Call forwarding probably isn’t the first thing you think of when you think of Business VoIP, but it’s an essential function for an enterprise phone system. With multiple employees and extensions, it is important that organizations have a way to quickly transfer calls between them internally. More than that, calls can be forwarded to cell phones, home phones, or any phone you like to ensure that you can pick up your calls wherever you are. In emergency situations, forwarding calls allows a business to set up shop in an alternate safe location and keep operations going from there. There are many ways to configure forwarding settings and some providers offer Internet portals or smartphone apps to allow you to manage your settings instantly as you need to. Visual voicemail is another handy feature, as this transcribes messages into text that is emailed to you. This lets you check your messages quickly wherever you are and is kind of a forwarding service for messages. Some other essential features include conference calls and automated attendant.

Another basic but key feature of Business VoIP is extensions. Whether you are running a large enterprise or a small business, you probably have multiple employees who all need a personal number. However, it can be expensive to give them all a personal line. A way around this is by assigning employees extensions and then only having as many lines as you expect to have simultaneous calls. This gives each employee their own contact number, while keeping down the overall cost. This truly is an essential feature. What else is essential? Toll free numbers are important, especially when dealing with customers outside your local area. Fax support is also important despite the move away from fax machines. While analog fax lines are available, you may find it better to go with an e-faxing feature that delivers faxes to your computer.

These features may not sound like the most glamorous of functions, but they are key to your business and its continued growth and survival. Whether your office consists of ten, one hundred, or more people, some features are simply required to keep up with the modern world. Business VoIP delivers all of these essential features in addition to many more specialized functions and it does it all at a much lower cost than comparative solutions. When things start to seem overwhelming, it is helpful to focus on the basics and that’s where this solution will have your back.