What is BT Cloud Voice: Explanation of Features

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BT Cloud Voice is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone system designed to help your business with everyday communications. BT’s Cloud Voice enables your workforce to work from anywhere and is offered in three tiered packages:

  1. Basic

  2. Connect

  3. Collaborate

Unlike traditional telephone systems, which rely on physical telephone lines, Cloud Voice leverages your internet connection to make and receive calls. This provides businesses with the flexibility to use their phone system from virtually anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection.

What Features Does BT Cloud Voice Offer?
What Features Does BT Cloud Voice Offer?

Moving from physical to virtual phone systems can help reduce the cost of business communications, offering not only a scalable phone system infrastructure but also a range of other benefits and features.

BT cloud voice features include support for a range of voice and collaboration capabilities, voicemails that can be sent to an email, hunt groups for distributing workloads and analytics tools to help determine inefficiencies in your infrastructure design.

Table of Contents

In this article we’ll cover the key features of BT Cloud Voice, how it can benefit your business and what add-ons your business should be leveraging to meet demands.

Calling Options

As with any business phone system, the focus of BT Cloud Voice should be on the calling options provided. One benefit of the BT Cloud Voice call plans is that all minutes are shared across users and not applied at an individual level, therefore your business resources are pooled together for greater cost-efficiency. Within these plans, call plan minutes range from 500 through to 60,000 with a further unlimited option available for call-heavy workloads.

With any BT Cloud Voice setup, a UK and International package must be selected, but if your business does not make calls outside of the UK, pay as you go should be your go-to selection.

To see the calling options available for BT Cloud Voice, check out our pricing article that goes into detail about the costs involved with BT Cloud Voice, as well as the different calling plans on offer – both for UK and international calls.

Standard Features In Each BT Cloud Voice Package

BT Cloud Voice is offered in 3 packages: Basic, Connect & Collaborate, all of which come at their own price point and functionalities.
BT Cloud Voice is offered in 3 packages: Basic, Connect & Collaborate, all of which come at their own price point and functionalities.

BT Cloud Voice can be scaled to meet your demands, with Connect and Collaborate building on the features of the basic tier, including features such as call director and voicemail, meanwhile hunt group capabilities and automatic call routing are all included as standard.

wdt_ID wdt_created_by wdt_created_at wdt_last_edited_by wdt_last_edited_at Unlimited UK Call Plans Prices
1 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM Cloud Voice UK Unlimited £9.47 (per user)
2 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM Cloud Voice SIP UK Unlimited £13.50 (per channel)
3 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM Cloud Voice UK Unlimited v2 (In-Life) £10.81 (per user)
4 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM Cloud Voice SIP UK Unlimited (Acquisition & Cross Sell) £13.50 (per channel)
5 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:40 AM Cloud Voice SIP UK Unlimited v2 (In-Life) £10.81 (per user)
Unlimited UK Call Plans Prices

Optional Features

One of the greater benefits of leveraging cloud-based services is the inherent ability to leverage new features on-the-fly and BT Cloud Voice is no exception to this rule. With features such as CRM integrations, call recording, shared call appearance, call centre ACD and more, your business can quickly get equipped with the necessary features via a BT Cloud Phone system in order to best serve your customers, workforces and to take the strains out of daily communications.

Chargeable Per User Per Month Add-ons

wdt_ID wdt_created_by wdt_created_at wdt_last_edited_by wdt_last_edited_at Add-on Feature Description
1 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM Busy Lamp Field Allows you to see if a colleague’s line is free, engaged or if the phone is already ringing before attempting to transfer a call. This ensures calls aren’t being dropped and that customers make it to the necessary department or person.
2 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM Hunt Group Plus Hunt Group Plus builds on the standard hunt group features offered by BT Cloud Voice, adding improved forwarding and management features. This includes forwarding to alternative numbers and pre-alerting announcements, whilst also adding custom ringback an
3 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM Call Recording Call recording allows you to store a particular call, or all calls or allow employees to choose to activate recording in real-time. With easy management of your call archive through an online dashboard, call recording is an essential feature for businesse
4 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM CRM Integrator BT Cloud Voice CRM Integrator combines your calling with your customer relationships system. Enabling ease-of-use through click to dial, caller identification and automatic customer contact history viewing, the integrator assists your employees with bette
5 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM CRM Lite A cut down version of CRM Integrator that works with Outlook, Lotus Notes, Google Contacts and basic Skype for Business.
6 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM Fax Messaging For businesses still using fax machines, this enables you to receive a fax and email it to the message store.
7 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM GO TAPI GO TAPIC provides your business with an interface to a TAPI compliant application. It provides call information to the business application and the application then provides the integration features.
8 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM Hot Desking For more flexible workstations, hot desking allows employees to log into any phone on your system and have their user profile and settings follow them to that device, saving the need to re-configure routing and their personalisations each times.
9 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM Receptionist Console Give operators and receptionists the ability to easily put calls into the right hands. See at-a-glance who’s free to take a call and transfer it at the click of a mouse.
10 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:30 AM Receptionist Small Business A scaled-down version of Receptionist console for smaller businesses. Doesn’t include handling multiple queues or other more-complex
Add-on Feature Description

Chargeable Per Site Per Month Add-ons

wdt_ID wdt_created_by wdt_created_at wdt_last_edited_by wdt_last_edited_at Add-on Feature Description
1 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM Auto Attendant An automated receptionist for your business. Choose to use standard system messages, or upload your own.
2 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM Call Centre ACD Distribute incoming calls to multiple users with call queues and play intermittent ‘comfort’ greetings to your callers. You can also log into and out of the queues, so your phone won’t ring when you’re busy. Agents don’t even have to be located at a singl
3 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM Hunt Group Plus Add extra call forwarding functions, giving even more flexibility to your hunt groups. You can set up the forwarding function from any location, as long as you’re connected to the internet.
4 tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM tjostheimer 22/01/2025 12:28 AM Call Centre ACD Plus An optional add-on to Call centre ACD which gives you even more enhanced call handling features.
Add-on Feature Description

Call Analytics

One of the best ways that businesses recognise a potential return on investment over traditional phone systems is with BT Cloud Voice is through its Call Analytics capabilities. Similarly to the call packages, Call Analytics are also delivered in three packages: Insight, Report and Report Premier. Providing you with an online portal, call analytics are available on wallboards, PC and mobile devices to showcase your businesses’ trends and view reports to keep track of missed, made, attempted and received calls.

With the Insight package, analytics update every 15 minutes and provides your business with 12 months of historical call data. Offering pre-built dashboard for key analytics, the insight package allows reporting for individual direct lines, users or whole businesses, enabling basic call trends and pattern analysis.

The Report package offers all of the insight features, as well as customisable report templates and dashboards that allows viewing of real-time data on calls made, received and missed. If real-time viewing isn’t your thing, reports can be emailed on a schedule, allowing your business to perform monthly, weekly or even daily reviews of calls.

Alongside the scheduled reports, the Report package also provides SLA-based dashboards for productivity tracking, helping your business to measure ongoing performance against pre-defined service level targets. This includes executive summaries that consolidate multiple reports with observations and tools to review performance and plan future staffing needs based on historical data.

Finally, the Report Premier package offers everything in the previous two packages, with live queue and agent monitoring, real-time information on waiting calls and calls in progress, team productivity wallboards and future shift planning capabilities.

What Features Does Your Business Need?

When selecting BT Cloud Voice, it’s important to know what features your business needs or could utilise to improve daily processes.

Benefits of BT Cloud Voice for Different Business Sizes

As to be expected, smaller businesses will typically need the features offered by the Basic package. The inclusion of essential capabilities such as call forwarding, hunt groups and voicemail already offers a complete overhaul of traditional phone system infrastructure, allowing businesses to continue on with daily processes without worrying about added functionality.

However, for larger teams or those requiring collaboration tools, the Connect or Collaborate packages can become more favourable. Offering improved functionality through increased Cisco Webex Teams and presenter controls, workforces are better supported with a wider range of capabilities.

When considering calls, for businesses with high call volumes, the unlimited call plan is ideal to avoid per-minute charges. For others, shared call plans can optimise costs across users, therefore businesses need to carefully evaluate potential cost-saving benefits and where the greatest return-on-investment may come from.

How BT Cloud Voice Supports Remote and Hybrid Workforces

BT Cloud Voice is designed for flexibility, making it ideal for remote and hybrid teams. The key features that facilitate this flexibility include:

  • Hot Desking: Employees can log into any phone and their personalised settings are carried over, ensuring productivity across different locations without any setup delays.

  • Mobile Apps: Users can make and receive calls, manage voicemails and access collaboration tools directly from their smartphones, alleviating the need to constantly have a laptop or desktop device to hand.

  • Online Portals: Administrators can manage the entire phone system remotely, adjusting features and monitoring usage in real-time, reducing the complexity of workload for administrators and also improving operational efficiency by minimising the need for on-site expertise to handle issues.

Customer Success Stories

However if you’re still stuck on whether to choose BT Cloud Voice, or if you just aren’t sure what features you might need, we’ve detailed some customer success stories to assist in your considerations.

Diaceutics

Diaceutics provide the world’s leading pharmacy and biotech companies with end-to-end solutions for precision medicines through data analytics and scientific services. When moving to their new office at King’s Hall in Belfast, Diaceutics decided to implement BT Cloud Voice to replace their traditional phone system, giving their new offices a whole new infrastructure to improve their offerings.

Once implemented, Diaceutics significantly leveraged capabilities such as the Cisco Webex integrations and multi-device functionality. Successfully deployed for 145 employees (who were mostly remote and hybrid workers), BT Cloud Voice provided Diaceutics with communication across all continents, with integrated voice, video, and messaging tools under a single portal, that could support their remote and hybrid work styles.

A quote from Diaceutic’s IT Director highlights the impact of implementing BT Cloud Voice has had: “BT Cloud Voice gave us extra flexibility to maintain a presence within departments and allows them to receive important calls even though workers could either be in the office, at home or on the road”.

Vale Garden

Vale Garden, a manufacturing company that were losing confidence in proposals received to replace their legacy onsite phone system. The IT team were unsure whether all technical aspects had been captured to allow a successful migration into the Cloud.

Nik Bahl from BT and Netify (Network Union) conducted a workshop to align their features with BT Cloud Voice capability and met budgets allowing Vale to save against their previous voice costs. This meant that Vale could successfully migrate from their legacy system to BT Cloud Voice and maintain all required technical functionality.