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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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Managing and transferring customer calls is a vital aspect of customer service. Not only do you have to provide helpful and accurate information to assist customers on the phone, but you have to make sure that, if you must transfer the call, that it actually gets through to the next agent and that the customer is taken care of throughout the process. The following are some points (obvious as they may seem) that will help you and your team to provide great customer service, even during a transfer. #1 Don’t hang up. On behalf of those of us who have been dropped by an agent while waiting on hold, please avoid this at all costs. Not only will it infuriate your caller, but if they hear a dial tone instead of being successfully transferred, you might have just lost this person’s business. It seems to me that while most of …

  This post will start with a few quick rules-of-thumb to help you create a professional and effective call menu. If you don’t have time for my rhetoric, then please feel free to skip down to the good stuff.   When labeling menu options, be concise and get to the point. Like a voicemail greeting, a good menu prompt immediately tells the caller where this option will send them and quickly states what number they should press.   Don’t be afraid to add more specific options, rather than fewer, general options. Most people are willing to wait just a little bit longer for the right prompt, and even if you only have 2 agents, you can break the menu into a bunch of specific departments and route multiple options to the same agent.   Use a calm and even tone. In the same way that callers on hold react better …

There are a many elements that make your virtual phone system work, and one that is frequently taken for granted is your cell phone. Since Talkroute connects calls over the network that your phone already uses, it is a vital aspect of that system. The system usually works so seamlessly that it seems to happen like magic, but the truth is, we all know that sometimes the mobile network drops your call like a bad habit. Instant Gratification There is an invisible framework of connectivity that covers the entire country and plays an integral part in most of our lives—the mobile network, or cellular network. When we place a call from a cell phone, we are instantaneously connected to someone else, sometimes on the other side of the country, or even the world. Let’s take a look at how a call gets dropped, and what is responsible for it. There …