Everyone is familiar with the term Voicemail these days. Most of us have said, I left them a voicemail, probably pertaining to a cell phones voicemail service from a wireless provider. What I am going to tell you about is integrated telephone system voicemail.

Telephone System voicemail supports a commercial grade telephone system and integrates with it seamlessly. What I mean by integration is that it functions as another feature rich part of the phone system and can even take the place of companys receptionist. Consider this, a receptionist answers the telephone, transfers calls to the appropriate person and takes messages- so does a voicemail system!

The voicemail system has a built in auto attendant (AA) that answers the calls with a company greeting (i.e. Thank you for calling ABC company, if you know your parties extension, you may dial it at anytime..etc.) The company greeting can pick up all calls on the first ring or any number of rings you would like. I generally recommend 4 rings (approximately 16 seconds) because this allows you to answer the calls and if you are busy, you always have a backup receptionist! You can also set up multiple greeting tables so that multiple companies can share the same voicemail system.

This makes sharing a phone system and voicemail very economical. The auto attendant can also be configured with CCR trees. These are Custom Call Routing trees that allow you one touch access to your party or department (touch 1 to go customer service, touch 2 to go to our sales dept., touch 0 for our operator)

In my 15 years in the communications industry a large stickler for my new customers who are considering purchasing voicemail with their phone system is ease of use. The voicemail system should also be very easy to get though the menus for both the person calling your company and your employees. I have heard the phrase, I was stuck in voicemail hell many times.

Our company provides and installs Nortel Networks Norstar Voicemail specifically for its ease of use and many useful features. Users have the ability to record their phone conversations and save them in their voicemail. They can also set up Caller Announce, this feature prompts your caller please tell us who is calling and then plays that for the user, they then can decide to take your call or send it to voicemail- this is also like having a personal receptionist for each employee. Users can also allow their callers to reach them while out of the office by announcing it in their greeting (I will be out of the office today, if this is urgent please press 7 and you will be transferred to my cell phone!)

The price of voicemail can definitely vary among phone system manufacturers. It certainly has come down drastically in the last 7 years. Most companies cannot live without it so they realize it the purchase is an investment in their companys infrastructure. You should also ask for financing options for your new telephone system and voicemail. Most reputable companies should offer you leasing as an option to paying cash.

Reliability is probably the most important factor of all. When voicemail systems came out in the early 1990s they used hard drives to store your messages. Now we all have learned over the years with our computers, hard drives do crash. Voicemails today use FLASH ROM to store the messages and have little or no moving parts. It is also very important to ask for quantitative reliability data for the system. The Norstar Voicemail system has an MTBF of over 100 years. Lastly, please ask for references when buying a new phone system with voicemail. I have replaced dozens of systems and had the customer tell me how much they disliked the previous system because it was difficult to use.