Business Phone Systems – How not to miss the call again
My wife and I were in the middle of setting up our new office and I needed help of an early learning centre to look after our 2 year’s old toddler. I went to Google to search for an early learning centre in Nedlands. The first one I rang didn’t pick up and there was no messaging service or voicemail. The second one I rang had the “line disconnected” message. Finally, on my third attempt, I got through to a nice person who took our details and we managed to get our son to a nice place. Even though, a bit farther than we initially planned.
Missing the phone call in most cases means losing a business. What do the modern phone systems offer to businesses to mitigate this risk? Some of you who used to have a phone bill from a Telco company remember seeing a mysterious charge for Line Hunt or Call Circulate. What is it exactly, who is hunting what and what are these spooky terms replaced with in a newer system?
Let’s imagine you advertise a number in a local Western Suburb’s business directory. The customer rings that number. However, you are in a middle of a conversation with another client who rang a few minutes earlier. Line Hunt or Call Circulate would automatically find and redirect this new call to another number and/or circulate the call until you finish the conversation. The feature was available on Telstra’s ISDN lines and is already removed as part of Telstra upgrade of their systems at the end of September this year, as the NBN rollout continues to bring business-grade networking solutions online.
Interestingly enough, even when the service was in place, not every business had it set up. The end result was that when you were to ring a business the call would drop after a minute or so. Or would land in a voicemail that no one knew how to check. If you were too busy you’d call another business.
Alway make sure you test your system. Try calling your business phone number within your business hours, after hours or on the weekend
What do you need to do to ensure the system works?
- Create the basic call flow diagram
- Decide on whether to use a Voicemail or to redirect calls to an Emergency number
- Use a simple menu to get the calls routed to the right people
- Test your system
The Line Hunt and Call Circulate features
The Line Hunt and Call Circulate features are replaced by Ring Groups and Queues
When you are on the call and another client rings your business number, the call lands in the queue and is picked up by the next available person. The number of people in a queue depends on the number of incoming lines you have. We recommend to our clients to always have the option to redirect the calls to a mobile or voice mail should you exceed the number of lines set up for your system. Check the call redirection now as the missed call might mean a silence, and silence is not always fun for businesses looking to get more sales through the door.
Line Hunt and Call Circulate generally attract a charge from $10 to $46 per additional line. If you have already upgraded your system you should have Queues as part of the Professional License and Ring Groups as part of the Standard License.
Is Queuing Client Calls A Good Thing? The difference between a Queues and Ring Groups in our Article Here
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