel may not always be available to take calls. After all, they are working. But it is just as important to take care of your customers or potential customers when they call. So when a call goes unanswered, quickly directing the caller to an appropriate voice mailbox, with instructions in a personal greeting, will help assure your caller that he or she will be taken care of in a timely manner.When your personnel need privacy to accomplish complex tasks, their extensions can be set to "Do-Not-Disturb" mode so that important callers don't just hear ringing or fall into "Voice Mail Jail." When an extension is set as Do-Not-Disturb, it will play an alternate greeting that the mailbox user had set up to handle the times when they are unavailable. This greeting is known as an "Unavailable Greeting." It gives instructions to your caller to be used while not available, such as to call a different specified extension, or to leave a message. In the latter case, the time when the caller can expect a return call should be specified in the greeting. The fact that the mailbox user can record both a regular greeting and an unavailable greeting makes it easy to switch to Do-Not-Disturb (or unavailable mode) and back again without the need to record a new greeting.
Obviously it is important that you do indeed follow up with all messages. So it is important that your personnel check their voice mailboxes on a routine basis or that they have a message notification method enabled.