As you know, I am the end-user telephone trainer for New England Communications. Every training session is unique in its own way, since customers buy different telephones for their company. The sessions are also unique because each customer selects different programmable buttons for their telephones.

One feature that our customers have the option of adding to their IP Office telephones is visual voice mail. Assuming the customer has voice mail and they have an extra button available for programming, I highly recommend this feature. As opposed to dialing your voice mail, entering your password, then listening to the prompts in your voice mail box, you may get all the information you desire with just a click of a button. When visual voice mail is programmed onto your telephone, all you need to do is to press the button associated with this feature, put in your password, and you have now entered your voice mail box. On the display of your telephone, you will see four different options. These options include: Listen, Message, Greeting, and Password. To listen to any of your voice mails, you just press the button associated with the listen option, and you now have ability to listen to any new, old, or saved messages. Once you have listened to a message, the display on the telephone will prompt you on what to do next. You will have choices such as: save, delete, forward, etc. Again, to choose any of these, you may just press the button on the telephone corresponded with that option.

Rather than listening to prompts in a voice mail box, you can view the next steps required for you to take, by glancing at your telephone screen. Although it is a learning curve and requires a little hands-on training, this is a great way to save time getting your voice mails. Once people get the hang of how to use it, most prefer accessing voice mail this way.