Hosted PBX Guide

A straightforward question. This represents having no contracts, and minimal ‘extra cost’ or ‘premium’ features.

A separate article here covers the specifics of pricing – this is just the quick-glance version.

Some companies will let you manage active times by extension, for specific queues, or for specific dates on the calender instead of days of the week.

Automatically have callers trying to reach you at off-hours be given a different greeting and be sent to voicemail.

Not as common an option, this lets you assign callers to a specific agent or queue based on their caller ID - either by area code or by whole number. Makes it easy to have callers reach their local office.

To make sure you aren't infringing copyrights and have the right feel for your business, your PBX provider should offer a wide array of options with the system you buy.

The ability to record, upload, and assign unique music/messages to welcome callers or be played when they're waiting.

Agents should be able to be added or dropped from a queue as needed, and their status should be readily visible at all times.

Many companies have a limit of 6-12 agents in a given calling group. That cripples larger businesses.

Each queue should have its own hold music/message, designed however you want.

If you want to rank employees in order of who should receive calls first, that should be an easy option.

Rather than random assignment of calls, incoming calls to a group of people should be balanced across that group, so everyone puts in equal work.

This represents individual agents being able to do basic management for their own extensions as needed, so they don't need to bother the system administrator if their phone numbers change.

You shouldn't need to call or email support for anything short of major changes to your account. Just download a gadget or login to a web portal, and you should be able to make almost all changes yourself.

Though less powerful and easy to use than a web-based tool, a good hosted PBX service should let you set voicemail options, change extension numbers, and do basic management by phone, quickly and easily.

Above and beyond basic call logs, this represents being able to see charts about what the volume of calls was during particular times of the day, and being able to convert the call logs into spreadsheet format.

Nobody handles this properly at a reasonable cost, but the idea of being able to have recordings of all incoming calls is a nice one.

I like being able to look back at the end of the day, see how many calls came in, who answered them, and how long the calls were.

The ability to see whether someone is currently on a call, or how long it has been since they were.

Not every PBX provider lets you have an extension that is another toll free number. This is important if you want to be able to send certain kinds of calls to a separate call center.

When a customer knows who they need to talk to but not the extension number, they should be able to get a company directory automatically, without needing an operator to help them.

The ability to block an incoming call by caller ID.

When we're talking about a service that lets you work from home or on the go, you want to be able to screen out telemarketers and answer business calls professionally. This technology helps with that.

Most hosted PBX solutions let you receive faxes on the same business number, and some let you send faxes virtually without needing extra software.

Voicemail messages left for you should be able to be emailed to you, kept online, accessible from phone, and, ideally, a notification service should be available for cell phones/pagers.

Ideally, you should be able to connect multiple callers on the same line, without needing to go through complicated setup procedures or use a second product/service.

Any hosted PBX service should let agents transfer a call to a different extension. It should also be fast and easy, and have the option to talk with the other extension owner before transferring the call.

Okay, so this is mostly wishful thinking. But it is nice when you can get a number directly from your hosted PBX provider for specific countries.

Some people like having more than one phone number people can call to reach their account. That way, they can operate multiple businesses, track how people are hearing about them, or have direct-dial options.

Though not strictly necessary, it's nice to be able to choose the specific numbers you want for your business line. Then you can spell whatever you want, or just make your number easy to remember.

Should you decide to quit using a particular provider (for whatever reason), you'll probably want to keep your business number. Not all companies are equally helpful in this regard.

If you already have a phone number for your business and want to keep using that, you'll need to port your number to the PBX provider.

Any PBX provider should also offer numbers with local area codes, which helps maintain a local image.

Any PBX provider should offer 8xx numbers, which helps create a big business image.

Sure, maybe it’s quibbling over details, but I think this counts for a lot, personally. Means just what it says. Most of these people don’t use their own technology, or buy extra hardware to ‘boost’ it.

This is where I congratulate anyone who hasn't outsourced their customer service to another country or to some call center company that handles a half-dozen businesses' customer service lines. Or both.

Let's face it - nothing works 100% of the time. But if you're losing calls or having trouble accessing your voicemail more than once a year, that's a problem.

Some systems will cause additional static or echo across the calls that are processed through their service. Good marks here means it sounds just like it would if you made the call directly to the phone.