Everything You Need for a Professional Phone System

Setting up the right phone system for your business does not have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. By utilizing and applying these key elements, you can set up a system that provides everything that is important to your callers.

Voicemail Greeting

Most people buy a new phone and take 5 minutes out of their lives to record it quickly and never update it again until the next time they get a new phone. Instead of taking the haphazard approach, it will help to put a little effort into this, as it is a primary point of contact for calls that may be very important to you, professionally and personally.

Callers On Hold

First and foremost, your caller will be much more comfortable on hold when they know exactly what to expect. As soon as the call connects, customers should be greeted with a clear, appropriate, and friendly voice, reassuring them that you are taking their call seriously.

Call Menu / Auto Attendant

You’ve probably realized, like hundreds of thousands of other businesses owners have, that utilizing a service which provides a professional phone system with a call menu to direct callers to various departments is an essential element of customer service.

Consolidate Multiple 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.

Caller ID Name

It is certainly disheartening when you find out that your business name is not showing up when you call someone, but as long as you make sure your carrier has updated your CNAM record, it will generally display properly across most networks.

Backup Phone System

No phone network is perfect. No matter what type of phone system you have in your office, there is always the chance of an outage, which is why you can’t put all your eggs into one basket, as it were.

After-Hours Call Management

Though Talkroute is a fully-functional business phone system that can handle your daily call volume, you can also use it solely for managing your after-hours calls. This will ensure that you never miss a business call, even when you’re closed.

Team Extensions

The extension numbers assigned to employees is not something that a business usually spends very much time considering, but there actually is some method, and even a little science to choosing the right number for each extension.

Setting the Ring Time

How long should we let our phones ring? And the real question behind this is, of course: How long will it take for our customers to hang up? The obvious answer is that the caller should have to wait for as few rings as possible before someone answers, but there are just a few factors to consider.

Solo Entrepreneurship

More and more entrepreneurs are running their businesses from their cell phones. The only problem with this is that, as you grow and soon need more professional features, the cell phone, by itself, doesn’t quite cut the mustard anymore.

Stop Unwanted Calls

You would think that we would all respect each other’s space, not to mention time, and refrain from calling other people when the call is not welcome. Sadly, though, we all get those unwanted calls from telemarketers, identity thieves, scam artists, and even unruly customers, leaving us desperate for a way to stop them.

Stephanie

Stephanie is the Marketing Director at Talkroute and has been featured in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur as a leading authority on business and telecommunications.

Stephanie is also the chief editor and contributing author for the Talkroute blog helping more than 100k entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses.

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