Voice 2.0 innovation calls the FlexNetwork "home"

Press 1 for big business features | Part II

Yesterday’s telecom history lesson explained how VoIP brought small business the advanced features previously reserved for big business customers. But VoIP can do more than traditional phone lines ever could; in fact, none of these features are available with a regular phone line:

• Enhanced Caller ID information 

  The Caller ID information received on a SIP trunk is received before the first ring of a call. Free computer software at your business can respond to the call before the first ring and give information to the phone company on what to do with the call.. This gives a variety of advantages to the business, such as:

1. Forwarding the call to a cell phone while keeping the original Caller ID intact. In this way, if you forward your desk phone to your cell phone, you’ll still see the phone number of the original caller who is trying to reach you.
2. Forwarding the call to a cell phone with a special Caller ID. For example, you might have the person’s phone number followed by the number 2 show up on your caller ID, where 2 means the person called the after-hours emergency support line. Note: Your cell phone provider may not allow the extra digit - you’ll have to try it out.
3. Playing a busy signal or custom recording. You might screen calls after hours and only let certain calls get through, while other callers hear a recorded message.
4. Getting additional information about how the call got to you. With some systems (especially cell phone carriers) you can get additional Caller ID data when a call is received that tells you when a call was forwarded to you. This particular feature is a little-known fact of SIP trunk signaling and a great example of tapping into services that previously were unavailable. Note: Not all SIP trunking providers will send along this information - you have to try it out and see what you get.

• Call Logging and Recording

  For many businesses, keeping track of what employees tell customers is important to maintain quality. Previously, devices to record calls and log call information were expensive, but with SIP trunks your provider often offers these features for free.

• Circuit Aggregation

  One of the most useful abilities of VoIP is the ability to allow multiple phones and devices to use the same circuits for their outbound calls. In this manner, you can potentially pay for only one or two circuits (a.k.a. SIP trunks) but send calls made from five or six phones down those trunks. The principal theory here is that you may want each phone to have its own phone number, but not all six phones are likely to be getting used at the same time - so why pay for a phone line for each of them? VoIP allows you to separate the concept of a phone number from a phone line.

• Call Transfers (re-invites)

  Many SIP trunk providers allow you to request a “re-invite.” A re-invite is a request to the SIP provider to transfer a live call to another phone number. The advantage is that, once the call is transferred, your SIP trunk or telephone circuit becomes free again to handle a new call.

• High definition audio and video

  While not widely implemented, VoIP devices and SIP trunks are slowly beginning to support high definition audio and video. Polycom and other major vendors have already begun implementing these higher quality audio transmission methods into their latest devices.

• Emergency Service

  What happens when your phone service is down? Today, many companies rely heavily on their phone service, and, while outages may be rare, they can be damaging when they happen. Most VoIP providers offer the ability to fail-over to an alternate number when the primary number is unavailable.

The bottom line
Don’t underestimate the value of presenting a professional business feel to your customers. The ease of reaching someone directly via direct dial numbers that ring through to specific employees encourages your customers to call you more often – and thus may increase sales or customer satisfaction. SIP trunking does more than just mimic the functionality that used to be exclusive to big business; SIP trunks expand and improve upon PRI technology, giving your business better phone features at a much lower cost.