sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Answering service equipment

a customer wants to set up a system where they can represent multiple companies and have a live receptionist answer the phone with the appropriate greeting based on the number dialed by the calling party.

What type of equipment do I need. Is PRI/DNIS the only way to go or is there a low tech solution. We cannot simply buy a POTS line for every company we represent.

Well you have to think what costed will be. Most voicemail systems can handle more than one company now. But if the customer feels he will only take a couple of calls per company POTS line would be fine. If he'll be taking alot of calls for each company you might want a t-1 using DNIS or They want alot of DID's go with a PRI.

You have to fine out what he want's to send and how much volume he needs.

T-1's And PRI's can get expensive

He has to have some type of phone system.

[This message has been edited by tony3866 (edited September 02, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by tony3866 (edited September 02, 2004).]

We are (were) a 24hr answering service as well. We used Startel equipment here at our office. Most run of the mill phone systems aren't built to answer and perform the functions of an answering service. Here is a link that has several manufacturers of answering service equipment. https://www.connectionsmagazine.com/BG/listbuy.html We have only dealt with Startel so I really could'nt provide much info about any of the others but it may be a good place to start. We used to have 7 DID trunks that the customers would forward to but recently converted to a T/PRI and 800 numbers. All the customers can forward to the same 800 number and we can tell who the call is for using the DNIS digits and caller ID info. It's pretty sharp, not only do we get the # that the end user dialed, we get his caller ID as well. For example Bob calls DR Jones who has his line forwarded to our 800 number, the Startel can tell the call is for Dr Jones, puts that on the screen and automaticly puts Bobs number in the message field of the sreen as well. It really depends on how big the A/S is going to be. You have 3 busy times a day, Check in, Lunch, Check out. What my boss did was bought other answering services in the other time zones than ours, so it pretty much stayed busy all the time until around 2am. When one "rush" was over it would kick in another time zone. Hope this helps.

how many different customers is he looking at.

please post equipment for sale in the appropriate forum.



[This message has been edited by Z-man (edited November 08, 2004).]