Is ShoreTel Best for your Business?

In the world of business phone systems, especially here in Tampa and Austin, we have many people calling in asking for a VoIP phone system for their company. There are many VoIP PBX products on the market today. These systems range from the tiny, 2-10 phone voice applications residing on routers to systems with capacities in the tens of thousands. Brands include household names such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Avaya all the way down to niche players like Grandstream, Zultys, or Star to Star. Legacy manufacturers are even getting in on the act- anybody from Samsung to Toshiba and Mitel have their VoIP enabled phone systems. After browsing our website, clients quickly see quickly that one of our flagship products is ShoreTel. Which naturally starts them asking why ShoreTel is the best VoIP product out there, or at least why we think so! Well, there are several reasons, and frankly, the main one for each company may be entirely different from another.

For instance, one of our larger ShoreTel PBX systems has well over 200 phones spread across 27 locations. They were very concerned with moves, adds, and changes, so ShoreTel Director was a major component of their purchasing cycle and concerns.  For a smaller company, that would be less of a concern as moves or changes may be rather limited. For them, however, it maybe the fact that ShoreTel has a seamless growth process, easily scaling from 2 up to 20,000 telephones. No forklift upgrades. Period.

Features are always at the top of everybody’s list as well. The good news- ShoreTel is packed with the standard telephone features that companies have built their business practices around, along with literally dozens of other included applications utilizing the VoIP backbone. So what features are there? Honestly, we couldn’t hope to list them all here. With that said, following is a breakdown of the telephone features (but not touching voicemail, hunt groups, trunk types, etc.)  included:

•  Answer
• Bridged call appearance
• Call barge in
• Call forward, busy
• Call forward, external
• Call forward, no answer
• Call hold
• Call join
• Call park/unpark
• Call pick up extension
• Call pick up group
• Call recording
• Call stack (1-16 calls)
• Call redirect
• Call transfer, blind
• Call transfer, consultative
• Call transfer, intercom
• Call transfer, mailbox
• Call transfer whisper
• Call waiting
• Caller ID name
• Caller ID number
• Caller ID blocking
• Conference (6-party)
• Conference blind
• Conference consultative
• Conference intercom
• Dial number (speed dial)
• Directory dialing
• Distinctive dial tone
• Distinctive ringing
• E911
• Group paging
• Handsfree
• Hang up
• Hold
• Hot key pad
• Hunt groups
• InstaDial
• Intercom
• Integrated voicemail
• Night bell
• Message waiting
• Missed call
• Multiple emergency numbers
• Multiple line appearance
• Music-on-hold
• Operator (“0”)
• On hold reminder ring
• Extension assignment
• Outbound caller ID
• Paging
• Park and page
• Paging extension in paging
• group
• Pick up night bell
• Priority paging
• Redial
• Ringdown
• Ring tone selection
• Ring tone personalization
• Send digits over call
• Silent monitor
• SIP
• Voicemail (“#”)
• Whisper page
• Whisper page mute

As you can see, the ShoreTel feature set is exhaustive, probably including things you are not ever aware that you need yet!

Contact CSM today to learn more about VoIP phone systems and ShoreTel in particular. Let’s talk!

The ShoreTel Family of VoIP Phones