Let’s Talk… Phones!
They say there are two things inevitable in life: taxes and death. If you live in Canada, you can add one more – a costly phone bill. With a lack of competition, the big 3 (Bell, Rogers, Telus) can charge these amounts and as a result we the consumer succumb. Many families now have opted to scrap their home phone and stick with their cellphone when it comes to telecommunications.
Businesses are not as fortunate – landlines are a necessity for most companies and help generate revenue through customer service and sales. However, as a business owner are you finding yourself on the same track with your landlines as your cell phones? Are you paying way too much, for very little? Do you ever wonder if there was more you could get out of your business phones to help increase productivity in your office, improve efficiencies for your sales team, and offer a better customer service experience?
At AOS, we strategically partner with industry leaders to better serve you. In this article, I will discuss our partnership with Fibernetics and the benefits of the hybrid VoIP phone system we offer through this partner. Founded in 2004, Fibernetics is one of Canada’s most established and innovative telecommunications companies. With excess of 100 employees across Canada, they are responsible for over 12 billon minutes year in voice traffic over the Fibernetics private network.
NEWT is the business division of Fibernetics. The NEWT Managed Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is and “end-to-end solution” combining the strengths of both hosted IP phone systems and traditional on-premise PBXs. In short, it is developed, supported, and deployed through NEWT’s 100% private, nationally regulated Competitive Local Exchange Carrier network. Due to this redundancy, it could be best described as a “Network PBX”, providing unparalleled quality of service and making it unique in the marketplace.
Some highlighted features include:
- Security
- Fibernetics core infrastructure is secure from the public Internet. Each NEWT Managed PBX connects to the core network via a highly secure RSA key-based Virtual Private Network (VPN). These RSA keys are generated when the PBX is provisioned and are not transmitted over any network. Only the NEWT team is equipped with the tools to create valid PBX keys. Any required access from the public infrastructure requires highly secure RSA key pairs for authentication.
- Find Me-Follow Me
- In today’s fast paced business world, you need to stay in touch with your customers and vice versa. Find Me-Follow Me allows for the desk phone to ring a certain amount, before redirecting to an alternate phone number. For example, sales representatives who are on the road often do not need to give out their cell number because the system will re-route automatically.
- Voicemail to Email
- Another fantastic feature to stay in touch. Voicemails are directed to email where a .wav file is created. As long as you have access to data/Wifi, you’ll have the ability to listen and respond to a voicemail.
- Call Detailed Records (CDR)
- Provides the ability to view inbound calls, outbound calls (or both) per extension (or all extensions), for a specified time frame. This is available on the PBX interface in near-real time for local and long- distance calls. Take it up a notch with the call centre where calls can be recorded to ensure accuracy when dealing with irate customers.
- Interface
- In general, most options can be changed through the interface/portal. For example, if your business is closed due to inclement weather. You can change your greeting while away from the office so customers are aware of the situation. It’s easy to configure and you can have presets in place to eliminate additional work.
Newt’s Managed PBX phone systems offers over 70 features and these are just a few that help highlight its ability to be a superior system for you. In addition, we often see large savings, as high as 80% in some cases. The cost structure is possible with NEWT’s integrated model that is created and deployed right here in Canada! If you are asking yourself the questions posed at the start of this post, please reach out to us here at AOS as we are here to help!