Features

Every business has unique telecommunication needs. For this reason, we will complete a site visit to see what features will most benefit your company. We offer an advanced array of features created by our in-house software developement team. Don't see one you want? Just give us a call. We would love to to work with you to meet your needs.

Because we are local, your features are easy to manage. We are always on hand to add new features or update your current configuration. This can usualy be done over the phone. When more is required, we are always available for a free site visit.

Feature Summary

Voicemail-to-Email:     Never miss a voicemail message with our Voicemail-to-Email feature. Every voicemail is forwarded directly to your email INBOX, playable on all modern smartphones, or directly from any email client.


Visual Voicemail:     No need to call your voicemail number and suffer through the time wasting prompts. Our cloud-based platform allows you to check your voicemail from anywhere, including an online visual voicemail app.


Auto Attendant & Interactive Voice Response (IVR):     These powerful features support a completely configurable menu system. The caller may "Press 1 for Tech Support, 2 for Sales ..." Pressing '1' may go to another menu, place the caller in the tech support queue, ring phones all in the tech department, forward to a cell phone or ... just about anything you may desire.


Call Screening:     Provides special handling for calls from priority customers, or block unwanted calls.


Call Transfer - Blind     The caller is placed 'on hold' and listens to music (or a custom message) while the call is transferred to another extension, voicemail, an auto-attendant or to any outside number.


Call Transfer - Announced:     Similar to the 'blind' transfer, except that the transferring staff member may talk privately with party to which the call would be transferred before actually transferring the call.


Call Forwarding:     Calls may be forwarded if busy, unavailable, always, or only during certain periods of time. Forwarded calls may go to another extension, voicemail, an automated attendant or any outside phone number.


Cell Phone Integration:     Calls may be forwarded or transfered to any outside phone number, including cell phones, and transfered back again.


Local Numbers:     We have local numbers in 98% of the US local markets.


Toll Free Numbers:     Toll free numbers are available with great rates.


Conference Bridge:     Most conference calls have only 3 participants. Our Conference Bridge can handle many more participants (there is no defined limit). Each participants dials into a special extension and who may speak is configurable.


Call Logs:     Every call is logged, incoming, outgoing, local and long distance. You have instant access to call records as soon as a call is completed. Quickly return 'un-answered' calls even if the caller does not leave a voicemail message. You can also monitor the effectiveness of each print ad.


Ad Tracking:     Determining the response a print ad (newspaper, magazine, etc) generates is often a challenge. With a unique phone number placed in each ad and by monitoring the Call Logs the response for each ad can be determined. Advertising budgets can then be adjusted for maximum effectiveness. The savings can easily exceed the phone system cost!


Direct Phone Numbers:     Each staff member can have his own outside number that rings directly to his desk. Other business or department numbers can ring multiple extensions in series or simultaneously, or go to an auto-attendant.


Call Manager:     The Call Manager Interface shows the state of all active calls, along those just entering the system. You will know who is calling before any phone rings. It also gives each staff member direct control over when and to where his calls are delivered. Calls to staff extensions can ring multiple (other) extensions or outside lines (including cell phones) in series or simultaneously or go to voicemail.


Flexible Open Hours:     Set the normal hours of operation for the business and/or each department and control the handling of after-hours calls; play a message, route to voicemail or alert staff if the call is urgent. Temporarily set your business to be open or closed as special events arise.


Call Parking:     Call Parking is our version of 'on hold', only better. Calls can be parked and un-parked from any phone (even standard and cell phones), can be transfered to and from any phone, and you are not limited to the number of 'phone lines' allocated to your business.


Ring Groups:     Multiple extensions, and even outside numbers, can be rung in series and simultaneously. First one to answer gets the call.


Last Call Return:     The phone number of the last caller is temporarily saved and the call may be easily returned.


Do Not Disturb:     A system phone will ring busy whenever set to 'Do Not Disturb'.


Music-on-Hold:     Callers on hold may listen to music of your choice, or a custom message promoting your goods or services.


Speed Dialing:     Frequently dialed phone numbers can be saved and dialed by pressing a button or dialing a short sequence.


Virtual PBX:     Because modern phone systems are computer based you will not have a big black box in the back room. Neither will you have the expense of that black box. What you will have is far more features, no obsolence issues and far less cost. And because your phone system is running from servers in multiple data centers you will have automatic backup, and the ability to have an extension anywhere there is an Internet connection.


Remote Office:     If you have remote office it will literally be part of the same phone system. All call handling operations between offices miles apart will work just as if the remote office phones were located in the next room.

Telecommute / Home Office:     Staff members may work from home (sick child) or even on vacation (ugh!) as if they are at their desk in the next room. No need to have callers to dial a personal phone number and voicemail messages will not be 'lost' in a staff member's personal cell phone voicemail.

Quality of Service (QoS):     IP phone calls use very little bandwidth, about as much as a dialup modem. But they do require an Internet connection with low packet loss and low latency, aka QoS. The number one reason for problems in an IP phone system is lack of QoS. In over 10 years working with IP phone systems the vast majority of problems we have encountered and solved have involved QoS on the 'last mile' of a client's Internet connection or the client's LAN. We have developed sophisticated monitoring methods to identify the problems and program our routers to ensure that voice traffic has low latency by giving it priority over all other Internet traffic.

Fail-Safe Router:     A Fail-Safe Router is vital for any business that must be connected to the Internet to be 'in business'. Besides providing QoS, our Fail-Safe Router actively watches multiple upstream Internet connections and automatically switches traffic away from a failed connection and onto a working connection.

Custom Features:     As with any major purchase, you will often not know if it will truly meet your needs until you have used it for a while and then tried to modify it to do what you _really_ want it to do. Unfortunately it is sometimes discovered too late that a very important (for you) capability is missing and that the seller can not or will not make any changes.

With the Phone Essence in-house programming staff that will not be a problem you will encounter. We wrote significant portions of the software that runs our systems and are both willing and capable of implementing custom features that may be critical to your operations.