Do you know the difference between transfers and forwards?
Every industry takes on confusing jargon now and then, and the telecom industry is no exception.
With all the advanced features available in our Business Phone Plans, for example, there will be a few terms you won’t immediately recognize.
We’ll try to remedy two of those terms today by breaking down the difference between transfers and forwards.
Difference Between Transfers and Forwards: Transfers
Call transfers are unique in that they can only occur once a call has been connected. Transferring calls refers to the moment when an employee is on a call, and the caller on the other end needs to speak with another employee. That can be for any one of a variety of issues, but the specific definitive facet of what makes a transfer unique to a forward is that it’s always an on-going call.
When warm transferring a caller, you can speak to the recipient first and pass along information like the caller’s name and purpose. This gives the recipient a head start and puts them on the same page as the caller. A cold transfer occurs when you pass along a call without any extra information. In many cases where situations are immediate or where calls arrive rapidly, a cold transfer can help quicken the pace and keep customers moving to their destinations.
You can actually execute an Advanced Transfer from your Dash VoIP plan in a variety of ways. One of the most popular, and possibly the fastest, methods is to use the transfer Feature Codes directly from your dial pad. However you choose to send a caller to a different member of your team or to a different department, when you are sending caller to continue a conversation with someone else inside your organization, you know you’re transferring them.
Follow Me: What is Forwarding?
Call forwarding is a similar, though entirely different function in telephony. One of the first things to consider when you want to know the difference between transfers and forwards is when the call is received. Like we just discussed, the transfer is when you transition a conversation from one employee to another after the conversation has begun.
A forward is different because it can occur either during the conversation using a Feature Code, or more commonly, it is a directive that occurs before a call is answered. Call forwarding is when a caller dials a number but the conversation is sent to a different 10-digit number. This is a common and helpful practice at many businesses where individuals want to have calls directed to a single location, like their personal smartphones.
One of the most popular ways to utilize call forwarding is the Follow Me Calling feature on Dash. This is when an employee knows he or she will be moving around in and out of their office throughout the day but still needs to be taking calls. By entering a series of telephone numbers to all of the different devices that employee could be reached at, the Follow Me Calling feature will ring them (either concurrently or in succession per the employee’s preference) until the caller reaches their desired party or the call is sent to voicemail. This is just one of a variety of forwarding methods, but again, the key differentiator is that forwarding can, and often does, occur before a call is answered.
The Grey Area
A variety of of call forwards and call transfers are always included for free into every Dash Account, and they are useful for an ever increasing number of scenarios. There exists, however, two other areas that are similar to, though wholly different from, both transferring and forwarding. First is VirtualPBX Valet Call Parking which is a technique used to put a call on hold in a place where anyone in the organization can answer it. There is also the much larger category of call routing that encompasses a massive amount of variables involved in routing callers to individuals or departments as part of a complex network of extensions at the point of reception. The possible routing options are so vast that it warrants its own blog later, but they can be either automated by factors predetermined by the company being contacted or they can be prompted by a caller inputting information from his or her dial pad.
While the difference between transfers and forwards can seem nuanced at first, as you can see, it refers to a distinctly different set of functions for a hosted business telephone system. You can call it jargon if you want, but no matter how you label it, if you ever need help working through the features of a Dash plan, you can rest assured we’ll be there to help you through the process. In fact, we’re here 24/7/365 for you on both our Customer Support channels and on social media as well. Plus, because there seems to be an entirely different set of nomenclature for both Twitter and Facebook, you can rest assured we’ll be able to help decode your message there, too
