Home Office Telephony

Welcome to Home Office Telephony

Hi, there. Welcome to my blog! My name is Victoria Santiago and I created this space to share with the world my passion for telecommunications services, especially those designed for the home-based/micro business market. Feel free to peruse my posts. You will find lots of information that will help you choose the right phone system and services for your small business.

If you are in a hurry, I've created a Communications Resources page which lists my favorite products and services. Click here to go to my resources page. 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave me a comment or E-Mail me. Thank you for stopping by and come back again soon.   

Ode To Ringcentral

 

"Ringcentral, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways." Following are the reasons why I remain faithful to Ringcentral as my virtual phone system:

Their Call Controller software rocks! - This little piece of genius software turns your computer into Mission Control. It allows you to:

• Screen your calls by showing you the caller ID or playing the caller's name.

• Answer your call from your computer.

• If you decide not to answer, you can type up a quick text response which the system will convert into a message the caller hears.

• Send the caller immediately to voicemail with the click of a button and retrieve the call back while listening to the caller leave their message if you decide to take the call after all.

• Record incoming calls. I use this (with the caller's permission of course) when I'm doing phone consultations and I want to review what the client said at a later time.

• Integrate with Microsoft Outlook so all my Outlook contacts are loaded to my controller and the system recognizes my contacts numbers and displays their name.

• Fax electronic documents straight from my computer to the recipient.

Super simple web-based control panel – RC has the most robust and easy to navigate control panel. You can add and delete numbers and extensions, route your calls to your land line and/or cell phone, access your voicemails and faxes from any computer with internet access, record your greetings, view your call history real time and much, much more.

"Ring Me" Website Button – Allows my web visitors to call me without having to pick up the phone. Feel free to check mine out on my About Me page. You give the system your phone number and it will call you and then connect you to me.  

Flexible Caller ID Options – I can choose which number to display when I call out from my system (my toll free or my local number) which helps me keep my home number private. I can also choose which number I want to see when someone calls me – the caller's number or the number the caller dialed. For example, if you have multiple businesses each with its own phone number you might want to look at the caller Id and see which one of your businesses is getting a call rather than who is calling.   

And don't forget, they offer a 30 day trial with 60 minutes included so check them out. Click here for your free trial.

More Quirky Things About VoIP

To continue the never ending saga of my love/hate relationship with VoIP (see my previous post "Things I Hate About Voip") I have yet another complaint. I've been using Voip Your Life for a few months now and I've been pretty happy with their service. However, there is one issue I didn't really expect to have.

I'm always attending webinars and tele-classes to further my knowledge and expertise. A lot of these types of classes happen over teleconference bridges. I recently attended a marketing tele-class and when I dialed into the conference bridge the system started to behave very oddly. It was bringing up menus (ie "press 1 for help" etc), muting me and un-muting me and acting a bit psycho.

What I realized is that the bridge line was translating noise in my VoIP line into commands just as if I had pressed a button. I couldn't hear any noise on the line but the system was obviously picking it up. It doesn't happen with every teleconference bridge but when it does happen it is very annoying.

I ended up ordering the flat rate unlimited long distance plan from my local carrier that I had canceled when I got the VoIP line. I was hoping not to need a back up but it's evident that my bad luck with VoIP continues.

How about those of you who use Voip services, have you had the same experiences? Or am I the only one who's jinxed?