Virtutel

Phone systems are the lifeblood of our businesses.  Without a good telecommunications infrastructure in place, our businesses wouldn’t thrive.  Basically, if you have telephones that don’t work, you have a dysfunctional business.  A good phone system doesn’t have to be expensive.  Just to give you an idea..

Let’s say you needed 10 telephones in your office with Voicemail, IVR, Follow-Me, Advanced Call Routing, etc.  We could put together the following phone system for you at a cost that’s extremely competitive.  Let’s talk equipment.

The “brains” of the phone system, otherwise known  as the actually PBX itself can be had for $1000-1500.00 depending on what kind of line configuration you have.  If you don’t know what kind of line configuration you have, we’ll assume 4 telephone lines (Plain Old Telephone System) it’s actually called “POTS” in telephone geek speak.  This system will be able to do anything the other more expensive phone systems on the market do.  How is this possible?  We use an open-source technology called, “Asterisk”.  This technology currently runs the telephone systems of many telecom companies, large hotels, hospitals, universities, and even consumer offerings from companies such as Vonage, Cablevision’s Optimum Voice Offering (Triple Play), and many others too numerous to list.  These companies basically implement an Asterisk-based phone system at their data-centers and sell you an “extension” on their system.  So the question begs, “Why can’t I get one myself?”  The answer is, you can.  Virtutel offers Asterisk-based phone systems and due to the nature of the license (free), we’re able to pass those savings on to you directly.

So basically, you’re looking at: $1000.00 for the pbx with unlimited voicemail time and unlimited voicemail boxes, unlimited extensions, IVR (Voice Menus), Call Directories, Queues (Call Center Functionality otherwise known as, “Please wait and the next  available agent will be with you”, Ring Groups, Find-Me/Follow-Me, Voicemail to Email, Voicemail by Web, etc..  You get the idea.  Anything you could possible want in a phone system is available to you!

Let’s talk about phones now shall we?  Depending on how “nice” you want your telephone, they can run from $60.00 to $700.00.  There are differences in the phone handsets themselves, such as features, speakerphone quality, the maximum number of lines on a handset, backlighting, backgrounds, headset support, you get the idea.  The one thing to remember though is that a small business doesn’t need a really fancy handset (unless you want one for the “cool” factor).  A good budget would be $110.00 per telephone.

The only other things we need to add in are: Wiring and Labor to install the phone system.  If you already have a computer network in your office, then you don’t need wiring!  It’s all there!  So there’s just labor.  For complete setup and configuration, we charge about $1000-1500.00 for a ten line system.  We set it up, configure it to your liking, test it, and tweak it to your liking!

So in theory, here’s what it would cost you for a state of the art telephone system in a ten line office.. (Drumroll Please)…

$3100.00  Not bad for a system that can do everything a $50,000.00 system from Nortel or Avaya can do, huh?  Oh.. and did I mention that your phone system will never go out of date?  We just apply software upgrades (also free) to your system and you’ll have all the new functionality as it becomes available!  The reality is though.. Once your system is up and running to your liking, you won’t be changing it (unless you’re growing).

If you’re interested, please give us a call and we can discuss your telephone system needs!  212.400.7430

A properly deployed telephone system will enable you to both save money on your telephone bill as well as increase your customer interaction with your customers. Spend a little time talking to potential installers and get them to understand the features you want and need. A good telephony integrator will help you choose the proper system configuration and features to be implemented in your system.

Every telephone system comes with features. The question is, what are the features and how do you use these features to effectively manage your business? Over the next few days, this post will increase in length as I discuss the various features of a telephone system and how a business will use them to increase their effectiveness.

Feature:

Find Me / Follow Me - This is a very powerful feature as it will always keep you in touch with your customers. When you are out of the office, the telephone system will automatically notify the customer it is transferring the telephone call to your mobile telephone. This can easily translate into more business, because your customers will always have access to you or your employees.

Ring Groups - The ring group allows you to ring a number of telephone handsets in the event some of your employees are busy on other telephone calls or just not at their desk. Ring Groups are also a great way to keep your sales and customer support people busy.

Voicemail - This allows the caller to leave a message for a particular person.

Music on Hold - Another great marketing tool that allows callers to hear about all of the products and services your company may offer. Music on Hold can be a very effective communications format that can easily lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Queues - Call Queues allow customers to wait for the “next available agent”.  This is important, because you don’t want to miss any important calls from your callers.  The callers can listen to music or hear more about your company while on hold.