years or own the system with minimal operating expense.” In addition, businesses prefer a phone system that includes access to every service option from the start, whether used or not, at a low, fixed monthly rate, which eliminates extra fees and complexity. “Business owners and managers appreciate having only one line item on the bill that covers everything. When the prices don’t change for a fixed period, this eliminates the issue of escalating expenses and surprise add-on costs,” said Brackett. He noted that such a system can improve both the customer and employee experience by integrating web services including voice, video, SMS/MMS, smartphone and PC, as well as contact center, CRM and workforce management. “Today, a business phone system needs to enable working from anywhere, whether at the office, at home, or on the go, and offer the full breadth of communication technologies,” said Brackett. He added that some of the more advanced marketplace options are now easier than ever to incorporate and use. These allow business employees to use their own smartphones without purchasing new equipment since the service functions with almost every cellular provider. To streamline use, a web portal can enable users to take control and easily manage the entire system through a simple interface. Video conferencing also facilitates collaboration anywhere on any device, and some or all calls can be recorded and retrieved as needed. Optimizing Business Telecom Astral Energy of Montvale, N.J., buys energy wholesale and sells it retail to more than15,000 businesses in the B2B market. Ashton Fox, chief operating pfficer of Astral Energy, sought a more robust, stable solution than his existing telecom service provided. “Many of our customers work off their smartphones on the road so texting and multimedia messaging is important to communicate with them. If our customers struggle to reach us, or we are challenged to reach them because of our phone system, it doesn’t work,” said Fox. “We were running into some issues with our provider’s call quality, SMS and MMS service, and technical support,” he added. “We also wanted better pricing transparency. We didn’t want to find out that we really needed a certain feature later and be asked to pay more for it every month, which would impact our budget,” said Fox. As a solution, Fox and Astral Energy turned to a new option in the business market called GoodPhone by BTI that provides complete web, voice, video, SMS, MMS, CRM, contact center and workforce management service and integration for customers and employees. The service functions on smartphones and office phones, as well as on PC softphones. Complete phone service with all the needed options costs a flat monthly rate of less than $25/user. For the contracted period, each user can utilize an unlimited number of phones as part of the same flat rate. Phones also can be rented or purchased from BTI, or existing VoIP devices used. When employees use their personal smartphone by downloading the GoodPhone App, they no longer need to give out their personal cell information to handle business calls. Instead, they can provide clients with one office number to reach them, and make or take calls from their web phone, mobile app, or desk phone while always displaying the office number. “Employees only give out one business number and all calls and texts stay within the GoodPhone portal on their smartphone or PC app. If a customer calls their number and they don’t answer it on their smartphone, the call can be routed to the company voicemail, not their personal voicemail,” explained Brackett. The service also allows businesses to text promotions and contact customers via SMS and MMS messages, as well as track the responses. Employees can monitor messages and set auto-responses with customized text from one account. The service facilitates resolving customer issues by enabling the search of text archives with a 360-degree view of customer interactions. When video conferencing is required, the service currently allows up to 1,000 people to participate and up to 25 to share a screen. Fox is very pleased not only with the ease of implementing the GoodPhone service but also its quality and reliability. “The phones shipped to our office were already programmed, so I just had to plug them in. They essentially handed me a turnkey system,” said Fox. Fox appreciates that the technology integrator is not just a phone company, which he believes has helped improve system dependINTELLIGENCE 22 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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