I’ve been working on adapting my commercial office building for virtual office space (perfect for home based businesses that need a place to meet clients) and stumbled upon CallButler.com.
It’s a bit difficult to describe exactly what it is, but in a nutshell, you can use a VOIP or SkypeIn number as your main company line and then an auto-attendant which you program through the CallButler software rings out the other extensions (any public, landline or mobile phone).
It also has a neat scripting feature will allows you to setup customer interaction such as setting an appointment.
You must check out the site even though it leaves a bit of information up in the air. Visit http://CallButler.com
Short list of features includes:
- »Get a business number in minutes, instead of giving out your home or mobile number.
- »Take customer calls 24×365 and automatically answer common questions in multiple languages.
- »Transfer callers to people on VoIP, mobile, and land-based telephones.
- »Give callers access to a Dial-By-Name directory of extensions.
- »Play hold music for your callers while CallButler finds you at one of your telephone numbers.
- »Have your own voicemail system with Email and Outlook integration.
- »Integrate your phone system with databases and other applications.
Long-
It's been a couple of weeks since this posting and was wondering if you gave call butler at try and what your opinion was.
Ken
Ken,
Since I had discovered CallButler, I decided it wasn't quite the solution I was looking for. That said, it's quite the feature rich tool. One of the only drawbacks (which I'm still trying to confirm) is that every "extension" must have an actual number to ring to, which means I couldn't use an IP phone the way I had envisioned. I've downloaded it and played around with the interface which is beautiful but I'll let you know if I truly implement it. Thanks for the comment. Incidentally, check my recent post about Asterisk/Trixbox.
I've been using CallButler's PBX for months without a single hitch. You do NOT need an actual number to ring to, CallButler supports extensions with IP phones. Additionally, CallButler recently went open source http://www.codeplex.com/callbutler. This is great news as it not only allows you to get this PBX for free but will accelerate development of additional features and add-ons. I have a number of .NET developers who have fallen in love with CallButler and have been creating some pretty cool add-on solutions. Keep an eye on CallButler as a potential Asterisk killer!