How a business presents itself to its customers has to be the
single most important factor in its potential success. In days
gone by usually your first contact with new customers would have
been through your storefront or through word of mouth, passed on
by other satisfied customers. In today’s modern world,
telecommunication plays an ever increasing role in reaching
potential new customers.
In the last few years the rate at which computing and
telecommunication technology has advanced is simply astounding.
With this increased rate of technological development comes
falling prices for products that were once extremely expensive.
This allows smaller companies to take advantage of features and
services that were once only available to much larger and richer
organisations.
Once upon a time the telephone was the primary mode of
communication, whereas now existing and new customers are able
to reach you I a variety of different ways. This article will
give a brief overview of what is available and how you can use
it.
Voice: The Telephone When the internet was first becoming
popular, many experts predicted it would kill off the telephone.
Little did they know that in fact the exact opposite would
happen. The massive growth in online shopping has generated
massive amounts of customer phone enquiries, making the
telephone still the most important communication tool throughout
the world.
The internet is undoubtedly an impressive medium for publishing
information, but it is not a person. Some customers would rather
deal with a real life human being rather than with a machine.
There are many situations where a person is much better suited
to talk to customers than a machine is. The internet is not so
good at dealing with higher priced items. Customers enquiring
about these higher priced goods would in most cases prefer to
deal with a person, and that is where the telephone comes in
handy.
Phone Systems The selection and installation of an appropriate
phone system is probably one of the most important purchases a
business will ever make. A bad phone system will repel potential
customers; a good phone system will help them, guide them
through a process, make it appear as though they have a direct
line and most importantly make them feel like their business is
both wanted and appreciated.
Phone systems with advanced features like voice mail, ACD (call
queuing) and auto attendant, used to be extremely overpriced.
Because of the integration between computing and telecom
technology, prices have come down dramatically, although system
performance and features have actually increased. Now a market
that was once largely ignored by the telecoms industry and
vendors alike is a thriving sector with manufacturers constantly
improving and upgrading systems in a bid to attract your
business.
The new phone systems developed for this small office/home
office market sector can be split into three basic categories:
key systems, mini-PBX’s (including PC-based phone systems), and
LAN based phone systems.
Key Systems In the past few years some of the best developments
have been in low cost intercom style systems for small
businesses of typically 12 or fewer users. The biggest market
sector in the telecoms industry is undoubtedly that of small
businesses who have 10 or fewer users. It now seems almost
comical that this market was largely ignored in the past. New
KSU-Less systems allow even the smallest offices to enjoy more
advanced features that used to be only normally associated with
larger more expensive systems. These systems are extremely cost
effective and designed to make use of existing telecoms wiring.
The systems in this category that have benefited most from
development investment are hybrid corded and cordless phone
systems. These systems allow users to integrate cordless as well
as corded phones within intercom systems. Office based employees
would have corded phones whereas mobile employees such as
warehouse operatives could have cordless phones.
Mini-PBX’s Mini PBX systems are ideally suited to companies who
have more than 10 employees, but fewer than 100. Mini PBX’s can
give access to features like voice mail, automated attendant,
intercom, computer integration and call distribution.
There are 2 categories of mini-PBX phone systems, self contained
devices and computer based phone systems. There are a few
companies who make self contained systems. These systems are
easy to install and require very minimal computer and networking
knowledge. These systems provide basic features like voice mail,
auto attendant, intercom and a few others. It must be stressed
though that although these systems will suffice for most small
business applications, they cannot always provide all the
specialist features each individual business may require.
Mini-PBX’s that are computer based are generally speaking for
the more technically advanced users, and can offer a wider range
of features that can be customised to meet a businesses
requirements. A good example of advanced features is advanced
IVR (auto-attendant) scripts. This allows computerised phone
systems to route calls to specific groups based on how the
caller has responded to prompts. These computerised systems
allow even small companies to handle their calls in a way
normally associated with large call centres.
LAN (IP)-based phone systems Companies that have installed a
high speed local area network (LAN) for connecting their
computers can use this same network as the backbone for their
office phone system. Many phone system suppliers are edging
towards this approach, and there are already several LAN-based
phone systems which use a company’s Ethernet data network to
transport phone calls and data.
LAN-based phone systems were a very experimental idea. They had
unpredictable audio quality; neither did they offer features
that users of conventional phone systems take for granted. This
has all changed as phone system vendors have retooled the
business phone systems to use data networks as their backbone.
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