What features should your HPBX phone system have?
The days when businesses channeled all of their communications with clients, customers, partners and suppliers through traditional landlines are long gone. Nowadays, businesses have modernized their phone systems with cloud solutions. Even very small companies can benefit by making all their calls using a hosted service known as a hosted private branch exchange, or HPBX for short.
Several factors make hosted phone systems an increasingly important option to consider, beginning with the cost structure. By moving telephony to a managed cloud service, the service provider can now become responsible for the operation, maintenance and upgrade of the system. All items traditionally requiring the resources of an IT professional. This is of course dependent on the provider and the contracted agreement but is an available structure to take advantage of with HPBX. In addition, there isn’t a need for costly upfront phone investments and because services and features are managed in the cloud, businesses can scale and adapt with greater efficiency than with traditional phone systems. Hence why, in the US, forecasts indicate the move to cloud systems like HPBX have tripled between 2011 and 2016.
But what’s so great about these Phone systems? Here is a list of great features that businesses can benefit from:
Auto Attendant
When customers and clients call, the quality of response they receive is of the utmost importance, as this could be their initial encounter with your company, and first impressions count for a lot.
If you have a receptionist covering the phone, an HPBX with an auto attendant will enable them to answer and manage calls as they come in. It can also be customized to deliver personalized responses that differ depending on the time of day.
An auto attendant ensures you will never miss a call at busy times or after hours and provides a good experience for those getting in touch, as well as freeing up your receptionist to perform other duties.
Extension dialing with no long distance charges
Extension-to-extension dialing is a feature your businesses HPBX should definitely have. For a start, it enables your employees to call one another using just a our-digit extension, meaning they do not need to remember full phone numbers for other locations.
With HPBX, extension dialing also means no long distance charges when employees in different locations call one another - particularly useful if your business is based across multiple sites that are a long way from one another - saving money that can be reinvested elsewhere, which could prove significant if you have a small or medium-sized business.
Find Me, Follow Me
Extension numbers are more like email addresses with an HPBX, as your employees can take them with them wherever they go; by setting up Find Me, Follow Me, both colleagues and customers can contact them whether they are working from another desk in the office, on the move or even at home.
Find Me, Follow Me also means your business does not have to continuously make changes to employee contact details, as colleagues and customers will be able to contact them on the same number whether the employee in question has chosen to take calls via landline, mobile phone, laptop or desktop computer.
Voicemail-to-email
With mobile phones having made it the norm over the couple of decades, voicemail is hard to get excited about. However, voicemail takes on an extra dimension with HPBX. That is because with HPBX you can retrieve voicemail messages not just from phones, but also computers via an online portal and even from your email inbox, where voicemails can be sent as an audio file.
This means voicemails can be checked, saved, deleted and forwarded across any number of business or personal devices, usually using a simple point-and-click interface.
Hosted call center
With a hosted call center, you have total control of how customers and clients experience your business, as well as over productivity within your business. It enables you to set up work groups to ensure incoming calls reach the right person or team, and if calls are not answered within a set time they can be queued, sent to voicemail or redirected elsewhere. This means callers can reach the right person more quickly, and makes certain that calls are not missed.
Different hosted call center service levels are usually offered by HPBX providers, and depending on the one you choose, it will include call reporting, so you will be able to monitor the volume of calls being received by your work groups and how long callers are having to wait, providing you with accurate insight into both your customers’ experience and how efficiently your work groups are dealing with calls.
Hosted call centers allow even small businesses to provide a slick caller experience, and without having to invest in hardware, install software or pay maintenance fees. They also provide control and flexibility in the form of an online portal, which enables you to make changes to your service as demand dictates, whenever you want, no matter where you are.
