Telephone Features and Equipment

April 13, 2006

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The telephone is absolutely vital to the running of most every business. Your business is truly unique if you really believe that it could survive without this tool for staying in contact with your customers, suppliers, and the rest of the world.

Among your first tasks in setting up your business's telephone system will be to select long-distance service providers and the telephone features you want. Within the last several years, features that traditionally have been available only for sophisticated telephone systems of large companies (or have not been available at all) have become available to small businesses. The more common of these features include:

call waiting
multiple telephone lines
conference and hands-free (speaker) calling
cellular and portable telephone services
speed dialing and automatic redialing
caller ID
toll-free telephone numbers
number blocking (limits outgoing calls to specified exchanges or area codes)

As with any other business expense, you shouldn't spend money for any of these features if your business doesn't truly need them. A penny saved is as good as a penny earned! If you infrequently speak to customers or suppliers, you may not need any of these features. In contrast, if the conduct of your business requires that you be able to instantly talk to all customers or suppliers who call, without the fear of missing a call, you should consider purchasing call waiting or a multiline system, an answering machine, and possibly a cellular phone specifically for your business (if you travel away from your office during business hours or if the nature of your business requires you to be readily available at all hours of the day).

Your local phone company may provide you with an attractive alternative to purchasing your own phone system by offering special services (such as Centrex) for businesses. In general, these services allow you to lease equipment with the features you want, with the phone company assuming the responsibility for maintaining your overall system.

Even if you don't need a sophisticated telephone system, your local phone company can provide a variety of services on "regular" phone lines. These include capabilities like conferencing and voice mail, which competes with an answering machine, but takes messages while your phone is in use.