Advanced Phone System Features

What to Look for When Purchasing a Phone System

If your company is one that uses your phone system more extensively, HTP offers advanced features as an added benefit.Call convergence will allow your corporate phone system to handle not only phone calls, but also e-mail, voice mail, video conferences, faxes, instant messages, and other types of communication.

Computer telephony integration (CTI) will connect your computer to your phone system and offer a large range of applications. Employees can use contact management applications to make calls without dialing the number manually. This system reduces errors in dialing, but it also saves time by making the most important contacts available to employees with just a touch of the fingertip. Another example of a time-saving application is one-click dialing for an outbound call center. One more time-saving application is the system that uses caller ID to route incoming calls straight to specific employees, eliminating a third person routing system. With this function, callers' account information can be displayed automatically when an employee picks up the phone.

Most high-end corporate phone systems are CTI-ready, but you should always research to make sure that the telephony integration application you desire for your company will be compatible with your existing software.
For businesses with a high volume of calls, automatic call distribution (ACD) can increase productivity by managing incoming calls and reducing call answer times. In addition, it tracks per-call and per-employee statistics, improving responsiveness by your call center. Most companies with a small volume of calls will not benefit much from ACD, however.

Finally, Automatic call forwarding, also known as “follow me anywhere,” routes incoming calls to where employees are, no matter if they're at the office, at home, or on location. This keeps callers from having to make multiple calls, and your employees won't have to manage overflowing voicemail boxes.