What Should Your Business Phone Do Besides Ring?
It is 5:15. You have locked up and are halfway home when a customer who needs you tomorrow calls the shop. The phone rings in an empty room, and they call the next name on Google.
Most small businesses we walk into have a couple of phone lines and a few desk phones plugged into the wall. Some have a small PBX hanging in the back room. Others just use the owner’s cell. It all works, but you have very little say in how customers reach you, what they hear, or where the call lands. A cloud phone system hands that control back to you.
You decide where calls ring
Your business number is no longer tied to the counter. Answer it on the app on your cell, on your laptop, or at the desk. When a storm closes the shop or you are out on a job, customers still reach you, and a bookkeeper or dispatcher can work from home on the company number.
If your cell is your business phone today, the business number lives in the app on that same phone with its own caller ID. You know which calls are work before you pick up, and your personal number goes back to being personal.
You decide what callers hear
- Auto attendant. “Press 1 for service, 2 for billing.” Callers get to the right person without you playing operator.
- Music on hold. Instead of silence that makes people hang up.
- Holiday and away greetings. Set them once and the phone tells callers when you are closed.
You decide how customers reach you
- Texting from your business number. Customers text to confirm appointments or send a photo of the problem, and it comes to the business, not your personal cell.
- Voicemail to email, with transcription. Read your messages between jobs instead of dialing in.
- E-fax. The fax line you keep paying for becomes an email.
- Team messaging. Your people talk to each other in the same app they take calls in.
What it costs
Plans start at $24.99 per line per month, and Basic and Standard are month to month with no contract. You keep your numbers, it runs on the internet you already have, and there is no box on the wall to maintain.
The short answer
Your phone should work the way you run your business, not the other way around.
