| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
Core functionality you'll enjoy with all our phone systems | |
| Auto Answer and intercom | With Conversant you can set your phone system so calls are answered automatically and operators can go hands free. With the right hardware, our phone system will let you use your phones like intercoms, one-way or two-way, for paging, to make staff announcements or work as door-phones. Conversant lets you get more business value from your phone system. |
| Call Forwarding | Receive phone calls made to your work extension even when you're away from your desk. Forward calls to another destination such as your mobile, another work phone, home phone or to someone who can cover for you. This means your team will miss fewer calls and your callers can always get the person they need. With Conversant you can customise how calls are forwarded. By selecting 'Call Forwarding on Busy', you can ensure calls are transferred when the original extension dialled is engaged. Selecting 'Call Forwarding on Unavailable' will transfer the incoming call when there is no answer, and 'Unconditional Call Forwarding' routes all incoming calls to another destination. You get the flexibility you need right at your keyboard. |
| Call Hold | Grab a moment when you need it with Call Hold. You can interrupt a phone conversation and place a caller on hold at any time without ending the phone call. This allows you to talk with people in the room, or call someone else with a query, without the caller hearing. You might find it helpful to use this alongside Call Waiting, allowing you to accept a second call while the first is on hold. |
| Advanced Call Transfers | Save customers the time and hassle of calling back to reception, to ask for another extension, by transferring them to the person they need. With Conversant, you can transfer callers anywhere within the system, such as to another employee, to a queue or even to an outside phone number. Handshake calls to the new recipient, by briefing them before you transfer the caller, or transfer them unintroduced. With Conversant the choice is yours. |
| Call Waiting | Call Waiting makes sure you always catch your calls. If you're on the phone when a second call comes in, you will hear a beep alerting you to the new call. If you want to grab the new call, place the first caller on hold and switch over. You can switch between the calls as you please. When you finish one call and hang up, your phone will ring to remind you about the call still waiting. When you pick up the phone, the call will be waiting. |
| Caller ID | If you ever want to screen your calls or have the freedom to answer non-work calls in a more relaxed way, Caller ID lets you. Like your mobile phone, Caller ID shows you the number the call is from (unless the caller has that option blocked). To see the caller's number you'll need a phone with a display. |
| Blacklisting | Blacklisting lets you restrict calls from specified numbers, protecting your staff from prank or nuisance callers. When you keep your team happy they'll be more productive. |
| Direct Inward Dial (DID) | Direct Inward Dial (DID), also known as Direct Dial Inward (DDI), lets you allocate specific phone numbers to employees, teams or departments. Customers can then contact the people they want directly without having to go through a receptionist or automated telephone system. This boosts your team's efficiency and your customers' satisfaction. |
| Do not disturb | Up against a deadline? In the middle of an important discussion? When you don't want to be interrupted by phone calls, 'Do not Disturb' lets you mark your extension as unavailable. You can send your calls somewhere else instead - to a colleague, to voicemail or to a queue. Conversant puts you in control. |
| Message Waiting Indicator | Message Waiting Indicator alerts you to voicemail messages, letting you clear message straight away, without wasting time checking your voicemail 'just in case'. The alert you get will depend on your device and could be a stutter dial-tone, flashing light on the phone, or a periodic special ring. |
| Multiple line appearances | If some of your team are responsible for more than one business area, you can make it easy for them to handle calls well. Multiple Line Appearances lets you assign multiple numbers to specific employees, so they can distinguish between different calls and handle them accordingly. In addition, when calls come through reception or your Automated Attendant, the business area the customer is calling can be shown as part of the Caller ID or can be signalled by a different call tone. You might need a hand setting up your phone hardware for this. |
| Redial | Save time redialling - just press one or two keys to recall the most recent number you rang. A great time saver when you call the same number frequently. |
| Three Way Calling | Bring a third person into your phone calls with Three Way Calling. All three participants can talk and hear each other, it's great for group discussions and decisions. You might need a specific phone for this. |
| Voicemail | Voicemail ensures you always get your messages, wherever you are. Record a range of messages to play at different times: when you're busy, unavailable or away on holiday. Get message alerts and retrieve your messages through your desk phone, or remotely by phone, web or email. There's no limit to how many messages you can have waiting or ceiling on their size. So your voicemail box never gets full. |
| Voicemail to email | You can choose to have your voicemail messages sent to you by email, ensuring you never miss a call. Conversant can convert your callers' voicemail messages into sound files and email them to you. You can listen to the message from your computer. Invaluable when you're on the road. |
| Virtual Office | Set up multiple ‘virtual’ offices in any national or international location – for the price of a local number. This means your customers, whether in Queenstown or Quebec, will only pay their local calling rate to call you, and you will only pay one low fee per month. |
| Work Anywhere | If you want to let your team work from home, keep flexible hours and reduce overhead costs, Conversant makes it easy. Traditional PABX systems usually require all staff to be in a central office. Conversant's virtual phone systems give your employees, including call centre staff, the freedom to work anywhere and still appear to other employees and customers as if they are in the main office. And we do this without call forwarding - though we can do that too. Wherever there's an internet connection your team can use the phone just as if they were in the office. |
| The advantages of a hosted PABX service | |
| Cost predictability | Pay a fixed fee per extension per month and avoid surprise maintenance costs, breakage repairs and add-on license costs. Predictable monthly payments make your budgeting easy. |
| Economies of scale | We share the cost of the hosted PABX across many customers, so you get all the advantages of a sophisticated phone system at a fraction of the price. |
| Unlimited Scalability | With Conversant, you don’t have to choose how big and expensive a PABX to buy to accommodate what you might need one day. Our virtual phone systems lets you start as small as you want and grow to unlimited size, paying only for what you need. Add new extensions and services when you want them, on our website. You can scale your phone system up, or down, instantly, when it suits you. |
| Constantly monitored and fully managed | Save yourself the cost and worry of managing your own phone system. At Conversant we continually monitor and manage our PABX servers and other systems so you can concentrate on your business, confident your phones are working. |
| Pay for Use | Don't pay for a bigger phone system than you need. Our low monthly fees mean you only ever pay for what you use. You can scale your phone system up, or down, instantly, when it suits you. |
| Free Upgrades | We continually update our servers so you can benefit from new functionality. Your system will never date. You'll never be stuck with obsolete boxes or find yourself having to buy add-ons to stay up to date. As a Conversant customer you will always have a state of the art phone system at your fingertips. |
| High availability | Our systems are designed to be available all the time. We use world-class data centres to host the PABX and have built-in redundancy to ensure minimum down-time. You get a phone system you can rely on without the cost of standby servers, redundant network connectivity, or back-up power, because at Conversant we take care of all that for you. |
| Offsite backups | We keep backups of all your call data offisite, in several places, so even if there was a disaster in one site your data would still be secure and available when you need it. You can relax with Conversant. |
| General services | |
| Administrators | The Administrators function lets you define who can use your Conversant phone system and what functions they can carry out. This gives you control over your employee's access and functionality, based on their needs, expertise and training. |
| Broad device support | With Conversant, you have the flexibility of using the phone or other device that suits you best. Our phone systems support a wide range of devices from many different vendors, including hardware VOIP phones, compatible mobile phones, analogue telephony adaptors and software phones. Why get locked in to a solution from one vendor that makes changing expensive or hard, when you can choose the freedom of Conversant? |
| Easy web-based management | Because Conversant offer a hosted service, we do almost all of the management for you. You can quickly and easily set up your phone system online to suit you. By using any internet browser, you, or the Administrators you appoint, can oversee, change, and monitor all system functions. Your team can set up and manage the way their own extension numbers work, checking messages and setting their own preferences quickly, and easily, online. |
| Real-time calling information | Monitor calling activity in real-time, whenever you want with our web-based tool, accessible from any web browser. A range of reporting is available to help you analyse usage and maximise efficiency of your Conversant phone system. |
| Device Provisioning | Save yourself the time and hassle of manually configuring your phones. At Conversant, we make it quick and easy for you to automatically configure your phones or other supporting devices. We automatically provision a range of devices <link to list of devices we provision>, and you can choose whether to buy them from us or somewhere else. |
| Multi-codec | Our phone systems support multiple codecs, including G711, G729, ILBC, GSM. This allows you to match your equipment, quality requirements and available bandwidth to the appropriate codec giving you maximum flexibility. |
| Free inbound calls | Unlike some competitor services, with Conversant all inbound calls are free, even calls made to your international number. The only exception is calls made to your 0800 number. Save money by not paying for diversion charges or expensive "tie-lines" or other dedicated circuits. |
| Supported by Knowledgable Locals | When you contact us, you won't be answered by call centre staff who can't help you. You’ll be dealing with passionate professionals who can give you the answers you need, when you need them. |
| Core PABX features included with both C-Lite and C-Vox phone systems | |
| Automated Attendant | Whatever size your business, our C-Vox and C-Lite hosted PABX phone systems let you sound, to your callers, like a sophisticated and established organisation. With Automated Attendant, your calls can be answered by a ‘virtual’ receptionist with a customised recorded message. This can replace or support a receptionist, providing a back up or a permanent service.Every call will be routed to the right person, in the right department, at the right time. This means your customers will enjoy a better service, your team will be more productive and your business more profitable. You choose how the Automated Attendant routes your calls: - To a specific extension number/employee - To an ACD queue (your call is held in a queue and will be answered by the next available agent) - To a ring group (dial 1 for sales, 2 for support, etc.) - Allowing callers to choose a team member from a company directory, by first or last name - Creating entry to a conference call - Transfering callers to an extension with a recorded message, such as opening hours. |
| Short Digit Extension Dialling | With Short Digit Extension Dialling (or Abbreviated Dialling), your team can call each other using extension numbers, saving the time and hassle of dialling the full phone number. They don't even need to be in the office, so long as they are connected to your C-Vox or C-Lite virtual PABX. |
| System Recordings | Make sure your customers understand the status of their call or use your phone system to promote your products, services and offers. C-Vox and C-Lite let you record and update your own customised messages on a phone or your computer. And set up when your customers will hear them. For instance, when they are being transferred, on hold, waiting in a queue or using an IVR. Our easy system saves you the expense of external suppliers creating and loading your recordings. Conversant makes doing business more easy and affordable. |
| Advanced PABX features included exclusively with every C-Vox phone system (Not available with C-Lite) | |
| Call Park and Pickup | If the colleague you are trying to transfer a call to is already on the phone, you can place a call in a temporary holding area with Call Park. When your colleague is free, they can retrieve the call with Call Pickup. This saves customers having to call back and allows your team to get back to work. |
| Call Recording | Want to review customer conversations to help in team training? Would you like a record of agreements made over the phone? Call Recording allows you or your team to record both incoming and outgoing calls. You can then access the recordings securely online through the Conversant website. You may need to advise customers their calls are being recorded. |
| Callback | With Call Back from Conversant, you can call back someone who is ringing in. This can make sense where it costs you less than the caller is paying. For instance, you might ring back staff or customers calling you on mobiles, allowing you to take advantage of better outbound calling rates. Or rather than placing customers on hold you can easily call them back. |
| Caller ID-based routing | With C-Vox you can easily determine where calls from specified numbers are routed. You can automatically route top customers to their sales reps, your partner to your own extension or block calls from known telemarketers. With Conversant you can translate your business knowledge to improved efficiency, from your keyboard. |
| Company directory | Give your callers access to a directory of your team so they can choose who they want to talk to. When callers don't know an extension number, they can use their phone keypad to dial a person's name based on their first or last name. This frees up your receptionist and gives your callers more control. |
| Conference | C-Vox lets you slash conference call costs, making it even more affordable to bypass face-to-face meetings. With Conversant you can set up virtual meetings with many participants instantly and easily, whenever you want. The C-Vox system doesn't have any limits on the numbers of conferences you can hold at once, or the number of callers taking part, but your hardware might determine this. Conversant gives your business the freedom you need. |
| Direct Inward System Access (DISA) | DISA functionality lets you allow your team to get more value from your C-Vox PABX when they are out and about. Your team can place calls and make it appear as if they are in the office. They can pay what they would pay for the call if they were ringing from the office. And you can give them permission and a PIN number that will let them configure PABX options remotely. You and your people can enjoy the flexibility and control C-Vox offers, wherever you are. |
| Distinctive Ring | You can improve the way your team handle calls by setting ringtones for different callers or different types of caller. By knowing they type of call to expect your team can be better prepared to answer it, making them more effective and boosting your company's productivity. |
| Follow Me | With Conversant you control where calls go. You can set up exactly how you want the system to handle certain calls. For instance if one team member might be in a meeting or out of the office their calls can follow them to a meeting room or to their mobile. You can also choose to have calls sent automatically to multiple numbers until someone answers. |
| Inbound Routes | You can set up calls from different sources to be handled in different ways, maximising your efficiency and your customers' satisfaction. For instance, you could automatically have the system send international calls to your export or import team. |
| Music or information on hold | Sometimes your team might need to put a caller on hold. With Conversant it's easy to improve the holding experience with music or promotional messages. You provide the content. Your system will play it to your callers while they wait, making sure more of them stay on the line. |
| Queues | Conversant's virtual phone system includes generally expensive Automatic Call Distribution functionality - for free.You can set the system to send calls to team members based on flexible rules, including the other calls they've taken. For instance, who has taken the fewest calls, or who hasn't been on a call for the longest time.And you can manage call queuing efficiently - setting maximum waiting times before calls are sent to voicemail or alternate numbers. And telling callers how many people are ahead of them in the queue and how long they might have to wait to have their call answered.You can allow your team to log in for receiving calls and then log out at the end of their shift. You control the parameters for their call-readiness, such as allowing wrap-up time after one call is complete before another is presented.And for those busy times you can set up overflow queues to be handled exactly as you want.With C-Vox you can use your phone system to improve customer service and business efficiency - for no extra cost. |
| Ring Groups | Sometimes it doesn't matter who in a team answers a call, so long as it is answered. With Conversant you can set a group of people to receive calls as if they are sharing one extension. Calls can be presented to this ring group all at once or one after the other. Making sure your team can handle the call as quickly as possible. One popular use for ring groups is as secondary receptions. If the receptionist can't answer, any calls can easily be diverted to one or more alternate phones. |
| Pin Protection | You have full control over who can do what with your phone system. You can allocate PIN numbers to groups or individuals to restrict or allow access to functionality as you see fit. This protects you from the costs of inappropriate use. |
| Time Conditions | If you want your calls handled differently after hours or during holidays Conversant makes it easy. It's simple to set calls to go to voicemail, a mobile or a specific extension based on the time, day or date. |
| Virtual Extensions | In most systems, extension numbers are assigned to physical telephones. Employees have to be at their phones to receive calls. With Conversant virtual phone systems, each of your people has their own extension, whichever phone they are using. Your people let the system know which phone (or phones) they want calls routed to. Hot desking is easy with Conversant. With Conversant's virtual phone system, calls can be routed to any phone, anywhere in the world. Incoming business calls can be taken by employees who telecommute from home offices, or by those who work in branch offices, without the need for extra hardware, expensive tie lines, or complex system configuration and management. And employees can make calls from any of their phones too, just as if they were in the office. While employees can work from anywhere, the caller experience is unchanged. Callers still dial the main business number, they still hear your business's custom greeting, and they still dial the same extension number or ACD queue. Calls are then routed to the phones that employee is associated with. Our system's power gives your business the flexibility you need. |
All features available with VOIP desktop phones provided. Other devices may not support all features.