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For example, lets say we have someone in PA who takes a call for us in Florida, is there anyway for us to get a system setup that can handle transferring the call from PA to our lines in Florida?
Im looking at a couple of new staffing options at the moment, so if anyone knows of a way of achieving what i described above it would be a great help as we could then have telecommuters working for us.
Regards,
Lee
VOIP has had that for ages. if i pick up a call on our lines, i can put it on hold and dial any # in the usa then hang up. the call is transfered.
vonage, packet8 and lingo all have that.
also lee, if your outsiurce workers have broadband, you can just ship them a voip box and a phone and yuu can put any # you want on it. maybe even set up a hunt group so there is only 1 number people call but it goes to the next available person
( if you arnt on voip for your lines then why on earth not ? )
I second that. We have Lingo, and we've completely dumped our regular telco land lines. $20/month gets unlimited local and US/Canada calling, plus voicemail, call waiting/forwarding/3way, call transfer, and a bunch of other stuff I've never used. You can get a local number in any of a bazillion cities.
The only catch is, right now the FCC mandated that the VOIP carriers can only provide service where they have E911 service working, and for most of the carriers, that's a small % of the US, so you may have to claim a bogus address in a city they cover, then, once you're signed up, just change the address to where your box actually is.
Hey chip, been trying to call aj for about a week now :) does he ever pick up his phone ?
I would agree...VOIP is about the only real option.
But if you need something a bit more robust...
1. Hosted PBX (low cost and works great)
2. Your own PBX (like Asterisk www.asterisk.org)
We run off of a hybrid PBX that allows us to use POT/PSTN (land lines) for the mission critial phone calls and then roll over to VOIP lines (junction networks or teliax).
Although VOIP is great but it can (and does) go down.
There are also issues with latancy (lag time).
If you get above 100ms in your pinging you may have some jitter.
We picked a PBX solution called switchvox.
It allows full PBX with IVR (you know...all those press one for sales, two of support, three to be told off). Then you can have it ring queues (or more then one phone at one time). The first to answer gets the call.
You can also do phone rules based on:
Hours (8-5 do this... 6 to midnight do this..)
Phone numbers (if call is X then ring to this extention)
The cool factor is that you can also run different different companies from one PBX.
Phone line one rings and it gets answered by "thank you for calling company A"
Phone line two rings and it gets answered by "thank you for calling company B"
So much you can do with this.
I use Polycom SIP IP phones.
And I have one phone hooked up at home (standard internet) and it is fully connected to my PBX at the office.
The basic cost is about $1000 for the pbx (includes box) and $100 to $300 per phone.
Any questions let me know.