A Shoretel Sky review from a company that recently deployed it.

Pros and Cons

Four digit extension dialing between branches and being able to transfer calls between branches works great.
Customer service is always very helpful with any problems.
The Phone Assistant is very easy to use and has a lot of features.

The Shoretel Mobility app for iPhone does not work very well and is not very intuitive in my experience.
We have had many intermittent instances of employees reporting that call quality is bad, sounds like the caller is garbled and underwater.
I deployed Shoretel Sky to eleven branches in four states over a 6 month period and experiences were not very consistent. Had issues with not enough power bricks being sent with the phones, some phones not having the the face sticker showing messages, directories, etc., user guides (quick start guides) not getting shipped with the phones at some branches, and phones being programmed incorrectly. This made it very difficult to plan my trips to train employees and install these at the various locations.

Return on Investment

At my branch alone, we are saving over $500 a month using Shoretel Sky versus the phone company we were using before them.
Shoretel Sky has increased customer service by allowing our employees to easily transfer a call to the proper department or branch no matter where they are located instead of giving the caller a phone number to call.
Most of our locations did not have caller ID before Shoretel Sky. That feature has increased employee efficiency because when they know who is calling before they answer allows them to professionally greet their caller and have their info up on their computer as they answer.

Shoretel Sky is well suited for our company due to being flexible to the unique configurations at each of our branches. Each branch has different call flows set up that are easily manageable using the portal. This is not a canned system that everyone has to adapt to which makes it very easy to work with.

Users and Roles

80 - The employees at our company that uses Shoretel Sky include Owners, General Managers, Salesmen, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivables, clerical, customer service, and IT personnel.

Support Headcount Required

3 - I am the Decision Maker for all of our branches and we also have 2 Phone Managers for backup purposes.

Business Processes Supported

Customer Service
Inter-branch Communications.
Mobility

Innovative Uses

The Conferencing feature is a nice benefit of Shoretel Sky.
Phone Assistant is a very powerful feature of the system.
Find me / follow me is a very important feature that makes it easy to locate someone.

Future Planned Uses

This question depends on what new features Shoretel Sky rolls out in the future.

Likelihood to Renew

I did a lot of research on different alternatives before we agreed on Shoretel Sky and although they have some shortcomings, I believe that they are the right phone company for our company right now. I also believe that they will continue to add to their services and our companies will be able to grow together.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability

When evaluating MiCloud Connect, it was important to us that it would be easy to scale it from a single location to many locations. We were able to do this flawlessly to 17 locations to date. With 4 digit extensions, we are able to connect with anybody at any location as if they were sitting in the same building. Setting up call flow at each branch is easy and very intuitive.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

We spent a lot of time back in 2013 evaluating several different solutions and we are very content with MiCloud Connect after 6 years and do not plan on changing any time soon. You should know exactly what you need for a phone system and find companies that can offer that and weigh other considerations like price, usability, features, etc to make a final decision.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Support

ShoreTel's customer service reps are fast to respond to any problems and follow up to make sure the problem is fixed.

Usability

ShoreTel Sky is easy to use but there are a few things that they could do to make it so much better. Overall, I am pleased with the system.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using	Lots to learn

Easy Tasks

Using Call Flow Editor.
Making calls.
Using Phone Assistant.
Using the online portal to make changes to settings.

Difficult Tasks

The Mobility app does not perform like I thought it would. You cannot "hand off" the phone call between your desk phone and cell phone and back to desk phone.
It would be nice if you could customize the actual phone so that more commonly used buttons like PARK would show up on the 1st screen instead of having to hit MORE every time.
There are not a lot of things that are difficult with this system, it's overall a pretty easy system to use.

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes - I am not a big fan of the Mobility App. I have it and half the time it doesn't even ring. I have all of the settings set correctly on my iPhone for notifications but yet I have to open it every day for it to receive phone calls from it. If it's not opened each day, it does not work. It is also hard to search for extensions for employees to call. From any other phone I can just dial the 4 digit extension but with the Mobility App, I have to dial the full 10 digit number.