Connect Features
- Your free account
- Your paid account
- Options for your paid account
Change the way you work as a team with these features:
- Free voice calling with other Merge users.
- Free video calling with other Merge users.
- Free voicemail.
- Answer your work calls at the office or home – easily and reliably.
- See when your colleagues are at their desks.
- Simply share files.
- Give a virtual presentation.
- Take control of other peoples’ desktops.
Add a business line to your account to make and receive calls from PSTN.* You can:
- port your existing telephone numbers
- call any PSTN number in New Zealand or the world
- receive calls from any PSTN number anywhere in the world
- get competitive calling rates.
* The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the existing landline phone network.
Further enhance your office communications with:
- multiple PSTN numbers that ring the same Merge account
- multiple SIP aliases
- using your own domain for SIP addresses.
Free voice calling between Merge users
Moving your business to Merge will cut the calling
costs between your team and colleagues to zero.
This is because when you contact other users on
Merge you don’t pay for the call. Better still, you
can do this from work, home and anywhere with a
broadband connection. This also means you’ll be less
reliant on your mobile phone, so you’ll save even more.
Encourage your suppliers and contacts to move to
Merge and you will all benefit from free calling.
Voicemail is standard
Tired of paying for voicemail? With Merge it is standard with all accounts. Merge’s voicemail is fully integrated with email and you have the option of receiving all messages as email attachments that you can listen to wherever you receive your email.
Keeping up with your voicemail just got a whole lot easier – and at a fraction of the cost businesses would typically pay for this kind of feature.
Video calling
What are the business benefits of using video calling from one person to another?
Using video technology dramatically enhances the communication experience. It goes far beyond just seeing the other person’s face and watching for non-verbal cues. With video, you can demonstrate processes, identify problems with objects, and create an ‘almost there’ virtual presence – invaluable benefits in any business discussion.
With Merge Connect, the capability to video call is always there. You just need to provide the video-capable end points. This can be either a video-capable SIP phone or video-capable softphone. Get the full picture!
Instant messaging – IM
Instant messaging offers real business value – it provides direct real time contact, improved collaboration and potential cost savings. It is a fast and effective way to get the attention of your customers, vendors, co-workers and friends. You can rapidly resolve issues, answer questions, and save time.
More instant than email and more convenient for all those ‘yes/no’ questions.
Desktop sharing
Desktop sharing is becoming an increasingly popular tool used by people who collaborate over the Internet. With desktop sharing, you can send whatever is appearing on your screen in real time to other collaborators.
This feature is currently only available on Mac OSX using the Blink Pro softphone. For creatives using OSX – try it. It is very cool.
For everyone else, good things take time 
Presence
What is Presence? Presence is a visual indicator that tells you whether the person you wish to contact is at their workstation and available.
If you have ever used Facebook, gmail, or any major social networking site, you know how it works – you just didn’t know it was called Presence.
How does this apply to your business communications? You will know whether your customers or suppliers are available to take a call at any point in time, and therefore optimise your communications.
SIP alias
A SIP alias is a human-friendly address for your Merge account number, like an email address. So instead of having to remember a nine-digit Merge account number, you can personalise it with your own name. For example:
firstname.lastname@mergecom.net.nz
Even better, you can have any number of aliases – it’s up to you.
Caller display
Caller display is a feature that many telephone users say they couldn’t live without. We agree, and with Merge it is free. Nearly all SIP phones today have caller displays and all softphones do.
Caller display puts you in control – you can manage your time by screening your calls, and voicemail will pick up the non-urgent messages for you to catch up with later.
Make PSTN calls
With a Merge paid account you can make calls to any PSTN phone number anywhere in the world.
Receive PSTN calls
With a Merge paid account you can receive PSTN calls from anywhere in the world. You can receive calls wherever you have registered to your account from like your work office, your home office, a hotel room or WiFi hotspot.
Bring across your existing landline number
You can easily move your existing phone number to Merge. Your customers won’t notice anything has changed – but you’ll enjoy all the features and benefits of Merge Connect.
Call diversions
Merge accounts come with the following call diversion options:
- busy
- no answer
- all calls
With a paid account you can divert to PSTN numbers.
Competitive PSTN calling rates
Merge PSTN call rates are competitive with other service providers. These rates, along with the Merge Connect service features, make for an unbeatable service proposition.
Not forgetting that calls to other Merge customers are free!
Additional landline (PSTN) phone numbers
Expand the presence of your business with local phone numbers in other areas.
For example, if your business is based in Wellington and you have many customers and suppliers in Auckland, you can get an Auckland phone number and have it ring a Merge phone in Wellington. Your customers and suppliers only pay for a local call and you pay no more.
