Piatel.co.uk - Telephone Features

These telephone features are included in all basic packages however the virtual business and enterprise packages include additional features.

PiaTel Telephone Numbers
Your PiaTel number is unique to you and need not be shared with others. Your PiaTel number, apart from being used to make and receive calls, can also receive faxes, voicemails, host conference calls, transfer calls to any landline or mobile phone. Your number can even become an e-mail address.

PiaTel Freephone Numbers
All our PiaTel packages come with a 'freephone' (0800/0808) number. "Call us free" is a compelling message and removing the cost of calling demonstrates that you actively welcome contact with your customers. Your freephone number also has all the functionality as you personal PiaTel Number. To make calls, receive faxes, record messages etc.

PiaTel Virtual Numbers
PiaTel allows you to establish a Virtual Phone number wherever your friends, family, or even customers live. They can call you anytime for the price of a local call regardless of where you are, around the corner or a far-flung corner of the world, it makes no difference to PiaTel.
PiaTel’s Virtual Phone numbers are inexpensive secondary numbers that ring your primary PiaTel phone line. Just select a Virtual Phone number in one of over 3000 cities we serve, both nationally and internationally.

For example:
Let's say you live in London where your PiaTel number’s dialling code is 020. Your friend lives in New York and calls the Virtual Phone number you gave them. It’s a local New York number so they only pay for local call charges, but, it’s your 020 phone number that’s ringing. Your friend will certainly be happy to hear that there is an end to paying for international calls. No more excuses, you can chat for hours!
Virtual numbers are great for businesses too. You can now have a local presence in say New York, London, Paris or Sydney with Virtual Offices situated there. Your overseas customers would think they are calling your satellite offices in these countries, when in fact they would be ringing you in London, paying just local rates, not expensive international ones.

PiaTel Public Access Numbers
PiaTel provides a unique International Public Access Service throughout their global network. This service enables customers who, for example, might be temporarily away on a business trip or a holiday in Sydney, Australia. To ring home or the office in order to pick up messages in say London, but at local rates. All the customer needs to do is call a specific local number in Sydney to pickup their messages. Not only are they free of charge, you can then place calls to the UK without incurring any international charges, just local.

The International Public Access numbers are not only directly beneficial to all PiaTel subscribers, but also to non subscribers calling a PiaTel number, regardless of where in the world they are. This means that for businesses in London, the International Public Access service will allow their clients, friends and family worldwide to reach them from anywhere around the world just as if the call was placed from within London. We at PiaTel carry the call across the globe on PiaNet at zero cost to them! They just pay the local cost from their phone to the local exchange number that they rang to connect into our network. Business owners or family and friends will be able to conduct a conference call for as little as 3p per minute, with associates, friends and family in say Tokyo, Rio De Janeiro, New York and Montreal, while they're in London or Manchester but with no national or international charges. With over 3,000 locations globally, you certainly cannot go wrong with PiaTel.

Pia - Personal Information Assistant
PiaTel provides you with Pia, your very own virtual interactive voice response Personal Information Assistant. Pia becomes your smart speaking assistant, coordinating all your PiaTel functions with digital efficiency. All our features are individually tailored and effortlessly programmable at will from any computer or phone. This PiaTel service will allow any telephone to become someone’s virtual assistant. It’s very simple to use. The touch-tone activated prompts make even the most complex operations very easy. This service will answer your phone, screen the caller and allow voice mail etc. Pia, your virtual assistant will greet your caller with a menu of options when they call. Your virtual assistant also includes a special “Follow-Me” service, whereby your caller is forwarded to your home, office or mobile phone. No more missed calls while you were out, as Pia will deal with them accordingly.

PiaTel VoiceGram Features

•   VoiceGrams are interactive and personalised messages from you. They can be sent to any landline or mobile phone number in the world, interactively catching the response of the recipient of that call. This message can be scheduled for delivery up to one year in advance, and can be programmed for repeated calling until that person is reached and answers. The reply can be accessed from anywhere by phone, e-mail or Internet. This function is especially useful when sending out appointment confirmations, or making calls to different time zones.

•   As VoiceGrams can be scheduled for delivery for up to one year in advance, they become excellent tools for personal reminders. You can set it up to ring yourself for those appointments that you might easily forget such as hospital, dentist, or social and business appointments. They can be also used to remind you of important dates such as birthdays and wedding anniversaries. Finally, you’ll never be late in the morning again. You can schedule your phone to go off at the time you need to wake up. With repeated calling until you answer, you are bound to wake up!

•   Pia can be programmed by you to send out messages to an unlimited number of acquaintances at any pre-set time. Each message being individually personalised. Useful for all occasions, such as informing family and friends of births and parties etc. If the person receiving the VoiceGram is also a PiaTel Subscriber the cost of the VoiceGram is completely free for you.

•   VoiceGram broadcasting is a powerful marketing and educational tool. Surveys can be digitally recorded, sales can be made, orders submitted and questions interactively asked and answered.

Free Messages, Faxes and VoiceGrams - Pia to Pia
You can send free messages, faxes and VoiceGrams to any other PiaTel subscriber, worldwide. These types of calls are free and unlimited, to anywhere. That means, any local, national and international call.
All VoiceGram facilities are also free when broadcasting messages to another PiaTel subscriber. Pia will send messages to an unlimited number of PiaTel subscribers for free. Each message can be set up to be individually personalised and interactive.

PiaTel 'Calling Features'

Caller Announcement
Caller Announcement allows you to know who is calling you before deciding to answer the phone. If you’re not next to your phone when it rings, no problem Pia finds you and informs you who is waiting on hold… you can accept the call, send to voicemail, or forward the call to any number you want and much more. Other telecom providers state their caller display service will show you the name and phone number of the incoming caller. However, this only works if your phone has a display screen, have subscribed for the service and finally, the number is from a UK domestic call. Calls from ex-directory telephone numbers will not be displayed. Our PiaTel Caller Announcement service goes one better. It will always announce the name of the caller when you pick up the phone, giving you the chance to decide if you want to speak to the person calling you. With PiaTel you will always know who is calling, whether your phone has a display screen or not. You’ll always know whether or not the call is domestic or international and whether the number is listed or not.

Call Waiting
The Call Waiting function allows you whilst you are already on the phone, to be informed of who is waiting on hold for you, by announcing the caller’s name. Once you know who the caller is, you have several choices. You can either accept the call, placing your first call on hold, not accept the call, sending the caller to voicemail or forward the call to any number you want. This lets you control and prioritise who you spend time talking to. You can always listen to their message later if you decided not to speak to them now.

Quick Answer
Whilst your caller is waiting on hold, you can use the Quick Answer function to send them a quick message without connecting directly with them. This function is useful for occasions such as when you are on an important business call and suddenly your husband or wife phones and wants to speak to you. You can quickly interrupt the first call and tell your partner that you will call back in twenty minutes without them opening up a conversation. You can do this without the business caller ever knowing… Brilliant!

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Calling home has never been so simple

Call Screening
With the Caller Announcement and Call Waiting functions, you can now screen all your calls and decide on whether you want to accept them, send them to voicemail or forward the calls to another number. This screening function means you are always in control of who you want to speak to. With two or more simultaneous incoming calls you can prioritise who you’ll speak to first.

Follow Me Numbers

Don’t Chase Calls – Let Them Come To You
The Follow Me function means all your messages and calls are forwarded to the phone numbers you have chosen, regardless of where you are. These numbers can be either mobile phones or landline numbers. For example, if your work number rings and you’re not there, the call goes unanswered, but with the Follow Me service, the call will instantly ring your mobile, and if that goes unanswered, it will try your home number. You can change the numbers and method of call and message delivery instantly using any touch-tone telephone. You can even do it by following a few simple steps on the PiaTel website. You’re in complete control of how your calls are routed.
With Sequential Dialling, the Follow Me service will ring each number you specify in the exact order of your Follow Me List. If a number on the Follow Me List is not answered, the next number on the list will be dialled immediately.
You could even set up Ring Simultaneously. This function rings all the numbers in your Follow Me List simultaneously. The call will connect to the first phone that picks up from the list of numbers you provided.

Multiple calls Simultaneously
PiaTel has the ability to handle multiple simultaneous calls. Your caller will never get a busy signal. This is beneficial for businesses because If Company A doesn’t respond to a call fast enough; the customer is a phone call away from doing business with company B. An unanswered call represents a liability. You can have as many calls coming into your telephone as you can handle and all your calls will be picked up immediately.

Call Recording
Record up to 10 minutes of any incoming or outgoing call, conference call or Follow Me transferred call. Listen to your saved recording anytime by voicemail, either on your phone or by e-mail.

Call Transfer
Transfer your caller to any other person, anywhere, on any network, either mobile phone or landline. Your caller will hear music while waiting to be transferred to the person.

Call Divert
If you’re going out but still need to receive an important call, you can divert your PiaTel calls to any number, anywhere. This is especially useful if you want to divert your calls to your mobile phone, a colleague’s office or friend’s home.

Call Back
If you happen to be abroad and there are no international public access numbers in that area, don’t worry, as Pia’s Call back service allows you to activate a call back at a pre-set time to any number you wish globally. For example: you could activate your service in London to ring your hotel room’s telephone number in Rome, at a time when you will be there. If you don’t know your number until you get there, no problem, make one quick call and set your Pia to ring you back instantly. Once you pick up your phone, you can make as many calls as you want at much cheaper rates than the extortionate ones the hotel charges.

Music on-Hold
Your callers will be informed and entertained rather than frustrated whilst waiting for Pia to connect to you. There is nothing worse than being put on hold without really knowing if the person is coming back. Have you been cut off or are they taking too long? Our Music on Hold facility is really useful in situations when you’re dealing with a call and suddenly need to do something urgently like take another call, speak to someone or even answer the doorbell. You just put the caller on hold while you deal with the other matter, and all without ending the call. The caller knows they are still waiting because they can hear the music — reassuring them that their wait is not in vain.

Conference Calls
Forget 3-way calling, PiaTel’s conference calls can be used simply with up to 10 callers anywhere in the world, anytime. These conference calls are ideal for team meetings, negotiations, coaching and consultations etc. Your colleagues and friends can also join from any mobile or landline phone anywhere in the world. They don’t even need to be a PiaTel customer. If the calls involve other PiaTel customers, you have the option to decide whether you want to pick up their cost, share it or charge them in full.

You can hold a conference call with up to ten people to last as long as you like, any time you like. Once arranged, the conference call is open for you and your guests to enter. To arrange a conference call for more than 10 callers please contact customer services.

Get Instant Message Notification
Pia will notify you by either; landline or mobile phone, email or fax whenever new messages arrive. Don’t waste time logging on or calling the office to collect messages only to find there are no messages waiting. Pia will notify you for all message types. Even when you are on the move you can still keep in touch. You’ll know in an instant when the message arrived and what the caller’s number was (if available), so you can then decide the urgency of your response.

Multiple Greeting and Profiles
With PiaTel you can have multiple greetings and profiles, which will automatically greet your caller as required. i.e. Good morning, Good evening etc… taking into account the time of day. The greetings can be formal or informal as you wish, you just choose what you want for the time and date your want. Your Pia can be easily programmed to perform for different scenarios or profiles. For the professional touch we can produce Professional Personal Recordings for you. These are studio recorded to present your image professionally and consistently.

Multiple Language Facilities
Pia also provides the U.K.'s first nationwide unified communications platform with support for multiple languages. This multiple language support can be selected and configured by our individual customers to suit their own needs. This service allows individual customers the capability and flexibility to select the language used when answering their calls. At the moment you have two languages, English and Spanish. More will be added in the next few months, as Pia will be learning more and more languages as she expands her national coverage. These new languages will be automatically added to the list from which our customers or their callers will be able to select, using the menu options. Simple!
For example, a customer can have calls answered in English as, "You have reached the office of Mr. Garcia" or answered using Spanish, “Oficina Virtual de Sr. Garcia.” Customers can even select a menu approach in which Pia will answer the call by asking the caller to select the language they wish to hear.

Electronic Phonebooks
PiaTel allows you to create Phonebooks of phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses and other PiaTel numbers. You can rename each Phonebook as you wish, e.g. Family, Friends, Work, etc. For your convenience you can program contact “Speed Dial” numbers for use with all outgoing calls. You can send VoiceGrams, Fax-o-Grams, or internal messages to hundreds of people in one easy step. You can simply call, email or fax groups of people via a single message.

Easy Activation
A PiaTel account can be activated 24 hours a day, by phone or on the internet. The new account and phone number are instantaneously established in a paperless transaction. All future changes to your account are activated in a blink of an eye as we provide updates as an immediate, on demand service. Not like other telecom providers who first need to process your account then send you your equipment and contract in the post. All we need is your credit or debit card details, and your ready to go.