Upgrade to hosted VoIP phone system from BT Featureline

Why upgrade from BT Featureline to Hosted VoIP?

	Inbound Call Handling Queue An inbound telephone queuing system is a standard feature in all our hosted VoIP phone systems and is not supplied in a BT Featuerline system. After your custom company welcome message, this feature will route inbound calls to all available extensions. If all your lines are engaged, then the calls will be held until a line becomes available. Whilst on hold, held callers will be notified as to what their position is in the queue, and can listen to pre-recorded message from you. At any stage they can press 1 to leave a voicemail
	Call Breakout If you want to give callers the option or transfer to voicemail during hold, or another line (even external to your system), you can supply options for them to press at any time. You can also setup out of hours messages and rules on your hosted VoIP phone system to handle calls differently and certain times. Again this is not supplied with a BT Featureline system.
	Auto Attendants If you have different departments, or run different businesses in one location, adding an auto attendant can be a massive benefit. A hosted VoIP auto attendant allows callers to be directed to different hunt groups depending on what option they selected from the IVR. This can vastly increase customer service and reduce hold time and is not a service that can be found with a BT Featureline legacy system.
	Call Pickup & Transfer You can use your hosted VoIP phone system to pickup other ringing lines within your system, and transfer calls to other extensions when required. You can even transfer calls to numbers outside your phone system, such as to a mobile phone. You can do this mid-call, or press divert on your phone if you are leaving the office. This can also be done from your web portal.
	Keep Your BT Featureline Numbers You can keep all your current BT Featureline phone numbers with your Saffwood hosted VoIP phone system. We'll have your phone system live on your desk then transfer your phone numbers accross with no downtime and no hassle allowing you to run your business.
	No Expensive Equipment All the expensive equipment is hosted by Saffwood Communications which means costs are kept to a minimum. Unlike a BT Featureline systen, you only need to buy your handsets, and with over 400 makes and models to choose from, we'll have the perfect solution for you. With per second billing (rather than whole minutes) and no call connection fees, you'll be able to save money and improve how your business communicates within days of placing your order.
	Click To Dial Your hosted VoIP system can also use Click to Dial funcationality to make calls directly from your CRM or workflow system. This can vastly improve productivity, morale and reduce miss-dial errors helping you to boost profits.
	Moving Business If your moving business outside your current postcode exchange area with any analogue system, including BT Featureline, then you will be able to keep your current phone numbers with our hosted phone system. Call our experts today and we'll handle the entire process for you so it's once less stress when you move. With our business telephone moving service, there's no downtime on your service.
	Numbering Options We can add 01, 02 and 08 numbers in a matter of hours to your hosted VoIP phone system. All these numbers can route directly to your phone system and can give you a local or national presence anywhere in the UK. 0845 numbers are only £1.00 per month unlike BT Featureline which charges £10.00 per month.
	Outlook & CRM Integration Integrate your VoIP phone system with MS Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013 to allow click and dial functionality as well as well as inbound caller recognition.

Key Features

	Client phone features		System features
	Call forward, hold, park, pickup		Call recording (always on / on demand)
	Call Now call-back button for email & web sites		Call recording searchable web database
	Call transfer (blind, assisted)		Call queueing
	Call screening		Local queue agent
	Call routing		Remote queue agent (via PSTN)
	Call waiting		Hunt groups
	Call forking to 2nd, 3rd, 4th phone		Auto attendant
	Find me follow me		Interactive voice response (IVR)
	Smartphone integration		Call API control
	Intercom and paging		Multi-party conferencing rooms
	Ad-hoc conferencing		Instant messaging with Jabber
	Unified messaging		Live call monitoring
	Tannoy System		Sound database for voice prompts, moh
	Feature codes		Advanced call reporting
	Web portal for call settings		Click to dial from CRM
	Call reporting		Group voicemail
	IM and presence support		Calling cards
	FAX to email		Prepaid / postpaid billing
	Call-Me-Back for low cost international calls
	Customisable voice prompts		Admin features
	Time of day routing		Web admin interface
	DID numbers		Tiered permissions
	Outbound call rules		Multi-level web access
	Caller ID control		Multi-tenancy
	SIP phone and softphone support		Brandable web portal
			Call reporting
			Number porting
			Auto-provisioning of extensions
			API control using soap

The best alternative to BT Featureline

	Experience Saffwood understands what it takes to deliver best in class hosted VoIP phone system service with traffic profiles that are attractive to carriers. You can confidently reduce costs by using a VoIP phone without sacrificing on call quality.		Infrastructure Saffwood Communications privately owned infrastructure crosses six UK Gold data centres, with data crossing five Tier-1 carriers. So your VoIP and hosted phone system is reliable, crystal clear, and always available with no downtime.
	Quality Saffwood uses its years of business experience to react to the things that you need from your telecoms. Every product is developed to the highest standards, creating feature-rich services that deliver tangible value and results.		Support When you need help, you can depend on friendly, practical advice from Saffwood. Unlimited support and training is included in our monthly service fee as well as dedicatedd account management.

What BT Featureline customers say about our VoIP phone systems

In Page BT Featureline Blog

Why is BT Featureline being phased out?

BT Featureline is being phased out by BT in light of more modern, feature rich technologies. You can read about the old BT Featureline system on BT's website here. Featureline works by requiring users to dial 9 for an outside line. The reason this must be done is that dialler 9 from the system connects the featureline service to an analogue PBX. This PBX allows most of the limited features that the system offers.

As a fixed line service, featureline is prone to downtime and local errors, hardware faults and degradation. If the system experiences a local fault, an engineer visit will be required which can take up to 7 days unless you pay extra for a engineering contract. This issue is placing more and more strain and BT's overloaded engineering network.

Hosted VoIP phone systems from Saffwood Communications offer to remove all the issues that BT featureline customer face, reduce costs and at the same time offer far more features and value for money. With a hosted VoIP phone system, you can add lines and extensions in minutes not weeks, change number routing, call queues, hunt groups and voicemails from your web portal. This is simple not an options with a BT featureline system.

How do I migrate from BT Featureline?

Moving from Featureline to Saffwood is simple and handled by us! We simply send you your new phones that you put on your desk next to your current BT phones. Place a temporary call diversion from your BT mainline to our phone system. We then apply for your phone numbers from BT, and they are transferred withour any downtime. You can then throw away or sell your old BT phones.

Is your system cheaper than BT Featureline?

A Saffwood hosted VoIP phone system is considerably cheaper than a BT Featureline system for several reasons. The first is line rental. BT Featureline rental is between £15.50 - £17.80 depending on the number of handsets you have chosen. A Saffwood hosted VoIP phone system only charges £12.99 per line and with additional extensions only £4.99. These prices are monthly. As well as a line rental saving, the call charges with a Saffwood phone system is much lower than a BT Featureline service.

Price Comparisons

With BT, call charges are made up of two elements: cost per minute for making phone calls, and a call connection charge. A call connection charge is a set amount that is charged as soon as a call connections (even voicemail). With BT Featureline a call to a mobile carries a cost of 9p connection.

The next charge is the pence per minute. The two items here are the call cost per minute, and the billing duration. With BT, the charge is up to the whole minute, so a call of 10 seconds will be billed at 1 minute. 1 minute and 1 second would be billed to 2 minutes. Saffwood only bills in 10 second increments. A 10 second call with BT Featureline to a mobile would be 20p. With Saffwood this would be 1.5p.

BT Featureline - Case Study

GDC are a fast growing business who used a 5 handset BT Featureline phone system to make and receive their calls. The challenge was with staffing rising from 8 to 21 in a very quick period of time, the cost of using BT would be two high. As well as the timescale to increase the number of handsets, BT could not supply the funcationality that GDC required on their Featureline service. This included inbound call queues, branded pre-connection greetings and bespoke hunt groups. There was an importnat requirement to see which users were handling calls, and if any customers where hanging up before being connected.

Saffwoods Solution was our integrated hosted VoIP phone system to replace the Featureline service. The implementation process was to setup the phone system before making the application to BT to port the telephone number. A little know fax is that BT class number ranges on featureline as an "equinox range". This is a phantom range that only BT hold and the full range is no always portable. As this was the case for GDC, we advised that only the main telephone number could be ported and that this featureline would need to be downgraded to a single line before hand. Once this was done, an instant call forward was placed from the single line from BT onto the VoIP phone system from Saffwood. This means that whilst Saffwood waited for the port, all calls into the business were still being piped onto the phone system, irrespective as to the volume.

Once ported, the BT featureline service was terminated and Saffwood Communications took over the phone system. This ensured a smooth migration process with no downtime or business disruption.

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