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Phone Systems, Posts, Telephone Systems

Do you have a Back Up Plan if your PRI/T-1 Fails?

Many of you may have a PRI or a T-1 circuit connected to your business telephone system as your main source of dial tone. A T-1 has 24 channels (trunks) and a PRI has 23 channels for voice communications. Each channel serves as a single telephone trunk/line and can conduct a call with the outside world; it is the same as having 23 or 24 separate phone lines. Unlike traditional analog (copper) lines, telephone numbers are not assigned to each channel. Going forward we will refer to both types of circuits as a PRI. PRO TIP: Contact Comtex for your Bergen County business telephone systems services. What happens if this PRI circuit goes down? What happens if this PRI circuit goes down? You lose your ability to make and receive calls. This can be disastrous to your bottom line because you have the potential to lose money and customers. There are several points of failure; the carrier’s central office, the cabling from the central office to your location, carrier provided equipment and your telephone system. If any of these points fail, callers will hear a ring with no answer or a fast busy. Even worse, they will not reach your office. The worst possible outcome is that the caller is impatient or thinks you are out of business and calls another vendor. There are some ways to minimize this potential business nightmare. First, you can install back up telephone lines from a different carrier that are different in form (technology); i.e. copper, FIOS, cable or SIP phone lines. This way if the PRI goes down, you still have alternative dial tone connected and working in your phone system. Once they are connected to your system, you have your PRI carrier program your PRI with direct trunk overflow (DTO). In the event of a PRI failure, all calls made to your main telephone number will automatically be forwarded to the backup lines in the phone system. In this scenario, the number of back up lines connected to the system will limit the number of incoming simultaneous calls. With DTO, there should be minimal disruption in service. Keep in mind that you may only receive as many calls as the number of backup lines in the system. If the number of incoming calls forwarded exceed the number of backup lines, the callers will hear a busy signal because there are no open lines to reach your telephone system. For example, if you have 4 backup lines in the system, the fifth incoming call cannot reach you phone system and you will not get that call. Typically, we suggest 4 backup lines because circuits are usually not down more than 1 hour. Please keep in mind that some carriers charge a monthly fee for DTO but it is well worth the cost if you want to ensure the continuity of your business. Another strategy to maximize the number of incoming calls received during a PRI outage is to have Direct Inward Dial (DID) numbers configured on your PRI. In addition to a company’s published main telephone number, a PRI circuit can provide a block of telephone numbers for calling a company. Much like assigning an email address to each employee, each DID serves as a dedicated telephone number assigned to an individual employee. It allows an outside caller to directly reach the employee’s extension without the assistance of an automated attendant or operator. For more information on DIDs, please see this blog. Once employees have assigned DIDs, the PRI carrier can program DTO for all of the DIDs. Upon a PRI failure, each DID is forwarded to the employee’s cell phone. While these calls will not be routed to the phone system, at least they will be answered by the intended recipient or the employee’s cell phone voice mail. Take note that not all carriers will provide DTO to multiple alternative telephone numbers. If they do, you should find out if there is an additional charge and whether it is automatically effectuated upon a PRI failure. Some carriers that offer this option may provide the service but it will not be automatic; the carrier may require the customer to visit a portal to initiate the call forward for each telephone number (DID). If you choose not to pay the monthly fee for DTO, you have the option to call the carrier when you realize the PRI is down. However, keep in mind that it may take a bit of time for you to realize the outage and then to reach the carrier to effectuate the call forward (DTO). Some carriers will not commit to implementing the call forward immediately, claiming it takes some time to process the request. If you already have DTO service on your PRI, we highly recommend a call to your PRI carrier to confirm the telephone number assigned for the DTO upon failure. We know of at least one client that was paying the monthly fee for DTO but the carrier failed to program the call forward telephone number in the DTO service. Unfortunately, this came to light when the PRI failed and they were not receiving the calls on the backup lines installed in the system. It is also imperative to confirm they have the correct telephone number for DTO. Take into consideration that there are carrier charges for DIDs and in most cases, DTO. In addition, there may also be equipment and/or labor charges from your telecom vendor to connect back up trunks in the system.  Please contact your carrier and telecom vendor to discuss these business continuity considerations.   Call us at 201-935-2000 to discuss your redundancy needs for your phone system if your PRI or T-1 fails. Take a look at Comtex Inc on the map below. Comtex is here for you to answer any questions you have.

Business Telephone Systems News, Posts, VoIP Technology News

PBX: 20 Tips to Optimize your Business Phone System, Part 2

Advanced PBX Features- Now that you know what your default PBX system is able to do, it is time to explore the extent of PBX’s versatility. In this section we will cover more advanced PBX features which when properly integrated will provide your company with the capability to track user locations, transfer voicemail messages to email accounts and accept VoIP calls. 8. Consolidation: One of the more popular advanced PBX features takes on the “unified messaging” role, bringing together all of your telecommunications devices into a single convenient system. “PBX can bring together your cell phones, analog phones, VoIP phones, email, voicemail, IM, chat, video calling and more.” The technology works by linking all of your office devices together, and messages you on the appropriate device based upon your availability. The PBX system might try your cell phone first, your office phone next, the conference room, or maybe all 3 at the same time, depending on your settings. Whatever the case, the PBX system knows how to get a hold of you, and you should use that capability to your company’s advantage. If your employees are on the road and need their cell phones to act like their office phone, your PBX can do it. PBX consolidation gives you the freedom to work wherever you see fit and still receive all the unique telephony features PBX has to offer including line extensions, conference calling, call forwarding, etc. If your company isn’t currently incorporating consolidation technology into the PBX system, it is losing significant time and money by having “out of office” equal “out of touch” when it comes to your employees. 9. Personnel Locator: After consolidating all of your PBX features into one unique system, you are on the way to having a fully-functional mobile workforce. But what happens when you need to know exactly where one of your employees is? Not to worry, PBX systems can keep track of where your employees last interacted with the system, data that will allow you to pinpoint their exact location. 10. Email Integration: Modern PBX systems have the ability to merge with email clients (such as Microsoft Outlook) and retrieve contact information on the various customers you are on the phone with. Once a call is received, the name and phone number of the customer is automatically matched with existing records in your email contact database and their complete customer profile is brought up on the screen. From there you can get a more thorough idea of who you’re dealing with and will know how to better serve their needs. PBX telephony also boasts the capability to transfer company employees’ voicemail messages to their company email account. The messages are sent in easy to access audio files and allow employees to store and manage all of their voice mailbox contents. 11. Total “Business Intelligence” Integration: If you’ve successfully integrated email into your PBX system why not take it a step further and integrate your entire business intelligence operation? PBX systems have the ability to communicate with your computer and the customer databases you keep on that computer. To merge the databases and PBX, simply take the call information from your customer, probe the database and presto — you now have all of that customer’s contact information, previous interactions, purchase history, etc. Properly incorporating business intelligence and your PBX will allow for more streamlined and targeted customer relations, as employees will immediately know background information about the customer, that customer’s history with the company, past issues they have had and whether they have been flagged as a particularly important or problematic client. One of the ways you can take advantage of this technology is by analyzing your customer’s purchasing records and determining what they’ll need next as the call takes place. At the same time the call is taking place, you can email the customer quotes about your latest products that are related to previous orders he or she has placed, as well as go over these new products during that same call. Thus, the integration of “real time” accessible business intelligence data will allow you not only to better serve your clients, but it will also allow you to predict which products they might be interested in and use the call as an opportunity to pitch those new products. 12. Call Routing: Advanced PBX functionality allows for calls to be routed based upon certain criteria including caller importance, length of wait, time of day, day of week, etc. For example, if the president of your company is calling for sales statistics it’s probably not a good idea to have him wait in the standard customer queue. Likewise, if someone is calling after certain departments are closed it’s probably better to patch them through to the operator rather than have them traverse 2 minutes worth of menus to find out the bad news. Just as with call holding, caller mapping is the key to an efficient call routing scheme. Unless you know all the variants of calls the your company receives, you cannot begin to create a PBX routing system that will properly treat all of those callers. 13. Analog vs. IP Phones: To provide the greatest range of flexibility, modern PBX systems are able to direct calls through both analog and IP based phones. Both types of calls have their cost and service advantages. Consequently, it is important to setup your PBX so that calls which are more cost-efficient through VoIP (many long-distance calls) are routed through it, while calls that would benefit from the quality of analog are directed through those lines. It is rare to find companies that over utilize VoIP calling. As a starting point, begin by examining your analog calling for inefficiencies, rather than the other way around. 14. IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS): To take your PBX system to the next level you should make sure it has the technology to provide IMS functionality. IMS allows users to send and receive multiple types of media across a

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