From the perspective of a Call Center Quality Assurance Specialist.

If you are a business who is not concerned about Quality Assurance for their call center, or if cost is an immediate issue, then this is a great, affordable option for you with some awesome features (silent monitor, silent coaching, call barging) that some other business VOIP systems don't allow/offer (note: costs may be an issue right away, but it can be more costly to have to switch your businesses entire VOIP system later). If you're concerned about the quality of your customer service or sales reps for your call center, or plan to grow big enough to have the need for a Quality Assurance department, it would be wise to look into other options that will streamline that department and work in tandem with your customer service/sales telephony system.

Pros

This product has a lot of great features that make it worthwhile to businesses:

- the lowest price on the market (they guarantee the lowest price for their service)
- option to "barge" calls (3-way the call without being transferred in)
- option to silent monitor reps (monitor the reps with your phone on mute)
- option to silent coach reps (talk to or coach your reps without the customer hearing)
- see who is not on the phone, on a call, or has their phone set to do not disturb/busy/etc.

Cons

Mono recordings for calls; this is especially limiting for my job function (Call Center Quality Assurance), as to transcribe conversations you need dual stereo recordings to be able to differentiate your customer service rep from the consumer/customer. It is also such an old platform that it's difficult to find any 3rd Party Quality Assurance programs that are compatible with daily monitoring of our businesses customer service/sales reps.

Easy to Use Phone System and Cost Effective

Pros

I found this product to have a user-friendly interface when managing the phones in our organization. What I liked the most about the product is the ease in knowing which phone blocks are available for use, as well as the number of phone numbers available in that specific block. Additionally (unlike Cisco Call Manager) it shows the full phone number. This is VERY useful if you are forced to have different call blocks with different prefixes. Not to mention, the call communicator for each user was AMAZING. We could easily make calls to other extensions (or outside numbers) from our desktop using the communicator. Also, if you wanted to call someone in your organization, it will indicate if the person is available (green) or on a call (red). Also great for our call center that had a call queue available.

Cons

Nothing that I could think of that I liked least about the product. I think this is a very user friendly interface and we had no complaints when using.

Complex Implementation - Low Key Day-to-Day Maintenance

Pros

We were lacking quite a bit with our prior phone system. So the transition to shoretel was much needed. I was involved with the RFP and pricing discussion with a multitude of vendors. In all cases, Shoretel offered the greatest amount of features, including integration with our CRM (Dynamics) all while having the lowest price point. As the Director of HR, I am able to act as system admin with zero technical background, which is also greatly appreciated.

Cons

Reporting analytics are limited. Requires integration with third-party product to get the analytics we prefer. That being said, we dive more into our call details as we are a call center and execute performance metrics at the agent-level based on said data.

Everything I need.

I'd say we've had a seamless integration of ShortTel at our firm. I love the added features and how easy they are to use. Fits very well in my day-to-day operations.

Pros

Our company switched to ShoreTel a few years ago, and I've noticed a significant difference in how I use my phone and voice services. The desktop application makes it extremely easy to track missed calls, know the status of people I'm trying to get a hold of, and forward any calls when I'm out of the office.

Cons

Only one complaint - when voicemails get sent to my email, I have to listen to them through my external phone speakers instead of the earpiece. Sometimes I get confidential calls, so I can't be discreet about checking my messages.

Shoretel Communicator: Making Communication Easy

Shoretel has really helped to streamline and make our communication efforts more effective. I rarely type in anyone's phone number; I simply look them up in the system or reference my saved contacts.

Pros

I like the line redirection feature the most. You can configure and redirect your line to your mobile phone with one click, which is great and convenient for remote or offsite days. I also like the messaging feature because not everyone in my company uses Skype, but most everyone uses Shoretel. Shoretel also replaced all of our physical phone directory sheets, which is a nice step into the 21st century.

Cons

The call history feature doesn't always update in real time. I've seen instances of a missed call not showing up immediately in my call history, making it impossible to promptly return the missed call.

Great phone system and management tools

Great solution for dispersed call centers with complex organization. Enables us to manage the entire call process, but did not communicate well with our other data strategies.

Pros

Great all around flexible phone system, enables many of our trusted call center associated to work remotely and yet still be tied into the main platform. Great at capturing data.

Cons

Hard to pull the data out as the instance is localized inside our firewall, making it difficult to grant access to some but not all departments using the tool. Would have loved a better way to get the data out and leverage our BI rather than only have Brightmetrics to assess it.

Contact center solution that is easy to use.

Pros

The product is very easy for supervisors or managers in your call center to use. You are able to manage several calls groups and CSR's easily by looking at one screen. Its very easy to add new agents using the contact center director. The agent toolbar is very easy to configure at the agents workstations as long as you know the IP address. You are able to easily move agents in and out of the contact center groups. The reports are easy to access, create, and modify to obtain the data that you need to analyze daily.

Cons

In order to do a required system upgrade the contact center had to be closed and we were a 24 hour call center at the time.

I use ShoreTel Connect as our company's main method of communication for outside candidates/clients.

ShoreTel allows me to connect quickly and efficiently with candidates and colleagues.

Pros

ShoreTel Connect integrates seamlessly with our Salesforce databases, allowing me to quickly call candidates and clients by simply clicking the number on the screen. When making 100+ calls per day, this small quality of life assist is very welcome.

Cons

I have experienced some issues while attempting to use ShoreTel when not connected to our company's network. When connected via home/public Wi-Fi, there will be intermittent issues with maintaining a connection to ShoreTel.

Shoretel truly makes the communication process easier

Pros

I rarely actually use my voicemail, but I understand that it's a necessary part of doing business with some. I appreciate that when I'm on the go, Shoretel's transcription allows me to still read voicemails, and the IM function is so necessary for intra-office communication. I love that I can access my voicemails via email and I never have to call in!

Cons

I think Shoretel could benefit from a few more user-friendly benefits like recording of chats. Once the window closes, it's gone. However, at its core, what it does best is the availability of voicemail across other platforms. That happens very well.

Also, I think that the interface that allows you to switch between the functions (calls, IMs, etc.) could be a little better organized. I've had complaints from colleagues that have been unable to figure out how to add contacts. When they try to set it up, they end up accidentally calling people.

My employer currently uses shoretel for our call center it works great for the most part

I get to do my job as a support agent without interuption for the most part, for a while we had alot of problems but now we seem to be doing good with no problems in the last couple of months.

Pros

usually on most days it works great, the call quality is good and their are no issues.
i like the ease of use and it connects instantly. I like how it gives us options to break, without having to log out and the timer helps me know how long i have been on my break or lunch break,

Cons

sometimes we have issues with the phone still rings while we are still on a call with the customer and sometimes the customer cannot hear us when we are answering the phone and vice versa, the support people keep blaming it on our computers but it is clearly not our computers when we havent had these issues with our older system.

This is easy to use, keeps record/history of phone calls and able to transfer dial as well.

You are able to go back and check your call history and check voicemail and see who it is versus calling and not knowing.

Pros

Pros: You are able to check call history, check your length of calls, run reports, check statistics, works well with the phone itself and virtual system (application) on the computer.

Visual of who left voicemails and caller id.

Cons

Cons, If the virtual system to log in off ect. goes down it is cumbersome to use the phone to log in and out and check history.

Great product!

Pros

I highly recommend this product. I use the Shore Tel phone system everyday and till now very satisfied with its performance. I like the ease of recording any incoming or outgoing calls. You get a copy of the recordings to your email as well. It got the caller id feature which is really helpful too.

Cons

None, Very satisfied with its functionality and performance.