Some of the more popular small business phone models are Polycom VVX, Cisco 68xx, 78xx and 88xx series phones, and Yealink phones. I have a Polycom VVX 500 on my desk at the office. At my home office, I use a Polycom VVX 400.
With the Essential plan, you get a virtual phone system for your small business, with unlimited voice and video calling, 24/7 support and basic integrations. As you upgrade to the higher tiers, you will also get professionally recorded greeting messages, more toll-free minutes, unlimited conference calls, reporting features, and much more. The Unlimited plan is especially powerful, as it brings sales productivity, pipeline management and other useful management and efficiency features.
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Our Unlimited Users and Unlimited Minutes Plans give you full control over your Voicemail:
By way of a web portal, users can access their business voicemail boxes online. This type of voicemail software lets people skip their phones entirely and simply log into their phone system’s online dashboard.
Wayne Rash's IT Watch Column: www.pcmag.com/it-watch Wayne Rash is a freelance writer and frequent reviewer of enterprise hardware and software. He is also a Senior Columnist for eWEEK. Email him at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @wrash. Read the latest from Wayne Rash Line2 Review RingCentral MVP Review 10 Important Points for IT Pros Migrating Their Phone Service 10 Things About VoIP You Didn't Know You Needed to Know Why Mobile VoIP Should Be Part of Your Business Phone System More from Wayne Rash facebook twitter flipboard google instagram pinterest
Grasshopper provides a rich array of features, including custom greetings, call forwarding, call screening, and inbound fax. Voice mail and inbound faxes are automatically converted to email, so there are no documents to convert. Grasshopper will even read your voicemail to you. With Instant Response (included as part of the package), if you miss a call, a pre-determined text message will be sent to the caller.
If the you haven't changed your personal greeting, a default system greeting will be played for callers. For example, "Please leave a message for John Smith. After the tone, please record your message. When you finish recording hang-up or press the pound key for more options."
5. You have reached [your business]. We are currently closed. Our normal hours of operations are from [hours] [days]. We are closed on [days]. Please leave us a message with your name and number and we will return your call when the office reopens. You may hang up after leaving your message or press the [key] for additional options. Thank you for calling.
The best text-to-speech voices don't sound robotic at all. Do a "text to speech" search in Google to explore your options. Type in your script and presto! You'll get an instant greeting with a natural sounding voice. You can select from a broad spectrum of male & female voices with any local or foreign accent you choose. LinkedPhone offers text-to-speech built right into our software. It's super popular and our users love it!
Don’t include the date unless it’s completely necessary. 16 of the messages I heard last month had the wrong date—one of the messages had a date over 2 months old!
If you’d like more tips like these to improve your professional image and up your sales game, remember to subscribe!
For those with voicemail greetings that get changed about as often as a new president is elected, know that this is doing a serious disservice to the caller-recipient relationship. It signals to callers that the business is anything but an authority, most likely not very detail oriented, and has questionable overall credibility and competency.
Though the specific features you need will depend on the nature of your business, you should look for a small business phone system that offers:
36. Hello. You’ve reached the office of [your name] at [your company]. I will be out of the office from [date] to [date]. Please leave your contact information with a brief message, and I will call you back as soon as I have the chance. If you need to speak with someone urgently, please contact [name of colleague] at [email or phone number]. Thanks for calling.
I got Bandwidth.com service, T3 lines, and VoIP phones for my 5 locations. They send me one bill for all of them taking alot of hassle off my hands and cut my long distance charges out of the picture. Glad I made the digital switch, and if anyone else is looking check out bandwidth I’ve liked them so…for the 6 or so months I’ve had them.
Before you record your professional voicemail message, take a quick peek through these examples for some inspiration:
eVoice's virtual phone system sets you free from the limitations of expensive hardware. You can customize your online phone number to seamlessly fit your needs, no matter the size of your business. Our popular phone …