Feature 1 – Call Park for VoIP Phone Systems

Getting to know your VoIP System: One Feature at a Time

What is Call Park for VoIP phone systems?

The Call Park feature (also known as system hold) enables you to answer a call on one VoIP phone and continue the call on another IP phone: which can be located at another office location, or anywhere else in the world! It’s especially a great feature for small businesses and medium businesses.

 

How does Call Park Benefit you?

The Call Park feature is similar to placing a call on hold, except the call is on your network. This allows a user to retrieve the call from any other phone in your VoIP network. It’s a quick and simple way for users to hand off a call to a coworker. A call is parked and un-parked with only two button presses: one press to park the call and then another press to un-park it. This saves users time and reduces interruptions to their workflow.
 

How do I use Park on my cloud based PBX system?

It’s easy!

1. While you’re on the call, just press the button labeled “park” on your phone. The button will begin to flash, in red, slowly. The same button will flash on all of your other VoIP phones.
2. To answer the call, on another IP phone, just lift up the handset/receiver and press the flashing red button. You’ll then be connected with that call.

Practical Applications of the Park Feature

1. The park feature works great in offices where employees are sitting close together. An example of this is in a medical office, where you may have several clerks in the reception area. Picture a fast-paced medical office where clerks need to quickly move calls between each other. For this, call parking is the best option. Here’s an example of how it can be used: Let’s say a call comes in and Amy answers it. It turns out that the call is for John. No problem. Amy can press the park button on her phone and turn to John to tell him that there’s a call waiting for him on park. John then picks up his phone, presses the park button and be connected to the call.
2. Another great use of park is in an environment where employees are floating around. One such place is in a warehouse environment. In a warehouse, certain employees (like the warehouse manager) may be at any place in the warehouse. Accordingly, the person who takes the call, has no idea which extension to transfer it to, since they don’t know where the person is at the moment. To work with this situation, the operator can answer the call, place it on park and send a page* for the employee to pick up the call on park. The employee hears the page, walks over the nearest phone and presses the “park button” to answer it.
*we’ll be discussing paging in our next article.

Helpful tips:

1. If you press the park button and then realize that you still need to speak to the caller, then just lift up the receiver and press the park button once again. You’ll be reconnected with the caller.
2. Multiple park buttons can exist on a phone. We label, and refer to them as: Park 1, Park 2, Park 3 and so on.

Check back next week to learn about the VoIP Paging feature.