Guide to Small Business Phone Systems

Nowadays, there is a buzz about the small business phone system. Basically, a business phone system is an advanced calling network that is designed for improving communications for large and small companies. As business phones are designed in such a way for handling the complexities of business like call routing to get calls to the right person and customer service calls, office telephone systems have endless capabilities that typically you will not find on residential telephone service.  Here we have listed some of the useful capabilities of business phone systems.

Multiple Lines – Allow your business to communicate with several clients at once

Automated features – It is like auto-attendant that answers the phone for you and help in directing the callers to the right extension

Voicemail – Stores messages and also retrieve it when you are not in the workplace

On-hold messages or music – This option let callers know that they are still on an active line

There are some types of telephone systems suited for small business or office use – PBX, VoIP, and Multi-line based phone systems. These phone systems are differentiated by the cost, the service provider and the technology used.

Multi-line phone systems

These phones have multiple lines that run through the same unit and allow the operator for answering every phone number individually or sending calls to voicemail. These small business phone systems are basic that makes them a perfect fit for many small businesses. Simple two-line phone systems consist of separate telephone units that allow multiple people to be on a call, such as a manager and a receptionist at the same time. More complex four-line phone systems allow more staff to make or take calls simultaneously. With either phone system, you can easily handle a toll-free number or local line.

VoIP phone systems

They operate with broadband internet connectivity instead of traditional phone lines that have multiple advantages such as scalability, ease of installation, cost, and advanced features like setting up a virtual receptionist for handling calls and forwarding calls to employee smartphones with a mobile app.  With this business phone system, you can have access to unique phone numbers, just like a traditional phone system, handling toll-free numbers and routing calls to extensions for specific workers. One of the biggest advantages is it can connect with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that allows automatic logging of interactions. The biggest downside is the reliability – you need to make sure that you have high-speed internet connectivity at all times for smooth functioning of this system.

PBX (Private Branch Exchange) phone systems

It is a private phone network for the office. It routes outgoing and incoming voice calls by sing business phone line and provides multiple features like conference calls, routing to extensions, and call holding which are important for running a business. This small business phone system is different than standard multi-line phone systems where the routing and the call switching do not take place directly through the phone unit but rather are centralized. This makes a PBX more cost-effective and scalable than a key system. This system can also be hosted in the Cloud and can handle VoIP calls.