I forgot to mention one of the best features of the system for us - it e-mails all voicemail messages to the mailbox owner with attached .wav files. So we set up a support mailbox in our IVR so folks can open support incidences from the phone system. The phone system e-mails the message to our ticketing and issue management system, opening it up as a new ticket automatically, and notifying the tech staff that there's a new ticket in the queue!
That was something that, try as we might, we just couldn't get the human answering service to do consistently, and issues would slip through the cracks because the notifications were often sent to the wrong address. Rubin On Thu, 2009-12-10 at 09:55 -0500, Rubin Bennett wrote: > We ended up moving to SIP trunks here (3 people). > > Our setup was: > 1 FairPoint business line @ $130-150/mo incl long distance > 1 Vongage (yuck) @ $32/mo unmetered > 1 Contact Voicemail/ Answering service @ $85/mo > Total: $267/mo > > We moved our phone service to SIP trunks, and got 4 @ $30/mo for a > $120/mo phone bill (unmetered) meaning that we can have up to 4 > simultaneous phone calls going at ones, plus our fax rings in on a > different number. We can also put Dial in Direct (DiD) on the trunks > for some minimal charge like $2/DiD number. > > We took the extra $140 and used it to buy a Digium system and SIP phones > for ~$3,000 - in about 20 months it's paid off and we start seeing > savings. We opted for the non-free phone PBX appliance and higher end > Aastra phones, so our hardware cost was higher than it could have been - > Trixbox is free and runs on cheap PC hardware. > > The upshot is that we've been using the system for a year and it's been > fantastic - once you can easily transfer calls between extensions, have > real menus for callers to navigate when you can't answer the phone, and > all of the other features of a proper PBX, you'll wonder how you lived > without them for so long :) > > > Rubin > > On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 19:47 -0500, Stanley Brinkerhoff wrote: > > All, > > > > What do small companies (5 people, 8 people max within 3 years) use > > these days for single site PBX systems? Something that uses POTS > > lines instead of special IP phones would be highly preferable from > > both a cost perspective as well as a pure simplicity perspective. > > Something off the shelf and solid state ideally. > > > > Stan -- Rubin Bennett rbTechnologies, LLC 80 Carleton Boulevard East Montpelier, VT 05651 (802)223-4448 http://thatitguy.com "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Voltaire, Essay on Tolerance French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
