5 Essential Features Of An Office Phone System

When was the last time you updated the phones in your office? These days, office phone systems are so much more than they used to be. A telephone that only makes a call is seen as a relic. It’s a funny thought, but it’s true. One example of this is cloud-based phone technology, also known as voice over IP (VoIP for short). VoIP technology brings with it features like call park, hoteling, virtual extensions, and click to call that enhance productivity and make the client’s life easier to boot.

This post isn’t meant to explain all of these features in nitty-gritty detail. Instead we want to give you a high-level overview of some features that every office phone system should have, whether they’re the latest VoIP offering or a simple landline system.

Here are 5 of these essential features:

1. It Should Be Flexible
This is especially important for small to mid-sized businesses. A good office phone system should grow along with your company. Cloud-based systems are particularly good at scaling and in most cases adding new lines is only a software update away.

2. It Should Be Reliable
Dropped calls or long-lasting outages are not good for business. With VoIP systems, reliability will depend heavily on your network. For business with good high-speed internet this poses no issue. Business without reliable internet may want to look into other systems.

3. It Should Have Advanced Features
Phone systems have come a long way. Just two decades ago you were lucky to get caller ID, but these days you can get a whole host of advanced features that can enhance productivity and improve the customer experience. These features are cheaper than ever as well.

4. It Should Be Simple To Use
Any office phone system, no matter how advanced the features, should be simple enough for you and your employees to readily grasp. Any new system will involve a learning period, but if a few months down the line you’re still grappling with how to do things then what good are all these “productivity enhancing” features?

5. It Should Have Good Voice Quality
A fancy phone system is not much use to your business if the call quality is terrible. This is especially true if you work in customer-facing industries or need to provide technical support for your products. Even intra-business communication needs a high level of clarity. Every time you need to repeat yourself or someone misunderstands your instructions, productivity is going down.

In the past there have been some concerns over the call quality of VoIP systems, but most of these issues have been dealt with. Modern VoIP systems can provide call quality equivalent to — and in many cases even better than — hardwired systems.

A new office phone system could be just the thing you need to grow your business. It may seem like a tall order to find a flexible system with the right features, a simple interface, and good call quality, but there are a number of affordable and feature-rich phone systems out there these days.

Need a little help finding a new office phone system? At Atlantic Communications our team has decades of experience as a full-service business phone provider. We’ll be there to offer our expertise every step of the way, from picking your new phone system to installing it. Please, contact us today to find out more.