Phone System Features

Phone systems for business offices are available with a wide array of features, but companies typically use only about 10 percent of those included with their phones. So it’s better to avoid comparing features item-by-item. Instead you should review how you actually use your phones. That way you can develop a list of the must-have and likely-to-use features to shop for.

Here are some of the most popular features in today’s office telephone systems:

Auto-attendant
This is the recorded voice of your system. It instructs callers about how to reach a particular person or department. If your call volume is high, this feature may be important, but you may instead want to have a real person answer each call.

Conferencing features
These vary considerably. You should determine how regularly your staff makes conference calls, and how many people need to join such calls. If conferencing features aren’t available on a system you might otherwise buy, consider other options for teleconferencing that you can buy separately.

Music-on-hold
This is straightforward: In most systems you merely plug in a music source.

Location assistance
Callers find the people they seek using dial-by-name, dial-by-extension, or dial-from-directory features.

Displays
Many phones have a small LCD screen that displays information such as name and extension of an internal caller, call duration, caller ID and similar.

Speaker phones
These are now standard on most new handsets. They can be “half-duplex” meaning that only one person on the call can be heard at a time, or full-duplex, in which case both parties can talk simultaneously (like a regular phone). Some phone sets also have listen-only capability on speaker phone, which lets users listen to a conference call while on hold.

Voicemail
In some high-end telephone systems, voicemail is included as part of the package. But if not, adding it your system as an option can be expensive. If you already have a voicemail system, check with your vendor about its compatibility with the system you’re analyzing.

It’s important to get the right the features, but it’s even more impoprtant to ensure that they’re easy to use. Most employees devote little time to learning about their phones, so you should shop for a system that’s simple and intuitive.