You started a new business a while back. Your business is starting to really take off. Congratulations!
On the telephone communications front, so far you and your team have been operating successfully from mobile phones and from consumer VoIP accounts like Skype.
At what point does your business need a real telephone system instead of a collection of personally owned phone numbers? Here are some of the factors, which in combination can point to consideration of a change.
1. You’d like to be able to transfer calls to others within your company rather than saying, “Mary isn’t at this number. Let me give you her number. Are you ready?”
2. Publicizing your mobile number to too many people has resulted in some rude awakenings—literally. You want to control the time of day that business calls ring to your mobile phone.
3. You’ve become concerned about the possible effects of holding a mobile phone to your head for hours on end each day.
4. You (and your business partners) find yourselves juggling more calls. You’re occasionally dropping calls and need an easier juggling system.
5. You want someone who’s on “juggle hold” (or any other type of hold) to hear something other than dead air—maybe something informational or promotional.
6. You and your staff need a more user-friendly way to “conference in” additional people to an in-process call—compared to navigating through assorted mobile phone screens.
7. Your mobile phone’s speakerphone sounds tinny to you. You sound hollow and distant to the person or people on the other end of the call.
8. You want to publicize a main phone number that can be answered by someone who will engage with callers and then distribute calls appropriately.
9. At times of your choosing, you’d like the main phone number to automatically answer with options such as “press 1 for sales and 2 for support”.
10. You have more than one person who handles customer support and you want support calls to ring through to multiple phones.
11. It’s important for you, your partners and your staff to see who’s on the phone and who isn’t—no matter where they’re located.
12. If someone leaves the organization, you need the ability to forward their number to someone else (you won’t be able to forward their mobile phone number).
13. You want to be able to monitor both sides of your new salespeople’s phone calls for training purposes.
14. You’d like to see call activity reports for management reasons, such as data for staffing decisions.
