Setting up a small phone system with "standard" features
vvol:
I'm new here and considering a small setup with 3x OB1032 devices.
We have a Google Voice number and would like to setup a simple phone system that:
1. answers automatically a call
2. has a recording that mentions: "For sales, press 1, for support press 2, etc"
3. When user dials one of those options, connect to a particular device extension.
This is pretty basic stuff, but, I'm not sure if OBiTalk can do that.
Thanks, in advance for any help.
SteveInWA:
Google Voice can't do that.
Use a paid service, such as Callcentric or voip.ms, instead. Either service will allow you to set up extensions for each phone, and set up an IVR to prompt the caller and direct calls. Either service can be easily configured on the OBi IP phones, using pre-configured templates for those companies on the OBiTALK web portal.
Note: the OBi 1000 series are near end-of-life. I suggest you instead buy either OBi 2182 units or Poly VVX x50 units.
vvol:
Hi Steve
Thank you so much for your reply.
I'm getting more acquainted with the technologies and nomenclature.
It seems like I could achieve what I want by:
1. Pointing our GV to Calcentric
2. Enable IVR with custom recordings on one of their paid services
3. Direct extensions selected by the callers to OBi2182s that we would get instead of OBi1032s...
Does that sound like would achieve what we are looking for?
Thank you,
Sheilon
SteveInWA:
There is no point whatsoever in kludging together Google Voice and Callcentric to do this. Just do it all with Callcentric. You'll be able to have customers call one Callcentric phone number, which can then prompt callers to press DTMF keys to send their call to whatever extension or department name you wish. You'll assign unique extension numbers for each phone. For example. a prompt "Press 1 for sales" could result in ringing extension 101, or "Press 2 for service" could result in ringing extension 102. Each extension can be configured to send the company's main phone number as their caller ID on outbound calls, or you can pay for as many individual phone numbers (DIDs) as you need. You can easily add, change or delete any of this at any time, as your business changes.
I've seen so many people come here to this forum over the years, who think they should spend time fiddling with the cheapest possible solution to save a few dollars, only to realize the folly of that effort later. Focus on whatever your core competency is in business. Invest in tools that are reliable and don't require you to be an expert in something that doesn't make any money for your business.
The mostly-free version of Google Voice is not intended nor recommended for business use. Things break. There is no direct customer service from Google. Google now offers a business-class version of Google Voice for G Suite customers. There are two monthly fees: one fee for each G Suite "seat" or user, and a separate per-seat fee for adding Google Voice. Its IVR isn't very flexible yet, but improvements are on the roadmap.
If you're curious, here's more information: https://cloud.google.com/voice/
vvol:
I absolutely agree with you. It is very counter productive to be "fiddling" with configurations and I so do not want to.
But, please understand that when I got started looking for this I had no idea on what to look for. If you do not know the vocabulary, the features, etc is hard to know what to even look for. (Took me 2 days to get to learn the term IVR)
Anyhow, my reasoning to keep the GV is mostly because we have a vanity number and would love to keep it. But, I guess we could transfer to Calcentric. The other advantage are the ways GV makes it easy to access VM, translation to text, etc.
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