Your Office Phone’s Features Can Make You More Productive
Your business phone system comes packed with features designed for productivity, which can help you to impress co-workers and customers alike. Time is money, and you can add time to your day just by using your phone more efficiently. Because Lieberman Technologies sells Allworx phones, this list focuses on the features offered by an Allworx system, but many phone systems have similar elements. Become a business phone rockstar by mastering these five essential features:
1. Command Your Voice Mail
If you spend 5 minutes learning how to use the keys on your voicemail, it can save you hours in a month. Often pressing zero will give you the full menu, or you may have a card from your phone installation that is a guide. Allworx phones have a handy feature that allows you to rewind a voicemail 10 seconds at a time. Press *4 to replay a message, and *7 to rewind 10 seconds. That 10-second rewind lets you hear the phone number that you may have missed without needing to listen to the whole message again. *6 will skip to the next message and *3 will delete the current message. Knowing these by heart or having them on a post-it next to your phone can save you a lot of wasted time.
2. On-Demand Phone Conferencing
Sometimes you want to bring another person into the phone call. This is called conferencing and often involves a program like GoToMeeting and some setup. With most office phone systems, you can do conference calls on the fly with 3 different people. On an Allworx phone, press the CONF button while you are on the first call. That person will hear hold music while they are waiting. Choose an open line and dial the number. Once you have the new person on the line, press the CONF button again. Now you have all three parties on the line. When you want to hang up, press the line number of the person you want to disconnect and you are back to your call.
3. Transfer a Phone Call
- Before you transfer, tell the caller why you are transferring them and make sure they are ready for that. A lot of people hang up during the transfer if they are upset and see it as a chance to give up.
- Give them your name and extension so they know who to call if the transfer doesn’t go through. (This is more of a customer service move than a technical move. This assures them that you care about them getting to talk to the right person.)
- Tell the person that is about to receive the transfer as much as you already know. There is nothing more frustrating to a customer than having to repeat the issue to someone new. Your customer may wonder if the other person they’ve been transferred to is the right person or not. Show the caller that you listened by preparing the new person for their call. If you don’t have any information, you can pass them on without introduction. If you are going to pass them to a voicemail box, you may need to go back to the caller and let them know. You can always come back and do it again.
4. Presence: Like a Facebook Status on Your Desk Phone
Did you know you can change your phone so that it will act differently if you are in the office, at a meeting, on vacation or just ‘away’? By clicking the presence button on your Allworx phone, you can choose from a number of options. Once you set your presence, your phone can give a different voicemail greeting according to your status. “In a Meeting” could tell callers, “I’m in a meeting right now, but I’ll call you as soon as I get back to my desk.” Your “In office” presence could trigger your phone to rollover to your cell phone if you don’t answer. Finally, you can also use the settings in ways they weren’t intended. You can make “On Vacation” forward your call to a hunt group while you are on your lunch so that your team will never miss a call. On Allworx you have 9 possible presence choices, each based on call routing or different voice messages.
5. Hot Desk Yourself to Work at Any Desk or Any Office
You can work at any desk phone in your office if you know your extension and your PIN. Press the config button on a phone, arrow down to “Hot Desk Login” and type in your extension and your PIN. Now whenever someone calls your line, that phone will ring. This is super handy if you want to change desks in your office for a day or if your staff changes desks around during special projects. At Lieberman Technologies, the Hot Desk option is used most often on our conference room phone, so that callers don’t have to call a different number for a conference call. A staff member can just hot desk to the conference room and tell the client to call their usual number.
Using Your Phone as a Productivity Tool
No matter what phone system your business uses, mastering these five features can go a long way toward saving time and making you more productive. If you save six minutes a day on your phone communications, that adds up to a half hour every week. Over the course of a year, that’s three additional days! What could you do with three additional days each year?
Not sure what kind of features your current phone system offers? Let us show you the Allworx family of business phone systems. Every phone system we install comes with user training and handy user guides so that you can get the most out of your investment.