Ooma, Inc., a smart communications platform for businesses and consumers, announced Call Screening, Distinctive Ringtones and additional advanced capabilities for its Ooma Office business phone service.
Ooma Office named by PC Magazine in March as the Business Choice award winner for Best VoIP System for the tenth year in a row, delivers a curated set of capabilities that make small-to-medium-sized businesses more productive and efficient.
Designed from the ground up for ease of setup and use by non-phone experts, Ooma Office doesn’t require any long-term contracts and gives customers transparent pricing for three service plans: Ooma Office Essentials at $19.95 per user per month, Ooma Office Pro at $24.95 per user and Ooma Office Pro Plus at $29.95 per user (prices exclude taxes and fees).
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The new capabilities announced today are:
- Call Screening – A powerful tool for avoiding robocalls and unnecessary distractions, Call Screening answers incoming calls with a greeting that asks callers to record their name. The recipient’s phone then rings with an automated message and playback of the recorded name. The recipient can press 1 to accept the call or hang up to reject it. For rejected calls, the system can be set to transfer the caller to another number or allow the caller to leave a message.
- Distinctive Ringtones – A business Ring Group, such as a sales or customer service team, can be assigned a distinctive ringtone to give an audio cue whenever phones are ringing with a call to that group. This makes it easy for group members to instantly distinguish an incoming service call, for example, from a colleague or non-work call.
- Call Deflection to Text – When the Ooma Office Virtual Receptionist answers a call, this capability adds the option of sending the caller a pre-written text message. For example, a caller can press 3 to receive a text message with a link to the business’ website or to begin a text exchange with the customer support team.
- Call Leaderboard – Managers who supervise employees answering calls can view a leaderboard showing each team member’s total number of calls received and placed, average call duration, the number of incoming calls, the number of outgoing calls and more.
- Faxing from the Mobile App – The included Ooma Office mobile app can now send faxes of a document or photo on the user’s smartphone. Users can also view a list of recently sent faxes.
- Videoconferencing Enhancements – Ooma Meetings, the Ooma Office videoconferencing app, now allows users to preview how they look on camera without first having to share their image with the entire group. Users also have the option to enable noise suppression if they are working in a noisy environment. And users can now see a list of all upcoming meetings scheduled in their Google or Microsoft calendar and launch them with one click.
- Bulk Download of Recorded Calls – Multiple call recordings, up to one month’s worth, can be downloaded to the user’s computer in a single step. This is helpful when large numbers of recordings need to be retained for compliance purposes, order confirmation or training.
Distinctive Ringtones and Faxing from the Mobile App are available in all Ooma Office service plans – Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus. Call Leaderboard, Videoconferencing Enhancements and Bulk Download of Recorded Calls are available with the Pro and Pro Plus plans. Call Screening and Call Deflection to Text are available with Pro Plus.
“We’re always listening to our customers and expanding Ooma Office to help them be more productive,” said Dennis Peng, vice president of product management at Ooma. “The new capabilities we’re announcing today – added at no extra cost to customers – are intended to make Ooma Office even more valuable by providing additional tools for efficiently managing phone calls, texts, faxes and videoconferences.”
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