Communication plays a central role in today's business marketplace. Successful companies are able to stay in constant contact with their customers, employees, and vendors. The easiest way to ensure your business is able to communicate properly is to invest in a business phone service.

Many companies offering business phone services exist, and each of the packages provided by these companies can differ. Knowing which phone service features will help drive your company to greater success will help you select the service package best suited to meet your needs.

1. On-Hold Music

According to a study conducted by Research Now in 2012, the average person will spend between 10 and 13 minutes waiting on hold each week. Improving the time that your customers spend while waiting to speak with a representative from your company can help improve your odds of success.

Adding on-hold music to your business phone system can give customers something entertaining to listen to while they wait. On-hold music also has the potential to help calm a customer who is angry or irritated, helping to diffuse customer service problems before they begin.

2. Call Forwarding

As technology advances, more and more employees are becoming mobile. Whether this means that employees are working from home, traveling for meetings, or spending time in vehicles commuting between various locations, you need to have the ability to remain connected with mobile employees at all times.

A business phone service that offers call forwarding lets employees receive calls no matter where they might be. Incoming calls placed to an employee's office number can be forwarded automatically to a cell phone for pickup. Customers and vendors never need to know an employee's private number, but they will be able to reach an employee when assistance is needed.

3. Toll-Free Number

Most of today's successful companies conduct business on a national and international scale. If you have customers living in various states across the nation, you need to ensure that customers can easily and affordably contact your company regardless of their location.

Investing in a business phone service that allows you to establish a toll-free number can accomplish this goal. Toll-free numbers do not result in long-distance charges and they eliminate the need for your customers to remember an area code when placing a call to your company. You can establish different toll-free numbers for each of the departments within your company to help streamline national communication.

For more information about business phone services, contact a company like ACC Telecom.