Online Retailer Links Home Office Workers using Panasonic's SIP Cordless Phone System

In today's economy, it has become increasingly common for organizations of all sizes to have a distributed workforce, where a large percentage of employees work from remote or home offices. While this model provides a number of benefits, it also has the propensity to make an organization look less unified and professional if they don't have a capable communication system in place.

Show Dog Store, an Arizona-based online retailer and distributor of grooming and pet-care products, recently found itself in this exact situation, where an incoming caller would be received by a live receptionist and then be given the cell phone number of service rep on the other side of the country.

"This didn’t give the professional appearance we wanted not to mention being terribly inefficient," Show Dog Store President Larry Bowe noted in a recent case study. "Even when the call did get routed to my or another team member’s cell phone, because we’re in home offices, we’d sometimes miss the call if we were in another room.”

So Bowe went out to the market to find a cost-effective, scalable and reliable way to link home-office workers using a single, centralized phone system, and the Panasonic SIP Cordless Phone System is what he came away with.

With the SIP end points system in place, the retailer was able to enhance its communication efficiency while also providing service reps with all the next-generation functionality of big-business systems. Best of all, the Panasonic (News - Alert) SIP Cordless Phone System required only a minimal investment and moderate, consolidated monthly payments.

These low costs are made possible by the fact that the system is combined with virtual PBX (News - Alert) service from Vocalocity, which hosts everything offsite. This means that customers like Show Dog Store get all the next-gen communication features like dial-by-name directory, multiple extensions, automatic call forwarding to mobile devices, one-touch transfer and conferencing – all at fixed monthly pricing plans.

In addition, the online retailer now maintains an automated single point of contact, giving callers the appearance of a unified, cohesive organization.

"We liked the idea of going cordless for a great price," said Bowe. "We got lots of phones for not a lot of money because the cordless handsets are relatively inexpensive. And because we have handsets throughout our home offices, reps never miss a call. All in all, it’s a perfect solution."

Click here for more information on Panasonic's full lineup of SIP phones.

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Carrie Schmelkin