Every UCaaS datasheet claims the same forty features. The difference between platforms shows up in the demo — and in the contract. Here's the checklist we'd use to shop our own category, including the questions that make weak vendors sweat.
(This is the demo companion to our complete buyer's guide — read that one for cost anatomy and contract traps, print this one for the sales call.)
Core telephony (make them demo, not describe)
- ▸1. Visual auto-attendant editor — can YOU change the phone tree at 5 PM on a Friday, or does it take a support ticket?
- ▸2. Ring groups and queues with overflow — where does a call go when nobody answers? Make them trace it live.
- ▸3. Call park and warm transfer — front-desk basics; clunky here means clunky everywhere
- ▸4. Voicemail transcription delivered to email/app — reading beats dialing into a mailbox
- ▸5. Mobile app parity — place, receive, transfer, and text from the business number on a personal phone
The revenue features (where platforms separate)
- ▸6. Missed-call auto-text — automatic, per-line configurable, with templates
- ▸7. Shared SMS inbox — the whole team sees and answers business texts with full history
- ▸8. Automated appointment reminders with natural-language confirmation handling
- ▸9. Screen pop with CRM/PMS context on inbound calls — demo it against YOUR system, not their demo CRM
- ▸10. Review requests and reputation monitoring built in
Items 6–9 are the features that stop missed calls — and there's a right order to deploy them in, which is a guide of its own.
Platform and trust
- ▸11. Uptime: geo-redundant infrastructure and a written 99.999% target, plus automatic failover to mobile when office internet dies
- ▸12. Compliance: BAA available? Call recording permissions? Audit logs? (Even if you don't need HIPAA, the answer reveals engineering maturity)
- ▸13. Analytics: answer rate, missed calls, response times — per user and per line, exportable
- ▸14. Integrations: two-way sync with your actual CRM/PMS, plus API/webhooks for the future
- ▸15. AI: receptionist, transcription, and call intelligence — included in a tier, or a per-seat ransom?
The contract traps
Ask these four questions in writing: What are the one-time fees, itemized? What does porting cost? What's the term and what happens at renewal? What exactly requires an upgrade tier? A vendor that answers crisply is safe. A vendor that says 'your account executive will put together a custom quote' is telling you the price is whatever they think you'll tolerate. (Talk Is Cheap's answers: $0, $0, month-to-month available, and the pricing page is the whole truth.)