Why Doesn’t My Company Name Show on Caller ID?

    This article will give you an overview of how the company name is set for outgoing caller ID, including a description of the process and why, sometimes, it doesn’t show up for the person you are calling.   Our Talkroute engineers collaborated on this post to provide valuable insight into how caller ID works, and what you can do to make sure your caller ID name is accurate.   CNAM (Caller ID Name) Firstly, the CNAM is the name that shows up on the receiving party’s caller ID when you call a number. When your call comes in on the phone of the person you dialed, their carrier retrieves the CNAM record, and displays your name on the receiving phone’s caller ID.   The CNAM has a 15-character limit, so a name exceeding this length will be cut off in the displayed caller ID.   The Neustar Database …

10 Steps to Handle a Tough Customer on the Phone

    1. Listen. This has to be one of the most crucial aspects of handling difficult callers, and customers in general. When you really listen to what they are trying to tell you, you are simultaneously showing concern and gaining insight into the issue they are having, which helps you to find a solution. Also avoid the impulse to talk over them, even if you have good news.   2. Provide validation to the caller. Many times, the person screaming at you on the phone just you to recognize that they are upset for a good reason. Many customer service professionals have a tendency to talk down to the customer because they don’t understand what is happening, and this is wrong. Instead of just telling them to “calm down”, try saying, “You’re right—this is a problem, and we are going to find a solution.”   3. Don’t react emotionally. …

What Happens After You Port a Number to a Virtual PBX?

The foremost thing you have to understand about ports is that when you take your number from one service provider, and port it to a provider, it is a clean transfer. That is, once the port to your new virtual PBX is complete, the phone number is no longer associated with the losing carrier, in any way. This leads us to the second most important point, which is this: The old phone will stop working. Let’s say that 555-1234 is your primary business phone number, and this number is attached to a desk phone in your office. What makes it possible for that desk phone to ring when people dial 555-1234? It rings because the service provider, whether AT&T, or Comcast, or whoever, has activated the line going into this phone by attaching the number, 555-1234, to that line. When you port that number away to your new provider, the …

Area Code, Prefix, & Other Parts of a Phone Number

Did you ever wonder where the digits in your phone number come from, and what they mean? As you probably suspected, each segment has a reason for being there. Like most codes, it contains information in each part that allows it to function properly and to send your call to the right place. If you dial a phone number using even one digit more or less than the exact code (we’ve all tried it), then you quickly find that it simply doesn’t work. While we take it for granted that phone numbers work and don’t really think about how this number connects our call, the system is made possible by those groups of numbers working together in just the right way. Now you can finally understand what each part of the phone number means, and what it does. Call it Like it Is First things first—let’s name each part of …

Backup Phone System for Any Business

  Your business depends on your phones, possibly more than any other system you have. Whether by network malfunction or act of God, there is no way to predict when the phones may go temporarily out of service—but you can prepare for it. Why leave it to chance?   Talkroute forwards your calls to any phone and any provider; that means you can use your cell phone, landline, or any other phone to take business calls while your primary system is down.   You can have a fully functional phone system that requires next to no maintenance, on deck and ready for those times when your primary phones unexpectedly go out.   HERE’S HOW IT WORKS   Pick a local or toll free number from our library of phone numbers, or transfer an existing number to Talkroute, which will serve as your main backup business line.   Add forwarding phones …

Telephone Terminology: Virtual Phone System Terms

Many of the terms associated with telephony are self-explanatory and familiar, but occasionally you’ll hear one that you’re not quite sure of, which is why we’ve compiled a short list of commonly used phone system terms. If you’re already a Talkroute user, this will also help you understand your system. Please feel free to leave a comment below if you’re wondering about a term that isn’t listed here. Forwarding Phone Number As part of a virtual phone system such as Talkroute, your forwarding numbers are all the phones to which calls are routed. When calls come into the main line, they are routed to the forwarding numbers—these are the phones that will actually ring. Virtual Phone Number or Talkroute Phone Number Your main business line with a Talkroute account is your virtual number, otherwise referred to as your Talkroute number. You may have multiple Talkroute numbers on a single account, …

Is a Virtual Phone Number the Same as a Standard Number?

When you first hear about virtual phone numbers, you might be a little apprehensive about using them for your business because it seems as if this is an entirely different kind of number, but it actually works just the same, and in some ways better than a number you would get from a phone company. A virtual number is not a soft phone number, it is not a VoIP number, and it is even more versatile than a conventional number. A virtual number works just like the numbers you’re used to. When you say, “virtual number”, it sounds like it’s not quite a real number, or that there’s something strange about it, but this is not the case. You receive calls in the same way, and when someone calls your virtual number, they will be instantly connected to you from anywhere, as you would expect. They can also be local …

Divert Calls to One Platform by Consolidating Your Phone Numbers

  As your small business grows, one thing that can become hard to manage is your phone numbers. You may only have one or two main business lines in the beginning, but as you gain more customers, hire more employees, or open stores in new locations, more phone lines become necessary to handle the call volume.   Is the cost of expansion becoming too high? It’s a wonderful thing when you begin to experience growth and success, but the problem is that so many phone lines can get really expensive, and really complicated.   Traditional service providers will charge you hundreds, even thousands of dollars to manage all of your business’ phone numbers. You can use Talkroute to consolidate all of your phone numbers into one place, and not only that—you can manage all of them from your control panel.   Gather all your numbers into one, centralized platform. Consolidating …

What Does VoIP Stand For, and What Does it Mean?

VoIP is an acronym that sounds weird at first—“vŏy’p”—but is actually fairly straightforward in application. It stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, which, in the simplest of terms, means the type of phone service that works over an internet connection. To be clear, VoIP is the prevailing method of internet telephony that floated to the surface after around 20 years of a varied succession of attempts to make internet calls accessible to consumers, and I am admittedly glancing over many stages of its development. This type of phone connection has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its low cost to the user and its versatility for business, as well as personal use. It’s possible that you have used a VoIP connection without even realizing it. Have you ever used Skype? That’s a VoIP call—and in fact, they’re one of the companies who made it famous. VoIP phones have …

talkroute mobile app call path

The Simplified Call Path: How Your Mobile Dialing App Works

Though the connection is virtually instantaneous when you call someone, there is a surprising number of operations that have to take place before the call completes. Each of these operations is vital, sometimes quite complex, and they all happen in a fraction of a second. In this article, we will explore one type of call that, if you’re a Talkroute user, you’re probably very familiar with—an outgoing call from your Talkroute mobile app. Using your cell phone as a business line. As one of our specialties at Talkroute, the system makes it easy for business owners who have a cell phone that doubles as a business phone. The mobile app was created so that you are the only one who knows that you’re calling from a mobile phone. To your customers, you could be sitting at a desk in your office, wielding the handset attached to your corded desk phone—which …