Cloud communications being the latest trend in the telecom market, has made almost every organization move to the cloud for their business communication services. While they offer businesses a feature-rich communications solution with increased flexibility and mobile-optimized workflow, they are far cheaper than traditional on-site PBX. Alongside cost-saving benefits, cloud telephony comes with productivity advantages as well.
With organizations deploying cloud communication solutions in full force, the numbers of its service providers are increasing rapidly. Thus, customers have a plethora of alternatives to pick from. However, deploying a business phone system is not something you can flip too often. So, it is vital to have the right cloud communication solution implemented.
So, if you are making a move to cloud communications, we have one of the leading cloud communications and collaboration solution providers reviewed here.
RingCentral: An Award-Winning Cloud Communications Provider
RingCentral is the sole specimen of what most companies foresee from a full-featured cloud PBX solution. Right from faxing, video conferencing, and custom application integration, to supporting Artificial Intelligence, RingCentral includes everything.
An Overview of RingCentral’s Features & Functionalities
1. Phone System
When you log in to your RingCentral account, this is what you will see:
It has an intuitive dashboard with functionalities like Edit Business Hours, Edit Company Call Handling & Greetings, Set Caller ID, and Publish Company Info to Directory Assistance on the go. Moreover, it also provides links to some of its tutorials for better user understanding.
Under the Phone System, you will get a list of functions that will lead you to different features and settings.
Here, the information related to Company Address, Caller ID Name, and Directory Assistance can be inserted.
Caller ID Name refers to the name you want to get displayed on the called party’s device when a call is made from your main company phone number. This helps you create a professional presence.
Directory Assistance publishes your business details in the National Local Directory Assistance. Thus, your company shows up in local searches, and your potential customers can easily locate your business.
The Main Company Number that connects callers to auto-receptionists and Main Fax Number, which enables your customers to send faxes, appear here.
You can also view the assigned & unassigned numbers, add more numbers, and forward calls to your RingCentral account. It also lets you determine all the numbers that have been transferred from your previous provider (if any) to RingCentral. This also includes your international numbers and vanity numbers.
With features like Common Phones, RingCentral offers Hot Desking, i.e., your users can log in to a shared RingCentral desk phone remotely and access all the functionalities as on their personal phone – be it their extension, voicemail, saved settings, etc. Hence, your team can work from anywhere and at any time.
RingCentral enables you to create your auto-receptionist. You can personalize the settings for single-level and multi-level users and have effective call management. Here, you can do the following:
1. Company Hours
With RingCentral, you can choose how to handle the incoming calls by selecting any of the given options – 24 hours / 7 days a week or set custom business working hours.
2. IVR
Here, you can customize company greetings for business hours and after business hours. This doesn’t make your customers feel ignored when you cannot receive their call. Nevertheless, you can also create answering rules for special routing, in case you are on a holiday, lunch break, or for other purposes. Additionally, the facility to develop IVR menus is simply a cherry on the cake.
3. Dial-by-Name Directory
In your RingCentral account, you will have all your extensions in the dial-by-name directory by default. If there are some extensions that you do not want to be searchable, you can exclude them. Furthermore, you can define the search criteria either by first name or last name.
4. Call Recording
This is one of the quintessential features of any business phone system. You can have this setting turn on on-demand or automatically record calls depending on your business requirements.
5. Time Zone
When your business deals with global clients, the time zone holds prime importance. So, an administrator of the RingCentral account is given the power to set the time zone and time format for different accounts to enhance their customer service.
With RingCentral, you can create groups of specific users or extensions to increase the efficiency and productivity of your team.
1. Call Queues
It represents a group of users that receive queue calls to be answered by the next available representative of the group. This ensures that the caller is connected with the right employee.
2. Paging
This feature enables one-way real-time broadcasting. Thus, announcements can be made on multiple desk phones or paging devices at a time. It is especially useful for the hospital, retail, and warehouse industries.
3. Shared Lines
With this functionality, RingCentral users can leverage the advantage of answering calls made on one phone number from up to 16 phones. Hence, it assures none of your customer calls get missed.
4. Park Locations
As the name suggests, this feature enables a specific group of users to put a call on hold and continue the conversation from another device. The park locations are seen only to people added in that group.
5. Call Monitoring
This is another vital feature of cloud telephony. With it, managers or certain authorized users can monitor another extension’s call in real-time. This helps train new employees, assist agents in crucial times, and monitor their performance.
This feature set empowers an administrator to access the phone details of any user extension. It displays an extension’s phone’s device name & its serial number. The admin can also gauge if the device is online or offline. Also, he can quickly determine if the phone assigned is a User Phone, Common Phone, or an Unassigned Phone.
Users or extensions added in emergency calling groups will receive a notification through text message or an email whenever anyone in the RingCentral account dials 911. However, 911 notifications are for the US lines.
2. Users
This section enables the administrator to define various user roles, assign them extensions, and control what the users can do within the system. This setting can differ based on their job function. Whenever a new user gets added to the account, Standard (International) is assigned to him/her by default. The admin can amend the settings manually. Moreover, admin can create user groups under this tab.
3. Meetings
RingCentral meetings give you the power to video conference and web share. This means it enables you to conduct face-to-face meetings in HD and lets you share your desktop screen or documents from anywhere at any time. It also encompasses an option to chat while in the meeting and access drawing tools to mark up or highlight points on the shared documents.
You can even integrate calendar and schedule meetings right from Outlook, Google, or iCal. RingCentral allows you to bridge meetings for about 24 hours.
4. Analytics
When you deploy any software or business phone system, the most crucial element you will require is Analytics and Reporting. RingCentral provides you with a plethora of reports to help you make informed business decisions. You can download and save these reports for future use. Different reports that you can avail include,
Here, you can have an overview of the active users across your organization, the number of users that are enabled within the specific RingCentral account, number of active users in a given timeframe, type of device used by users, and their usage frequency.
You can sort the reports message, call, and meeting-wise.
You can have reports generated for all the company numbers you own under your RingCentral account. It showcases a range of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to offer you accurate data for inbound calls, number of calls answered or missed, number of calls put on hold, average call handling time, and average call hold time.
You can generate this report daily, for the past 7 days, the current month, last month, and so on.
It provides administrators with a quick overview of the overall usage of meetings within their organization. They can also use this report to analyze the issues for occurred meetings and determine the account-wide usage data.
This report enables you to study the performance of each unit of your business – be it users, calls, or call queues.
You can apply targeted filters and KPIs to evaluate the performance user, queue, and call wise. Similar to the above ones, this, too, lets you generate a report for the period you want.
As the name suggests, this report type lets you anticipate real-time information on the global health of your business phone system and actively monitor call quality issues. Right from ISPs, endpoints, and networks to top geo IP locations, it gives you a quick snapshot of your call quality.
Again, you can have this report generated for different genres like Extensions, Calls, and MOS Performance.
5. Call Log
Here, you can view the complete record of incoming and outgoing calls. This also includes the faxes received on the company’s number and extensions. By default, RingCentral saves this data on your account for a year or until you delete them. You can download the call log and deliver the same to designated email addresses if required.
RingCentral enables you to sort the Call Log in Simple and Detailed view.
Call Log – Simple View
Call Log – Detailed View
Furthermore, you can select particular contact and view his/her call log. You can view call logs for different time intervals as and when required.
Wrapping Up
With its impeccable feature set, RingCentral has grown from a lesser-known brand to one that’s on top-of-mind for everyone who is looking for cloud communication solutions. Besides the functionalities mentioned above and several third-party integrations, RingCentral provides ample reasons to justify why prominent businesses choose to deploy it as their main communication platform.
You can learn more about RingCentral from its website or its SoftwareSuggest Profile Page.
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