Charleston Industries Phone System

Charleston Industries Phone System

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Charleston Industries Phone System

Wikipedia defines PBX (Private Branch Exchange) as a piece of equipment that connects phone calls and is owned by a private business (2005). According to Webopedia, "Most medium-sized and larger companies use a PBX because it's much less expensive than connecting an external telephone line to every telephone in the organization (2003)." Charleston Industries uses a PBX system for their telephone needs. This system is designed to take the place of individual lines for each extension needed. Using a PBX saves connecting all of a business's telephone extensions separately to the public telephone network. If each extension were connected individually to the public telephone network, each call going out or accessing another extension would have to be routed out to the public telephone network initially and then get routed back in to the company. This method of operation is much less efficient and cost effective than using a PBX system. This system also requires minimal management which is done by an outside company.

Charleston Industries has the PBX equipment installed on business premises and it handles all calls for the company. The box that handles the system is located near the incoming phone lines and it is monitored and administered by an outside company. There are two outside lines (trunk lines) that are connected and available for making and receiving calls through the public telephone network. In order to access an "outside line" the user must dial a 9 before dialing their telephone number.

There are 17 phone sets and extensions currently used with 25 extensions available for company use. Currently, we have 8 additional extensions available. Each user has a two digit extension for their phone set. In order to dial an extension, the handset is picked up and the two digit extension of the other individual they need to call is dialed. Each extension also has a voice mail box that automatically responds to a caller if the line is not picked up within a specific amount of rings. Each of these voice mail boxes can have customized voice mail greetings. Currently, we do not have anyone that can add extensions for us in-house, so when we need to add an extension, we call or provider who runs the appropriate lines and configures the phone set.

There are several features that are integrated into the PBX system via the phone sets. These features allow the system to provide more services to the company beyond just internal phone lines. The first feature, call transfer, allows calls that are picked up at one extension to be easily transferred to another extension if needed. Charleston Industries has a phone operator that answers all incoming calls and transfers them to the correct extension.

Speed dialing allows a phone set is setup with speed dialing functionality. Each phone set can utilize speed dialing functions which allows a user to dial a number with limited button pushing. All phones have been configured with our parent company phone numbers and speed dialing features set to dial them so each hand set is capable of dialing several departments as needed to our parent company.

Call forwarding, when setup at the extension, allows a call coming in to be automatically forwarded to another extension, voice mail, or an outside line. The call can also be set to forward if the line is busy. This feature is especially valuable if we have a sales person or customer service