Applying for a phone line for your business is not easy. Telephone companies will offer you different packages with all sorts of premiums, solutions and extensive features, at different rates and special prices ? it's enough to drive you mad. To hold confusion off, here are some important call solutions and features offered by telecoms and why you should use them.



Time/Date Plan ? This is a great feature that enables you to set the hours in which you are to receive calls at a particular time; for example, on a weekday, all calls from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm go to your office, and then redirect your calls to your home on the weekend or your grandmother's house, especially if you're expecting an important deal to come through.

Divert Plan ? Whether or not you've scheduled your calls to go to a particular phone line, you may use the divert plan to divert to another phone if the main line that you use is busy or if no one is around to answer the call. This function can usually be set for the phone to automatically divert calls after three or more rings, or however many rings you wish, that go unanswered. With a divert plan, you may divert your calls to two or three back-up phones, or to your voicemail. Most telephone companies will offer different solutions to check your voicemail, such as the next popular feature?

Voicemail to email ? Smart telecoms offer the voicemail to email feature to accompany the Time/Date plan and the Divert plan, by letting you choose to receive calls through voicemail and then automatically mailing the message as a wav file to your specified email account, waiting until you're ready to hear it.

Web-based management ? With the help of current technology, you will be able to change the set up of your phone line and package through the Internet, accessible at any time, in real time. Web management is considered a special feature as it is not offered by many companies, nor available in low-cost phone line packages.

Virtual receptionist ? This is like having a live secretary answering your calls and accommodating your customer. Of course, it is just a professional-sounding voice recording that welcomes the caller to your business or firm and gives choices of which department the caller would like to get in touch with, or what service the caller would like to make use of. The customer then selects the department or service of choice using the keypad.

Call Queue ? You must have come across this function while placing your own call to a company; your call is answered by a voice recording that lets you know that all operators are busy at the moment and places you on hold. Whilst 'holding,' music will play to fill the waiting vacuum. Normally, the call is sent across the call centre to ensure that your call will be answered immediately. However, if there is no one to receive the call, the call gets "stacked," waiting to run through the call centre once again until someone is able to receive your call. You have the option with what type of music to play during the call queue, or you may even play marketing messages, advertising or even special offers.

Some phone packages will have all of these, others will have them in different combinations. Now you're clear on which features you would like to have, choosing a telephone package for your business should now be a lot simpler.