Music on hold is one of those things that many business owners don’t give a second thought to.  This is a mistake, as it can make a big difference in retaining callers, and can have a direct impact on sales.

First of all, having something playing to callers on hold means fewer hang-ups.  This is because if you have silence on hold, many people will think they’ve actually been disconnected, and they will hang up.  In fact, according to a USA Today study, about 60% of callers hearing silence will hang up after one minute, on average.  According to Voice Response, Inc., 34% of those callers will not call back.

Many people choose to play a CD or radio station as their hold music, which is certainly better than silence.  Be careful, though: these may be considered copyright infringement.  If you’re concerned about this, you should at a minimum play royalty-free music on hold.  This often comes with the on-hold equipment you purchase.  Phone systems from ESI (our preferred manufacturer) include 3 generic, prerecorded tracks.  There is nothing to set up if you’re going this route; music will play on hold from the get-go.  (More information on ESI phone systems here).

Better even than generic music on hold is a custom promotion on hold, which includes facts about your company or current specials, played over a music background.  The same USA Today study mentioned above also found that 85% of callers prefer to hear information while on hold versus other options (which roughly agreed with MaxiMarketing’s figure of 88%).  Some other findings:

• Customers left on hold without any background music felt that a 30-second on-hold call actually lasted 90 seconds. Furthermore, customers thought a 30-second on-hold call that used music on hold lasted only 15 seconds. [AT&T]
• Having an on-hold advertising system reduces call abandonment by almost 90%. [Better Business Marketing]
• 16-20% of the callers made a purchase based on an offer they heard from an on-hold advertisement. [MaxiMarketing]
• The average business executive spends 17 minutes a day on hold, or 68 hours a year. [USA Today]

A custom, professionally recorded on-hold advertisement will generally run you between $125 and $350, depending on which company you have record it and the length of the recording.  Avoid companies that have you pay a monthly or yearly licensing fee for on-hold music or advertising.  You should be able to pay the fee once and then use the on-hold recording for as  long as you want.

ESI phone systems have on-hold equipment built-in, not added on, something many phone system vendors charge extra for.  You can load custom on-hold recordings that will loop automatically.  As a bonus feature, ESI systems allow callers to dial off hold, useful if they already know the extension they want to reach.

We did it again!  Telco Ltd. is the recipient of the ESI Reseller Quality Program Award for 2008.  This award is granted to those ESI resellers who demonstrate excellence in customer service:

ESI Quality Program Award 2008

The Platinum level is the highest level offered in the quality program, and Telco Ltd. has achieved this level for four years in a row, demonstrating outstanding customer service and satisfaction.  Telco Ltd. is also the recipient of an Elite Reseller award for 2008, the highest distinction offered by ESI:

ESI Elite Reseller Award 2008

These two awards reflect our sincere commitment to our customers, and our desire that each customer have the best experience they possibly can.

We whipped up this game we thought you might enjoy; it has a Christmas theme:

Christmas Game Screenshot

It’s very simple to play.  Your job is to help Santa deliver his goodies by making sure they land in the chimney (which you control the movement of via your mouse).  You can download the game here:

Download Christmas Game

Enjoy!

We had our office Holiday party yesterday, and did we ever get stuffed!  There was more chili, Swedish meatballs, salads, wings, pasta, vegetables and dip, and exotic desserts than we could ever hope to conquer in an afternoon (though, believe me, we tried!).

Many of you have talked to some of us numerous times on the phone but haven’t seen us in person.  For those of you who fit this description, or even for those of you that just haven’t seen any of us in a while, this picture is for you (click on the picture to see it larger):

From Craig, Marvin, Mary, Melissa, Pat, Ron, Stephen, Tom, and Walter (and Boo, our adorable office kitty), here’s hoping that you have a very enjoyable holiday season!

A Hosted PBX (sometimes referred to as Hosted IP or IP Centrex) is a relatively new phenomenon in the telecommunications world, springing up as a result of a promising new technology, Voice Over IP (VoIP).

A Hosted PBX differs from a traditional PBX or key phone system in that businesses using a hosted PBX are “outsourcing” their phone system to a service provider. This appears on the surface to provide a number of advantages:

• Your phone can follow you wherever you go
• You don’t have to worry about equipment maintenance
• Your initial out-of-pocket costs are lower

There are certain things, however, one should know in order to make a well-informed decision when selecting a solution for critical telephone communications.

Reliability.

Using a hosted PBX means that all of your telephone calls will travel over an IP network, often the public Internet-even your intercom calls to other phones in the same office! This is the same Internet that tends to bog down during certain periods of the day. When you browse the Internet or check your email, many of the common day-to-day interruptions go unnoticed-if your connection is suffering for a few seconds or fractions of a second, you won’t notice a problem. VoIP, on the other hand, is very unforgiving about data transmission delays, and you will experience a loss of quality, or even dropped calls, on a regular basis.  Some providers mitigate this by providing a point-to-point connection between your office and their facility.

Cost.

At first glance, it may seem that you will save money by going to a hosted PBX solution rather than purchasing your own equipment. But will you really save money? The going rate per seat, per month in a hosted PBX solution is approximately $50. Multiply this by the number of users over 5 years (the average time period a business will use their phone system), and you may be surprised at the results. Let’s take an example of 15 employees:

$50 per month x 15 employees x 5 years = $45,000!

If your goal is to avoid large upfront costs and have a reasonable, stable monthly cost, you would financially be far better off doing a lease purchase of an in-house phone system.

Features.

When you sign up for a hosted PBX solution, you should understand that your service provider will not be dedicating a server to your business; on the contrary, you will be sharing a remote server with hundreds or even thousands of other businesses. This is important because many of the advanced features offered by standalone phone systems require significant computing power and resources. Because of this, you will notice that if you compare the feature set of a hosted PBX provider against that of a standalone phone system, many features and capabilities will be missing from the hosted PBX solution or be at an additional monthly cost, such as conferencing, call recording, automatic call distribution, presence management, unified messaging, service observe, enhanced Caller ID functions (such as attaching the Caller ID of a caller to voicemail messages) and more. Additionally, because most hosted PBX providers utilize non-proprietary IP phones, they must offer a “lowest common denominator” feature-set. The number of buttons available for lines, extensions, and features is usually lacking, as is the number of button colors available (ESI, our manufacturer of choice, offers tri-colored buttons; most IP phones used in hosted IP solutions have either dual-colored buttons, or in most cases, only one color).

Expandability.

Because each phone in a hosted IP PBX requires a certain amount of bandwidth, you will ultimately be limited on the total number of phones that you can add to your setup. The more phones you have and are in use, the greater the bandwidth requirements. Additionally, the phones will have to compete with the computers on your network for bandwidth-when many phones are in use, you may notice that the voice quality suffers considerably. In many cases, you may purchase equipment that supports Quality of Service, or QoS to alleviate this and give priority to the phone traffic. The downsides to this are that good hardware to implement this properly can be expensive, and in addition, ensuring that the phones have the bandwidth they need will cause your computers to run slower on the Internet.

Security.

In a hosted PBX, voice traffic travels off of your network onto other networks-your service provider’s network at the least, and in most cases over the public Internet. There, your conversations can be vulnerable to interception and eavesdropping. If your hosted IP PBX provider implements encryption on all calls, your risk is somewhat mitigated in this area.

911 Service.

Something most VoIP providers don’t like to talk about is 911 service. The reason for this is that some of them still don’t have it. Fortunately, since 911 compliance has been made a federal mandate, the VoIP service providers are making rapid progress toward this goal and many of them have implemented it in some fashion. Still, you should be aware that even for providers who have implemented a solution, there will be at least one extra layer of separation between yourself and emergency services. This is because the provider has to either hire staff to handle emergency calls or contract it out to another call center, but in either case the party you reach when you dial 911 is not a governmental 911 dispatch center.

Provider Longevity.

VoIP services is a new and expanding area of commerce, with most companies offering services being fairly new business entities (or at least being relatively inexperienced at offering these particular services). How long has the company you’re considering been in business, and perhaps more importantly, what will be their condition a year or two from now? If they do go out of business, will your service remain intact? You can always port your phone numbers to another provider, but if the hosting company is unresponsive you could experience delays (perhaps on the order of weeks) in that respect.

Monetary Benefits.

Keep in mind that there are certain tax benefits associated with having your own in-house phone system equipment.  When you own your own phone system, it is also considered an asset, improving your company’s financial worth.

Final Thoughts.

Hosted IP providers often tout the portability of their phones, so that your phone can go with you wherever you go, as long as there is a broadband Internet connection.  But if this used to be an advantage for them, it is no longer (ESI has, for example, three offerings that will go anywhere you do: a desktop IP phone, a cordless IP phone, and a PC-based “soft” phone).

Hosted providers often also tout low long-distance rates in their offerings.  But it should be noted that this is more a function of your dialtone/long distance service than it is the choice of an in-house versus hosted PBX.  There are several providers here in the Phoenix area (and probably nationwide) that are offering free and low-cost long distance in their plans.

When it comes to critical applications like telephone communications, having an in-house PBX (phone system) is the clear winner.

Almost every phone system, universally, supports cordless phones when properly equipped with an analog station port.  These are the phones you can get practically anywhere and are primarily intended for home use.  Many phone systems, however, do not support cordless phones via a digital interface.  Why does this matter?  Features, and ease of use.

An analog interface to a phone system is a very simple one.  Cordless phones connected this way are generally able to make and receive calls, transfer, and that’s about the extent of it.  Sure, a lot of manufacturers allow you to do more by pressing the Flash button and dialing a code, but few people ever venture beyond the basic functionality because to try to do more is, well, a hassle.  Even putting a call on hold is usually a chore, because you can’t see by looking at the phone what line a call is on, to be able to pick it back up.

This is where digitally-interfaced cordless phones come in.  These phones can communicate digitally with the phone cabinet, allowing for much tighter integration, making for more features and a phone that’s much easier to use.  What features?  Well, let’s take an ESI Digital Cordless Handset, for example:

This baby is small and light, making it very portable.  Though you can’t quite make it out from the picture, this phone has dedicated Hold, Redial, and Voice Mail buttons, as well as a button used for Transfer, Conference, or station programming depending on when you press it.  What’s really great are the 4 buttons along the bottom that can be used for almost anything, according to your needs.  Here is a partial list:

• Line buttons
• Extension buttons (including extension status)
• Company day/night/holiday mode
• Do Not Disturb
• Call Forward
• Overhead Page
• ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) agent logon/logoff
• ACD administrator for viewing ACD queue status
• Personal greeting switch
• Virtual Answer
• Door Unlock (used with Presence Management)
• Account code entry

The display indicates when you have new voicemail messages.  Also on the phone is one-button access to change the volume (including ring volume), as well as mute.  There is a micro-mini headset port at the top, which supports generally the same headsets you would use for a cell phone.

In addition to the digital version of this phone, a local IP version is available (for inside the building), and a remote IP version is available for off-site.  All three versions operate in the same way, with full functionality.  The remote IP version will also allow you to connect a phone line (for example, if you’re using it at home), so that you have the choice of making local calls if you wish (otherwise, calls are routed via your office lines).  There is also a slightly larger version of this phone (in all 3 flavors) which offers longer battery life and an extended range.

Well, the holidays are upon us again!  We thought we’d have a little fun by changing the blog to a holiday theme.

I chanced upon a couple of holiday music links, for anyone who’s interested:

Free holiday music

It’s unclear to me whether the music at the above link can be legally loaded into your phone system’s music on hold unit, or whether it’s just to be enjoyed for personal use.  The link below has holiday music available that’s definitely royalty-free and can be used as on-hold music (there’s just a one-time upfront fee):

Royalty-free holiday music

We are not affiliated with either site above; I just thought I’d share the links for anyone who may be interested.  If you are already an existing customer of ours in the Phoenix area and need help loading music into your phone system or on-hold player, or if you’d like more information on on-hold equipment or a promo-on-hold production, please let us know.

Also, a little gift for any of our customers (or anyone else, for that matter) who has a recent version of VIP software (this is software made for ESI phone systems that allows you to do several things, like control your phone from your computer; log inbound and outbound calls to your phone; program your phone; text message; and more).  The latest version of VIP is skinnable, meaning you can change its visual appearance, and a few skins are included.  We came upon this Christmas-themed skin you can download here.  Here’s what it looks like:

Christmas Skin for VIP

You’ll want to unzip the downloaded file and put the Christmas.skf file into the Skins folder of your VIP program folder (usually located at “C:\Program Files\VIP\Skins”), and then you can change to it by opening up the VIP Call Control window, then clicking on the Tools -> Options menu.  If there is no Skins folder, it means you need a VIP software upgrade–contact us if you’d like to pursue that.

If you don’t currently have VIP, it’s definitely worth a look.  Here are links to some videos on the different flavors of VIP:

VIP and VIP Professional video

VIP ACD Supervisor/Agent video

VIP PC Attendant Console video

Enjoy!

And now, for something unique.  ESI Presence Management is optional add-on equipment compatible with any ESI Communications Server phone system.  If you have an older ESI IVX system, you may be able to use the technology as well (it requires an E2 revision station card; call us if you need help determining what you need to get going).  It integrates security access and time and attendance management closely with the phone system, and has some great benefits.  (More on ESI phone system products.)

The central piece of equipment in Presence Management is called an EPM reader:

ESI Presence Management Reader

It is a small box that has several functions:

(1) Door Phone. Anyone visiting your building that does not normally have access (such as the FedEx driver) would press a button on the EPM reader.  One or more phones in the office that you designate would ring, and whoever answers can carry on a conversation with the outside person, thanks to a built-in speaker on the EPM reader.  They could then press a button on their phone to unlock the door.

(2) Security access. Each employee or other persons you wish to give access to the building would be given a unique security card or keychain fob with a unique serial number.  Thanks to RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology, the card or fob can be passed in front of the reader.  As long as it’s within a couple of inches of the reader, it will be read (kind of like Mobil’s SpeedPass, which also uses RFID technology).  If that person is authorized to enter, the door will unlock.  What’s great is that you can put these readers at any door equipped with the appropriate type of lock, either external building doors or sensitive internal areas, and then specify what areas each person has access to.  You can also specify access to groups of people based on time of day and day of week.  If a security card or fob is lost or stolen, that card or fob can immediately be deactivated by an administrator.  No locks need to be changed out, and the facility stays secure.

(3) Time Clock. An EPM reader can also be used as a replacement for a time clock and punch cards.  The reader would be mounted in any convenient place, and when the security card or fob is swiped, the system would keep track of whether the person is clocking in our out, along with the time, but it would not be associated with unlocking a door.  These in/out records can be downloaded from the system at any desired interval by an administrator and used for employee timekeeping.  This information can be tweaked, if necessary, and even imported into certain payroll applications (such as Quickbooks or ADP).

Because the EPM readers are integrated with the phone system, some neat things can be done.  When a person “clocks out” when leaving the building, others in the office will see that they are out because the button on their phone corresponding to that person’s extension will wink amber.  Also, the system can be programmed so that you can optionally have several things happen automatically when you leave the building: your personal greeting can be switched to your out-of-office greeting, your phone can be call forwarded to an outside number (such as a cell phone), and/or your phone placed in Do Not Disturb.  When you re-enter the building, your phone settings change back automatically.

ESI has just released another bit of Bluetooth goodness–the Bluetooth Headset Adapter.  After months of eager anticipation, we finally had a chance to try it out.  Our observations are below.

(If you haven’t yet read about ESI’s other Bluetooth product, you should check out Cellular Management: the product that bridges your office phone to your cell phone via Bluetooth.  If you haven’t already, you can also check out ESI, the business phone system manufacturer.  For more info on their products in general, check out ESI phone systems at our web site.)

One thing I like about ESI is that, for some time, they have offered a headset port on the back of each of their 48-key phones.  This makes it so that when you get a wired headset, you don’t have to get the bulky base unit that sits next to the phone; you can get any Plantronics Polaris-style headset instead, which saves money and desk space.  Up until now, there have been wireless headset solutions as well, but you’re back to having a base that sits next to the phone, and the headsets themselves can be pretty expensive (and slightly on the bulky side).

ESI 48-key telephone

Now, there’s another choice for wireless headsets.  The Bluetooth Headset Adapter is smaller than a deck of cards and plugs into the headset port on the back of a 48-key phone on any ESI Communications Server phone system.  There is a second small cord on the adapter that plugs into the Expansion port on the bottom of the phone for power (this port is normally used for a 60-button expansion console, if needed; fortunately, there is a pass-through port on the adapter itself for the console, so you’re not giving anything up).  The adapter fits underneath the phone and is completely concealed.

Because the adapter uses a standard technology in wide use (Bluetooth), there are a multitude of headsets that you can use and you’re not tied to any particular one.  Most headsets with Bluetooth 2.0 or higher are supported.  The one we chose is the Samsung WEP200:

Samsung WEP200 Bluetooth headset

This headset is considered one of the better Bluetooth headsets on the market right now due to its small size, light weight, good sound quality, and low cost.  To be frank, though, the principal reason we chose it was because we already had one in the office.

The most difficult part of pairing the headset with the adapter, which was not very difficult, was figuring out how to put the headset into pairing mode.  I resorted to reading the headset manual, something I was reluctant to do (I think I’m allergic to manuals), and figured it out.  Putting the ESI Bluetooth Headset Adapter into pairing mode couldn’t be easier–I dialed a few buttons to program a headset button on the ESI 48-key phone (it’s a lot like setting a station on your car radio), and within a few seconds, it found the headset and asked me for the security PIN of the headset (by default, 0000, which is how I left it).  We only had to go through the pairing process once; from that point forward, the phone recognized the headset whenever it was turned on and in range.

My experience with the headset was overall a good one.  I did have some trouble with the headset when it kept falling out of my ear; the earpiece was not very comfortable and did not fit well.  I went on the Internet and found that a lot of people were having the same issue, and some people had suggestions for making a better fit.  I bought an over-the-ear adapter on Ebay for a few bucks and was pretty pleased with it, as it held the headset in place and my ear did not get tired from the earloop.  Wanting to try all my options, I had also purchased some Jabra clear EarGels on Ebay (also a few bucks), and they came a day or two later.  The package I got had 6 of them–one in small, medium, and large or both the left and right ear.  The middle size fit me the best and is quite comfortable.  It does not make my ear hurt, even after wearing it for awhile, and the shape of the EarGel channels the sound from the headset right into my ear.

Because the Bluetooth technology is limited to about 30 feet, it should be noted that you won’t get the same range as you would with a traditional wireless headset.  In my tests, the best quality was when I was anywhere from right next to the phone, to about 10-12 feet away.  After that, I could hear some disturbance in the call, but I could get about 25-30 feet before the quality was unacceptable.  Again, this is a limitation of Bluetooth and is not a reflection of the ESI adapter, which functioned flawlessly.  Overall, I am very happy with the new technology, and I have permanently retired my old headset.