ShoreTel Reviews

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Although its a hardware and software VOIP telephone system, the software is extremely powerful and flexible, yet very easy to setup and use. Once it's programmed, it simply works. There are a lot of hardware options when selecting phones and enterprise required devices that making simple connections to remote offices and mobile users possible. You will also notice Mitel has acquired ShoreTel, but same high quality software and hardware support available.

Cons
Tech support is great, but extremely expensive and only available through VAR's or primary vendor you purchased hardware through. Trade off is that if not too complex of implementation, instruction manuals provided make for fairly easy install and setup.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Translation option and we liked the actual phones.

Cons
Needed to contact support often and they were not available often.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 3/10

Pros
This is a great VOIP system. The software is easy to configure and the phones work great. The platform runs without much need for interaction.

Cons
Support costs and partnership fees can be very expensive. However, the system just works, and doesn't require a lot of maintenance.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I forget which phone system provider we were with before but Shoretel is definitely much better! The phone has more features which helps me perform my work functions more efficiently.

Cons
I would like to be able to forward voicemails to my coworkers from the main voicemail screen. I don't think we have this function.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Easy to use, great management of devices, users, and admin. Easy dialing, ShoreTel phones can also take a BEATING.

Cons
The software could be a little cleaner on the side. The UI needs a bit of a change, especially the back end which just looks old.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I like how you have a GUI interface for dialing, answering, seeing call logs etc.. It is much nicer to navigate vs having to do that on the phone itself. I especially love the ability to setup call forwarding automatically. I am by no means a power user, and have only scratched the surface of the utility.

Cons
my only complaint, if i needed one, would be the GUI is a bit dated feeling and does not feel like a modern UI. However, it works great so I can overlook this!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10

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.

Rating breakdown

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
the easy of use, the flexible architecture of the solution and the surviving service aproach that they have.

Cons
the telephones hadware are not bad, but some often got issues and from tenth that we buy always one have an issue

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Well designed product and made to last. The integration with all the other products, chat system, desktop and the different phone's models.

Cons
Needs a marketing plan for the rest of the world, not well know on latin america. Along with that not all the functions are in native language.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
ShoreTel's TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is the lowest in the industry, and part of that reason is because so many ShoreTel features come right out of the box. With other phone systems, you have to buy a different package or have to pay individually for features to be used. Not with ShoreTel. Also, I like the fact that ShoreTel is just a phone company. All of their R&D budget goes into making their system better, not just supporting what part of their product line is making the most revenue.

Cons
There is nothing I do not like about ShoreTel. It is the best business phone system on the market, and I highly recommend it.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The thing I like most about the software is how user friendly it is. Maybe its because what we had previously was so bad and old but this is a light and day difference!

Cons
I would say the thing I probably least like about the software is maybe the price. Its not the most expensive option out there but it isn't the cheapest. But overall we are very pleased

Rating breakdown

Pros
This was quite an upgrade from our previous telephone software, so many of the features are an upgrade from what we had before. The software that each employee uses on a daily basis for their individual phones is helpful. It gives you minimal information, but is helpful in connection with each user and desk phone.

Cons
As an administrator I do not feel like the software is user friendly. Half of the symbols that represent functions on the phone system, don't even make sense to me. I end up going through each and every "main menu" item to get to every sub menu item searching for what I need. The purchase of this type of phone system (and the subsequent software) would have been optimal maybe 3-5 years ago, but doesn't function exactly as was told to us by the sales team. We were quite interested in the instant message and conference features available on the software, only to find out that the instant message feature is separate and requires its own dedicated server and separate installation. The tele-conference features were out of date and are much better met with a software like GoTo Meeting.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 4/10

Pros
They offer a full suite of solutions depending on what type of business you are and your exact needs. We have used them for a software/hardware phone solution and have had great success with them.

Cons
Customer support is lagging at times but has gotten better. Integration hiccups occurred from the onset and tend to pop up randomly

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
I don't have to use any numbers on the phone to call people, I can just bring it up on a computer, type in a name, and click call.

Cons
While it is easy to make calls, setting up the Tools and Settings can be confusing.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10