Friday, June 02, 2006
Communications Considerations
As you can imagine, I'm a gadget guy. I love cool electronics though I have resisted the Blackberry/Palm as well as MP3 players thus far. No, the gadgets I like are those that help my small business. With all that I need to do throughout the day, I try to find tools that make my job easier.
A few items I can't live without are my computer (ya think?), my office phone and my cell phone. It is in these areas that I find products and services that make my job easier and make me more productive overall.
A perfect example is my phone system. When exploring my telecommunications needs in my new office, I realized that I wasn't going to be making a large amount of long distance calls; did not need multiple lines (because it's just me right now); nor did I need the advanced features of an office phone system. Could I have used them? Sure, but sometimes the bells and whistle distract from productivity and yes, cash flow.
Enter in my local telephone company, BellSouth. I had experience with their business service because of setting up the phone system at my travel agency recently. I had many more concerns over there such as multiple lines, (6 lines, 7 numbers), multiple extensions, internal voicemail ect. For my new small (micro) office however, I really only needed two lines, (one voice and one fax) and since I decided to go with cable for my broadband, I didn't worry about DSL service.
BellSouth offers plans for business called "Complete Choice® for Business." At the travel agency I used it and now in my scaled down office I use it to. It gives me great flexibility in that I can add more lines and features as necessary. Without getting into all of the features which you can learn about yourself, there are a few that were important to me.
Interesting side note: I was greatly concerned about transferring my phone number. I was using line six at the travel agency since that was used for the DSL connection and could not be part of the phone system we purchased. When ordering my new service with BellSouth (completely by email by the way), I asked if they could make that number my primary number and replace line six without interruption in service. This was significant in that the loss of line six would mean the loss of DSL which would mean the loss of critical data for the travel agency, which would mean the loss of my head. My point is, they assured me no less than 3 times that they could make this happen without a hitch, I held my breath when I approved the change and didn't breath until the transfer complete. Like BellSouth promised, it went off without a hitch! Back to my point...
Items that were essential to me
- Caller ID (Name and number & CID call waiting)
- Call Waiting
- Central Switch Voicemail
- Packaged long distance and low overage.
Really, those are the only things that I felt I needed. I got a whole lot more. Caller ID is just one of those things I've grown used to and the fact is, if I'm busy and don't recognize the number, I'll gladly let it go to voicemail. (As a rule, I don't do this but when trying to do database or scripting, sometimes I can't afford the distraction.) CID also helps cull out some of the telemarketing calls. Someday I'll write about that but it would seem when you register a new business line... your new number is sold to many people. It's a revenue stream for the telco and I can't fault them for it, but I don't have to answer the "out of area, unknown number" calls either.
CID call waiting was an added bonus and it allows me to see who is calling when I'm on the phone. I had to buy another phone to see it but I'll get into that in a minute.
Central Switch Voicemail. (My own term, they simply call it "voice mail service from BellSouth") This was a service that I wanted so if (when) I'm traveling or away from the office, I can check my voice mail. Yes, I know most modern answering machines do that. But it also takes messages when I'm on the phone as well as allows me to take the phone off the hook if I want to focus on programming or napping or whatever. Another really interesting feature is the notification service. I haven't tried it yet but I can set up the system to call my cell phone when there is a message waiting. SWEET!
Packaged long distance was something I wanted too. I've grown accustomed to it with my cell phone service so I got it for the office too. I'll monitor the bill and see if I am getting my money's worth. Another tip for business, monitor the small stuff! There are hundreds of dollars to be saved by watching where it is being spent.
So I get this cool service all set up, now I have to pick out some hardware (a phone), Choosing a phone for one line for business is more complicated than I thought. It would appear there are few full featured phones for an office environment with only one line. It makes sense really but I did find it surprising.
I chose a
2 line phone,
AT&T 992. It is basically the same as the phones I
chose for the travel agency with the exception of voice mail and multi station
operation. It's a sleek phone with all the features one would want. Well, I have
a list of features I could add, but this will do for now (grin).
Some highlighted features would be,
- Being able to turn off line two indicator
- Caller id history that allows me to dial or store the information
- Speaker phone that really works
- A headset jack and button to switch from other modes.
- Auto redial, speed dial, mute volume etc. some really good features.
One feature that I really didn't expect was voice mail indication. As it would appear (and tested), even though this phone doesn't have voicemail, it will indicate when there is an unheard message at BellSouth. No kidding. Not sure how it works but the "new call" light will come on when someone calls and stay on until you view the call history. If the caller leaves a message however, that indicator light will flash. That was a most welcomed surprise. AT&T calls it the COMV feature and I really like it.
The phone cost about $55.00 at Office Depot and since I have an account, they delivered it for free. The phone service from BellSouth cost nothing to get going and I received $100 for signing up though I did have to agree to a one year agreement.
Now, before David Doran of ISTT runs me over in his truck for writing about analog phones and traditional phone service, (he is a friend and probably the best vendor of VOIP hardware, software and service in the country) please remember that I am talking about a very small one man operation who has an extremely low call volume. Would I have liked the fully supported VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system, cool analytical software and state of the art digital phones? Uh.. yes. Was it cost effective to consider it? Eh... no.
Granted, I am at an unfair advantage than the average phone service subscriber. I've spent countless hours studying, learning and even installing phone systems at my own home and offices. I put together the entire system at the travel agency from specifications, service agreements and even wired the office myself. I'm no professional and have no interest in being a system installer, but I will say that phone service and systems do get my creative juices flowing.
If you have a question, let me know. I'll be putting an email link at the top left this week. To many people complaining that there isn't one and I've figured out a way to keep the spam harvesting robots at bay.
Links on this page:
- http://www.bellsouth.com/
- http://www.insightbb.com/
- http://telephones.att.com/
- AT&T 992 Phone Link
- http://www.officedepot.com/
- http://www.isttechnology.com/
