Create a free Feed & Grain account to continue reading

Has Your CEO Seen the ROI of the VOIP?

Voice over internet phone systems can work for your ag business

Ten years ago I switch our home phone service that Qwest provided to a VOIP service, which stands for “Voice Over Internet Protocol.” The VOIP service works the same as the old-fashion phone except it used high speed internet to carry the conversations vs. the traditional phone line. Five years ago I was so pleased with how the home phone VOIP service was working that I subscribed to the service in our offices. This new technology costs a fraction of what traditional phone services cost and comes with many amazing options to help you’re ag business communicate with clients and employees.

One of my favorite features are Answering ruleswhich route calls based on the time called, caller ID or the number called. Imagine having a system that routed calls based on the caller ID, let’s say your company has a grain broker that you communicate with often and when he calls, the system automatically routes his call to your desk and cellphone at the same time, this potentially saves your broker, the secretary and yourself time and money. How about that important farm client that you want routed directly to you; they would really be impressed?

Another feature that is very useful is the “find-me” tool. Let’s say you have an office phone, cell phone, shop phone & home phone and you don’t want to make your clients call all your phones. Your client simply calls one phone and based on your phone settings will call each phone separately in the order you wish.

One last feature I will mention is the ability to setup custom extensions and recorded messages. Imagine setting up an extension called “daily grain bids”, when the client goes to that extension they are played a recording of the closing cash bids and then given a choice to press the #1 to speak to a grain merchandiser, once again another happy client.

I subscribe to Ringcentral.com and pay around $40 monthly, this includes unlimited long distance, an 800 number and all the wonderful features of the system. There are many other service providers to choose from such as 8x8.com, nextiva.com and getjive.com.

Page 1 of 2
Next Page