Do We Need A Phone System ?
We are starting a sales/customer service office that will have appx 10 people on the telephone all day. Im sure we will get a phone system but right now with our budget it would really be nice if we could start without one and use the money elsewhere.
I have looked at lots of used systems and they can be pretty confusing. What specs should we look for in what we need? amount of lines etc. We would need the following options for sure
1. All 10 people to take inbound and make outbound calls at the same time.
2. Be able to transfer anywhere in the office.
3. Ring at all stations when a call comes in so everyone has a fair chance to answer. Not just 1 line getting all calls and then rolling over to next in line.
4. to lose the least amount of calls possible if all 10 agents on on phone and calls keep coming in…maybe an option to hold till someones available….
Someone also told us that just go through the phone company and they will assign 1 number for all lines and a "hunting" for calls to come in…..would that work? would we at least be able to transfer a call to someone else in the office? will all phones ring at once?
Also what’s the rule to follow ….i have seen some phone systems with 6 lines, 8 lines, etc…but it seems you can run more than 1 phone on each….or will that limit the amount calls at the same time to each line. Wow…i think i just confused myself…
All help would be appreciated…
Filed under: Business Phone Systems
You def. need a phone system to handle your calls…
you are going to have 10 agents making calls, so you will likely want something with at least 10 stations, if you expect that they will all be on the line at the same time, you need to determine what your inbound calling volume is going to be. I would recommend at least 15-20 phone lines, if not more, I do not know what call volume you expect to receive. Lets not forget at least 1 fax line.
You can save some costs by using an IP phone system.
you should subscribe to call hunting for your phone lines, so that the incoming calls will roll over to the next available line, when lines are in use.
check your local phone book, or check around with other business in the area that you plan to operate in so that you can set up an appointment with a phone system vendor, who will be able to assist you in developing a solution that will fit your needs…
if you have ten lines the savings on having a system may be more than what cost of the systems are. A Phone system Profesional will have a program where it calculates the cost of the system and your phone bills. I like Siemens systems they work well and they have easy to plug in modules to add special features. acually most systems do. panasonic has a system that allows you to plug in a camera too. watch your employees from hawaii if you like. look for a used system. you should be able to find one with all the businesses closing right now. dont have money right now? they can work out a lease to buy or …you can call your phone provider (sbc), and get a
Centrex (central office exchange service) is a service from local telephone companies in the United States in which up-to-date phone facilities at the phone company’s central (local) office are offered to business users so that they don’t need to purchase their own facilities. The Centrex service effectively partitions part of its own centralized capabilities among its business customers. The customer is spared the expense of having to keep up with fast-moving technology changes (for example, having to continually update their private branch exchange infrastructure) and the phone company has a new set of services to sell.
In many cases, Centrex has now replaced the private branch exchange. Effectively, the central office has become a huge branch exchange for all of its local customers. In most cases, Centrex (which is sold by different names in different localities) provides customers with as much if not more control over the services they have than PBX did. In some cases, the phone company places Centrex equipment on the customer premises.
Typical Centrex service includes direct inward dialing (DID), sharing of the same system among multiple company locations, and self-managed line allocation and cost-accounting monitoring.
In your shoes I would definitely not invest in a phone system. I would sign up with a hosted or virtual phone service. Lines can be added or disconnected as business conditions change. You pay for what you use. There is no capex or locks in’s to technology. Virtual phone services commonly provide features and services that premise based solutions don’t. Even better, let someone else take responsibility for maintaining the service. Once the operation has been going for a year or 2 you can review again, but typically you can expect to save heaps by using hosted services.