SwitchboardFREE

As mentioned before, SwitchboardFREE delivers a whole slew of features for free. These include On-hold music, an auto attendant that forwards calls to multiple departments based on the user’s choices, time of day routing, call queuing, disaster recovery, call groups, call screening, as well as custom prompts, to tailor the telephony image that is portrayed to the caller. These can all be applied to incoming calls, and are considered part of the incoming call management feature set made available at no cost.

Among the premium features you can add as needed, and at an additional reasonable cost include:

• Call answering – This feature uses real people to answer all your calls or just the ones you miss, so you can respond to callers at a time that better suits you. SwitchboardFREE’s dedicated team will record and email you the callers name, contact information as well as some details about their needs.
• Audio branding – SwitchboardFREE can create your professional telephony image by crafting high-quality audio messages and content for your callers to hear. This feature includes quality production, script writing, music on hold, and professional voice actors.
• Call recording – To safeguard your customers as well as your employees, call recording services can be used to help resolve conflicts, keep legal records, monitor staff performance, as well as to train call agents on what to do and what not to do.
• Callback SMS – If you miss a call, SwitchboardFREE will automatically send the caller a customized text message from you with useful information for the caller. You can include a short apology, a message explaining that you’ll call them back, and links to your website or an email address.
• Fax to email – This feature allows you to receive faxes directly to your email inbox, allowing you to see them on the run while saving paper, toner, and other consumables.
• Multiple reporting features – SwitchboardFREE delivers a whole series of reporting features that let you see at a glance the performance of your system, as well as your call agents, including department reviews, missed call lists, and unique caller lists.

One of the most important features that SwitchboardFREE delivers to its customers is a comprehensive set of integrations with some of the most popular business productivity suites on the market. These include Capsule CRM, Pipedrive CRM and HubSpot CRM are among the Customer Resource Management systems that can be directly incorporated into your SwitchboardFREE system to maintain customer contact books to log calls and correspond them with particular customers in your databases.

In addition, integrations with other tools include Google Sheets, Microsoft To-Do, Salesforce, Slack, and Trello. In all cases, each call can be made to create a series of customized entries in each of these tools, making the management of follow-up activities as well as auditing much easier. All of this is made possible using Webhooks, which allows your SwitchboardFREE account top share information with reporting and database systems. Webhooks is included in all SwitchboardFREE accounts at no cost.

End users of the service have repeatedly reported that the service provided by SwitchboardFREE is easy to use. The Android and iOS apps are simple to install and quite intuitive to use for both making and receiving calls. From a system administrator’s point of view, the management of calls, call redirection, call distribution, and missed call control is also quite simple to set up and modify as needed. Some users have reported that some of the interfaces are a bit “clunky” sometimes, but the SwitchboardFREE team is always available to hear your suggestions to improve their product.

Hardware phones are not necessary, although they can be purchased and sent to you ready to be used. And best of all, whether you are a software user, desk phone user, or a system administrator, you don’t need any specialized ICT knowledge to set everything up!