Posts Tagged ‘IP PBX’

More Talk, Less Cost for This Local Real Estate Office!

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
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Remax Texas Heritage

RE/MAX Texas Heritage, in Bryan/College Station, recently upgraded their office telephone system with our help.

Their old system was a proprietary digital based system using analogue telephone lines (you know – the type you get from Verizon or AT&T that date back to Alexander Graham Bell) and special phones, all of which increased the cost of the system and increasing the number of lines or handsets when needed.

This old system was also limited by its storage, especially voicemails, and configuration of different routes.

John Byers and Brady Brittain, the two new owners of RE/MAX Texas Heritage, came to us to help solve their problem.

“We did not want to be restricted in what we could do with the new system now and in the future” said Brady.

John also had the vision of having their Agents be able to work from anywhere and still have access to the resources in the office. “I want to be able to allow our agents to be ‘Virtual Agents’ and work from anywhere where they can be connected to the office” he said.

The Solution

Given those requirements and the directive to also “cut costs” we looked at the old system and realized it was more cost effective to totally replace it.

Their new system was a Windows based IP PBX system, Cisco IP handsets, softphones for virtual agents and when mobile and Voice Over IP (VOIP) based telephone lines.

Under FCC regulations anyone is allowed to port their existing numbers from their old carrier to a new carrier, and our process makes it very simple – just a signed Local Number Port (LNP) authorization (a 1 page document) and a copy of the front page of your last bill, and we take care of the rest.

VOIP brings major cost savings to businesses like RE/MAX Texas Heritage. When switched over to VOIP most of our customers save in the region of 80% on their monthly bills!

How is this possible?

Well unlike a traditional phone line where one call means 1 physical wire, VOIP comes over your internet connection. Just as many users can view many web based applications at the same time over 1 internet connection, you can receive many VOIP calls at the same time over 1 internet connection.

As you don’t have to add physical wires each time then you won’t incur those extra monthly costs.

Also as no physical wires are involved you can have as many numbers as you want for little extra cost.

RE/MAX Texas Heritage can take 8 concurrent external calls on their system but has around 30 phone numbers – we will explain why in a minute.

Phone numbers (also known as DID’s) are $1 per month. And the VOIP lines start at $12.75 per month.  Compare that with analogue lines which average $50+ per month per line.  30 numbers would have cost them around $1,500 before they make a call! Compared to the (approximately) $200 per month they currently pay with VOIP, the savings soon add up.

Most of our customers also remark how “clear the line is compared to the old one” when we switch them over to VOIP, in the same way that CD’s and MP3’s are clearer than the old vinyl and tapes (remember those?) for music.

Additional Features

In addition to the cheaper, clearer calls, RE/MAX Texas Heritage was also able to make use of all the additional features that comes with the IP PBX.

They now have an unlimited amount of extensions, so they can add or remove extensions at any time. This is especially useful for setting up “dummy” extensions to be able to have more control over an incoming call and then forwarding it based on some rules you have (such as to a cell phone) without having to buy a physical phone.

There is also unlimited voicemail storage. As the PBX is Windows based (RE/MAX has theirs on a Windows 7 PC) then all storage is on a hard disk.  It is very easy and inexpensive to upgrade that disk or add a new one.

As it is Windows based, voicemail is an audio file which can be listened to on the phone, via a web browser or even emailed to the email address associated with the extension. This is great for RE/MAX Texas Heritage Agents, who can now get their voicemail as soon as a message is left, especially when not in the office.  Even on their cell phone!

The PBX also has a built in fax server. This receives a fax and converts it to a PDF and emails it to the extension’s email address. This is why RE/MAX Texas Heritage has those extra numbers and how they are the only Real Estate office in the area with “Virtual Agents”. Every agent has their own personal fax number – essential when dealing with contracts, offers and inspections all day – which has been configured by John and Brady to forward to their email address.

RE/MAX Texas Heritage also made use of the many different configurations of Digital Assistants, Ring Groups, Queues and dummy extensions that are available in their PBX system, not only for their Agents & Customers, but also for their Property Management side of the business. To provide the best emergency maintenance services (e.g. plumber) to the tenants of the properties they manage, the system will now route the tenant through to the correct maintenance person no matter what time of night it is so the emergency is dealt with immediately, without having to leave a message or call another number.

“We believe we are the only property management company in the area that offers this immediate ‘after-hours-direct-to-maintenance-contractor’ service” said John. “In situations when there is a water leak, or no electricity for the A/C with children in the house, time is critical for our tenants and this service saves valuable time”.

If you would like to read more about how RE/MAX Texas Heritage saved money and increased productivity through their new system then download our free eBook here. For more information on RE/MAX Texas Heritage or if you are looking to buy, sell or rent a property, call them on 979-846-4500. For more information on VOIP systems, call us on 979-985-5301 or visit our main site here

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Start the year by reviewing your phone costs

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Many businesses are looking for ways to cut costs in this economy.  One way is to look at your telephone costs. On average we save our customers between 50% to 85%.  How? Voice Over IP (VOIP).

Now before you all click away, we don’t mean Vonage or Magic Jack or those other inferior products (though we don’t have a problem with home users using them – they just are not suited for businesses).  And VOIP quality has improved immensely in the last 12 to 18 months.

We are talking about an IP based PBX system linked to a dedicated SIP trunk phone line(s).  Everything goes through your network and out over the internet.  With this type of system it is important that you understand a different type of concept.  A phone number is no longer dedicated to a phone line.  In traditional wired systems that most of you use if you want a 2nd, 3rd or similar number then you had to have another phone line put in and pay for it.  With VOIP you don’t, you just add another number (in our case it would cost you $1 per month extra).

And you don’t have to have that phone number tied to your local prefix as you do with traditional systems!  So if you are in Raleigh, North Carolina and have customers in Los Angeles then you can add yourself a local L.A prefix number and it will ring your office at no extra cost to you. This will save your customers money because they can make local free calls to you on the other side of the continent.

The other advantage (and we make heavy use of this ourselves) is for marketing.  Lets say we have 5 yellow pages ads and want to track them. Then we get 5 numbers ($5 per month) and put one in each ad.  By monitoring the call logs we can see which ad or which book is working for us.  Can you do this for $5?

So, now you are wondering how can you have all these numbers and how do you get more than one call at a time? The trick is in how VOIP Sip Trunk providers work.  A SIP trunk is how you make or receive external calls via a SIP Trunk provider.  You connect your PBX over the internet to the provider and make a secure connection between the two (don’t worry this would be configuredwhen you set up your PBX and is then automatic). You then contract and pay for the number of Concurrent Call Services (CCS) you wish to have.  So if you have an office of 10 employees and you work out that you usually have a maximum of 4 on the phone at any one time then you contract for 4 CCS’.  Of you course you can simply and easily request to upgrade or downgrade at any time.

Now you may want to give each one of them their own phone number, and with some PBX’s (especially our preferred one that we use) you can also give them a dedicated fax number (as it can receive faxes and then convert them to pdf and email to the person). So that would be 20 numbers and only 4 CCS’. So if your employees are on 4 external (whether it was dialed out or it rang in) calls then the next caller would get a busy tone – regardless of which number was called or which caller was on the phone.  You don’t need 20 lines as you would do with your old provider you just need the maximum you think would be in use at any one time.

And how much do these lines cost?  Well our preferred provider gives us two types – an unlimited local or an unlimited nationwide.  The local starts from $12.99 per CCS per month and the nationwide from $29.99 per CCS per month.  But the long distance calls are about 2.3c per minute for local calls, which means you would have to be making around 2500 long distance calls per month before you would consider moving to the unlimited.  We find most businesses spend around $15 per month (including calls) per CCS.  And as we said $1 per month for extra incoming phone numbers.  You don’t need these – you could have just one number and 4 CCS’.  When the first person calls your number it rings your PBX.  Then when a second person rings, it again rings your PBX (which you have programmed how you want these multiple calls handled) and so on until you run out of CCS’.

So if you are looking to save money this year – start with your antiquated telephony and also increase your marketing $ by tracking different campaigns with a $1 phone number.

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Posted in Best Practices, Business, Hardware, Marketing | 17 Comments »