There are two objectives in any competition — getting ahead and staying ahead — and as anyone who has ever competed will attest, the latter is often more difficult. In the business world, market leaders have to keep one eye on their competition, who are looking to win back market share, and they must keep the other on the evolving their products or services to ensure they stay ahead of the curve. In addition, they must do both without losing sight of their existing customers and their needs. 

 

8x8, Inc., which provides its Packet8 hosted VoIP service to business and residential customers, is in that position now, having recently been named the most popular hosted VoIP provider among SMBs according to and AMI Partners report. The Packet8 Virtual Office hosted IP PBX service is already being used by more than 7,000 businesses in North America that have made the move to VoIP. To further establish its position in the hosted VoIP space, 8x8 has now added several new features to its already popular Virtual Office service, including Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook integration, overhead paging, and toll free fax numbers.

 

By integrating Virtual Office with Outlook, 8x8 (News - Alert) allows its users to associate their Outlook contacts with their Virtual Office extensions, making it easy to place and receive calls via their Outlook email client. Simply put, users can place calls by selecting the ‘call contact’ option for any contact with an associated number, which then signals the server to call the user’s desk phone. In addition,  incoming call details are displayed in a screen pop, just like incoming email messages are — calls from callers not in the user’s Outlook contacts display the incoming phone number.

 

The new toll-free numbers for Virtual Office fax extensions allow incoming faxes to be sent to the Virtual Office customer for free from anywhere. 8x8 offers two different pricing plans for this option, which makes it more convenient for customers and colleagues to send faxes. For a $4.99 monthly fee, the basic plan includes 100 inbound minutes, which each additional minutes charged at 4.5 cents; the Toll Free 1500 plan includes 1,500 minutes for $39.99 per month (additional minutes are billed at 2.9 cents per minute).

 

Many businesses also make considerable use of paging systems, for which 8x8 now offers an Overhead Paging Extension, and inexpensive option for adding a company-wide paging system to Virtual Office. The feature makes it simple to page users within a facility, including branch offices, using the existing Ethernet network. To implement the paging system, customers must invest $49.99 in hardware and $9.99 for service activation — other than that, there are no additional fees other than the monthly fees the company already pays for its VoIP service. The paging adapter is designed to seamlessly integrate with the customer’s existing zone paging system.

 

In addition to these three new features, Packet8 Virtual Office includes the standard communications features needed by businesses today — auto attendant, extension dialing, voice mail, conference bridge, and ring groups, and many more. In addition, being a hosted IP PBX (News - Alert) service, customers are not required to make a costly capital investment, nor do they need dedicated on-site technicians to handle system maintenance, making it an ideal solution for SMBs looking to benefit from today’s IP Communications opportunities