The humble office phone has evolved considerably since its early days as a clunky box with extension switching, caller ID, and the dreaded Hold button. Today’s breed of advanced business telephones are feature-rich units of high-end technology, able to exploit the speed and data-handling capabilities of the fastest broadband internet connections. With their office integration and automation capabilities, they’ve become valued members of a business organization, in their own right.
Here are some tips on getting the most out of these contemporary marvels, to enhance the operations of your business and its employees.
Use Mobility And Presence
Part of the beauty of IP-based telephony is the extension of business telecoms system functionality to users of mobile phones. As long as they have the relevant VoIP apps installed, your traveling staff, service personnel, remote, home-based and mobile workers can gain access to all the features of your office telecommunications suite.
This includes “Find and Follow” redirect features like twinning – which enables users to have all calls coming in to their extension ring simultaneously on their office and mobile phones. Group directory and internal search, click to dial and presence panels can ensure that workers in the field have access to their essential contacts and a real-time awareness of whether or not their colleagues are available to accept calls.
Integrate With Your Business Applications
Having voice and data on the same system enables the integration of telephony with office productivity features, information and document-handling and collaboration tools. Integrating your phone system with other business streams can enhance the experience of your customers while improving the efficiency of your team.
Use Unified Messaging
Giving your workers the option to choose between different forms of messaging (email, fax, voice mail, etc.) delivered to their inboxes allows them to efficiently and conveniently share and manage the information they receive.
Centralize Administration
The web-based administrative console associated with your IP telephony account allows your management team to have oversight on the activities of your workers, and to scale and provision your lines and channels for the telecoms system as a whole.
For individual workers, allowing some degree of freedom with this console to configure their preferred settings (resetting passwords, changing routing options etc.) gives them the flexibility to fine-tune their working environment without having to wait for IT to honor support tickets or Help desk requests.