Business Telephone Systems Archives - Essex Telephone Systems

What is a Hosted Telephone System

Posted on 16/02/2015 by paul

With a hosted PBX the telephone system is located offsite by your telecoms service provider. This means that all the day-to-day operations and maintenance are carried out by the services provider, without the need and cost of site visits.

So instead of having all the telephone hardware located in the office the system is connected via a network connection. This “hosted” arrangement has several benefits.

Benefits of a hosted telephone system

A hosted telephone system enjoys all the benefits of a traditional PBX along with providing many additional services.

Most Hosted PBX (or VoIP PBX) can provide these standard facilities:

Call routing
Transferring calls
Voicemail
Fax handling
Conference Calls
Automated Greetings
Music on hold

Most service providers also provide a web interface to allow the business owner to manager their own network. Additionally the system allows for extensive reporting, call logging, recording and blocking.

These facilities can make your business more efficient and allow you to accurately track staff time and activity. Additionally many of these services can help give your business a more professional image.

By routing calls over a network you can let employees work remotely or whilst traveling. Because they are connected to your system remote workers can have calls transferred to them, and make outgoing calls via the business system.

Costs

Every business is different, but a Hosted Telephone System can help save money.

Compared to a physical PBX and hosted system can be cheaper to install as there is less physical engineering. However the real savings become evident when comparing the costs of ongoing maintenance and service calls. Not least because the hosted (or VoIP) service means fewer visits by engineers.

Some hosting providers will offer month-to-month contracts although you should talk to your local provider to establish which is the best solution for your business.

Solutions

Regardless of how big your company, a Hosted Telephone System is bound to offer cost savings and operation benefits.

You have the option to keep the same number, switch to a non-geographical number or a memorable number. Your customer’s calls will always be connected to your business with a personalised greeting, and no more engaged numbers.

If your business has offices in separate locations you can transfer calls between offices seamlessly. In fact your staff can effectively take their extension with them, being able to log into the system from whichever desk they are sat at, still being contactable via their own number.

Many businesses enjoy significant savings on their monthly bills by switching their outgoing calls via their business telephone system provider.

Hosted systems are suitable for any type of business. Often there is no initial capital outlay, with an agreed amount being paid monthly.

Business Telephone System Buying Guide

Posted on 30/12/2014 by paul

As a business starts to grow its telecoms needs develop and become more complex. In fact, if those needs are not met the business’s growth can be slowed or even crippled. However to the uninitiated the world of telecommunications can appear bewildering so this short guide is intended to give a very basic overview about the different types of business telephone systems available.

At its core the business telephone system allows customers and suppliers to contact you, and allows your staff to communicate information within the organisation. But a good system can do so much more to increase efficiency and productivity.

Choosing the telephone system for your business will take careful thought, so we’ve put together this basic guide to help you start the process. If you need more help along the way please feel free to contact us for a no obligation chat.

The Basics

If you have two or more telephone handsets that can make and receive external calls, and transfer calls between them, you have the beginnings of a telephone system.

The jargon that you’re likely to encounter most is PBX and VoIP. We will explain what these are in a moment, but first it is important to understand that all new systems are digital. Meaning that the difference between them is narrowing.

PBX Phone Systems

A Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is essentially a box that connects all your phones together and coordinates the interactions between them. It also manages the external connection to the public system.

The PBX directs incoming calls to the appropriate extension and allocates lines for external calls. It also houses features such as voicemail and call hunting.

With a PBX all the individual components are physically connected to the exchange.

VoIP Systems

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) directs all the telephone traffic over the internet rather than the telephone lines.

VoIP business telephone systems use the same internal network connections as your computers and manages them using software. Clearly when using a VoIP system a reliable internet connection is essential to maintain call quality and avoid call drop-outs.

Now would be a good time to point out that we’re keeping this guide brief, at the expense of going into too much detail about the differences and similarities between modern PBX and VoIP systems.

Features and Benefits

Modern business telephone systems offer a huge range of features. Many of these features were only previously available to large companies with big budgets. Here’s a taste of what’s available:

Music on Hold – playing music or a recorded message to callers.
Voicemail – group and individual boxes, remote access and message fowarding.
Call Recording – for training and quality assurance.
Call Management – generate reports on number of calls, call duration and much more.

Think about the Supplier

Before getting multiple quotes from suppliers it is worth taking some time to make sure that you understand enough about the systems to ensure that know what you are comparing.

When comparing quotes look out for some of these headers:

Installation – is testing included? Who will be responsible for training your staff?
Support – What level of support is on offer, and how much support do you think you will need? Will system upgrades be included?
Maintenance – Is regular maintenance and servicing included? If not check what the charges are.
Call Packages – does the supplier offer inclusive packages, if so does are you tied to a contract.

Finding the right system for your business is important. Essex Telephone Systems have been helping businesses of all sizes in and around Essex for many years. Contact us today for a chat about your requirements.

BT Openreach Service Update

Posted on 03/01/2014 by paul

Service update

We want to keep customers informed of the service situation across the UK now that the holiday period is coming to an end and as more extreme weather is forecast today.

Over the last two weeks high winds, heavy rain and flooding have battered the UK and this week we’ve seen more of the same, with very wet and windy conditions for many across the country on New Year’s Day and through Thursday 2 January.

The government has warned of “exceptional weather” to hit the UK today and over the weekend. The Environment Agency has issued 21 severe flood warnings – which mean “danger to life” – affecting south-west England, Gloucestershire and Wales and the Met Office has warned of flooding in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Many of the severe flood warnings relate to the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, and there is also warning of further storms through today (Friday) and into Sunday, with the potential to be “a significant weather event”, as strong winds and large waves coincide with high tides There are around 500 warnings for rain, high winds and flooding in place today.

Over the holiday period, we have seen around 20,000 more faults than our original plan with considerable damage to both above and below ground infrastructure. The fault intake is likely to increase further over the coming weekend and into next week following the severe weather and also when most businesses and consumers will have returned from their Christmas and New Year breaks.

This morning (Friday) the overall repair work stack stands at around 38,000. We expect to see this peak at around 40,000 by the middle of next week before falling to around 35,000 by next Friday.

On our current plan, we are looking at being back under 30,000, by the end of the following week, (w/c 13 January) as we recover in most areas of the country. However, Wessex, which has been the most seriously impacted region over the holiday period, saw the repair work stack peaking at a national equivalent level of 70,000, and is likely to take a little longer to recover.

As we said in the last update, the planning we put in place prior to the holiday period ensured we had people available in the field over Christmas week and even with the bank holidays and the weather difficulties, we saw over 90,000 completions.

This week we have also been stepping up to meet the challenges, with record number of engineers working over the New Year holiday and we made around 115,000 completions. Over the holiday period we have also managed to keep on-time repair at around 70%.

Next week we are fielding enough capacity to complete over 175,000 completions, but we expect that to be eroded by continued access issues to villages and towns and also the huge level of movement needed to get engineers to the hardest hit areas.

While we are in this recovery period, and as the conditions continue to be challenging, repair will obviously continue to be our main focus. In some areas of the UK we need to flex our provision lead times to ensure we bring customers back into service as quickly as possible.

With the high winds and flooding, we need to ensure safety of our people and your customers continues to take precedence.

Despite this focus on repair, lead-times for provision appointments have been held within 12 working days nationally, with ranges between 6 and 14 working days at GM patch level.

As a reminder, it would be really helpful to us if you could please make use of all electronic tracking and reporting tools, continue to highlight the Emergency Welfare process to your teams and ask your own customers to report any damage they see to our network at www.openreach.co.uk/reportdamageor www.openreach.co.uk/contactus. We will also keep you informed of any need to re-appoint your customers as part of the agreed process.

The situation is fluid and we are constantly reassessing the latest position. We will hold weekly service calls through the recovery and will issue a further update on Tuesday next week when we see the effects of the weekend storms and also as the majority of people have returned home and businesses re-opened.

Meanwhile thank you for your support over the Christmas and New Year holiday period.

Regards

Openreach Communications

Telephone Systems In Essex

Posted on 28/07/2013 by paul

It’s essential that companies make the most of all the modern communications technologies that are available to them, and by investing in the right telephones systems, they can do just that. Acquiring the best telephone systems doesn’t have to be expensive, and there are many companies around that can provide you with an affordable package that suits your needs perfectly. Some of the most sought after modern telephone packages are based upon facilities such as hosted or cloud-based telephony and more and more companies are investing in these to ensure that they are constantly able to communicate.

Stay Constantly Connected For Less

At Colchester Telecom we have an array of packages available for small-to-medium businesses to take advantage of and whether you’re looking for better phone systems or broadband facilities, we can help. We offer short 30 day contracts if this is something that you would prefer and work hard to ensure that you’re always able to stay in touch with your customers and associates. We can provide new telephone systems in Essex, Colchester, Braintree, Chelmsford and Ipswich.

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People are talking for longer

Posted on 10/06/2013 by paul

According to our customers calling statistics, the average call now takes 84 seconds, which has almost doubled in the last 10 years. This may be related to the drop in call charges as ten years ago a local call was 4 pence per minute and a mobile call 17 pence per minute. This compares to 0.8 pence per minute and 8 pence per minute today. Or perhaps travel and other remote working factors have contributed to this. Are we getting more done today without leaving our offices? Let us know what you think.

Colchester Telecom