Features
VoIP Can Give Your Business the Best Automated Phone Tree
Posted on June 19, 2018 by Dan Quick
An automated phone tree is a menu-based telephone system that routes callers to individuals, departments, or even to recorded messages or additional menus. This inbound call direction tool is essential for businesses with high call traffic or large departmental organization. The phone tree got its name in part because there is a multitude of options for a caller to be directed towards even though they all come in from the same telephone number. This “many from one” design resemble the branches of a tree and the trunk is the single pathway that all inbound call traffic originates from. Traditionally, the phone tree was something that didn’t exist as an automated system at all. Live receptionists had to be staffed by the dozen to accommodate the complex call routing needs of some organizations and that persisted well into the late 20th century until the advent of new, digital telephone technology like an Auto Attendant.
Putting the Auto into Automated Phone Tree
An Auto Attendant is a popular feature on some feature-rich hosted VoIP plans that has taken most of the point-of-contact requirements out of the hands of humans. However, more than just fielding calls, an automated phone tree’s core function is to direct them to the appropriate party or parties, as well. This is accomplished by combining the infinitely scalable capacity thresholds of an Auto Attendant with a few advanced telephony tools, as well. Specifically, these tools are designed to handle the complex routing requirements of modern organizations without the costs associated with older, traditional phone systems.
- ACD Queues ACD (Automatic Call Distribution Cues) are highly customizable call routing systems that can designate more than just the group or party an inbound call should be directed to. Additionally, ACD Queues can also throttle the pace of distribution, designate the sequence of agents who will answer calls, plus any one of several skills-based and overflow oriented call routing logics.
- Hunt Groups Hunt Groups are similar in function to ACD Queues and also help to complement the function of an automated phone tree, but are less sophisticated in their adjustability. Also, whereas an ACD Queues can be added to a Dash Business VoIP Plan for a fee, Hunt Groups are included with every available Dash Plan, including basic.
Getting Started With an Automated Phone Tree
Even though the combination of an Auto Attendant and either ACD Queues or Hunt Groups make for a formidable inbound call strategy, using them does not preclude an organization from having a live receptionist. In fact, the opportunities to use these technologies to enhance and improve the impact that having a live receptionist has on an organization are greater than the using them on their own. Plus, getting started is easy considering that all VirtualPBX VoIP Plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee. So what are you waiting for? Get automated phone trees for your office and see how they can help your business, today!
How Work Has Changed for a Phone Receptionist with Cloud Communications
Posted on June 12, 2018 by Dan Quick
A phone receptionist is often times the first and most commonly encountered employees at a company. Being the point person on the front lines of a business’ telephone traffic definitely puts an individual in contact with a lot of the public, but how a phone receptionist works has changed with the proliferation of modern telecommunications technology. While the tools he or she uses to accomplish the task of answering, transferring, and forwarding calls may have changed, however, the essential value of a phone receptionist has remained just as high.
The Original Phone Receptionist
As we can all imagine with the images of bays and bays of operators working a switchboard in the office buildings of yesteryear, the function of a live receptionist has always been, well, lively. This has always been the lot of the phone receptionist, irrespective of what the industry or size of an organization he or she worked for. That’s because regardless of the amount of traffic that comes across the desk, or phone line, of a phone receptionist, the importance of it all does not waver. Being a triage nurse or sorts, a phone receptionist has historically played a role in which determinations need to be made about a host of topics. Everything from locating the correct parties to receive inbound calls, assessing callers’ needs and escalating as necessary, to even gatekeeping access to members of a leadership team all are responsibilities that fall at the feet of a phone receptionist. This has largely remained unchanged throughout the years, though advances in telephone system technology have shaped how all of these tasks get completed.
The Super Charged Phone Receptionist
Today, with the benefits of faster, leaner, and simpler voice communications technology like VoIP, a phone receptionist can effectively be at more than one place at the same time. This is accomplished across several fronts, many of which stem from the multi-faceted benefits of an Auto Attendant, the virtual receptionist that comes with the award-winning Dash Business VoIP Plans. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is an advantage to any phone receptionist because it allows him or her to “park” calls to be handled by a team of potential recipients rather than simply taking a message. Also, by nature of being hosted in the cloud and not tethered to physical wires, a hosted phone plan allows phone receptionists to move from location to location, permitting them to get more done than when they had to be stationed at a desk to field a call. This mobility can be accomplished a variety of ways, intra-office moves can be executed with a Hot Desk from desk to desk or even anywhere the industry’s only 4G LTE nationwide network exclusively for Dash VoIP users covers them with Mobile for Business. This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what all an Auto Attendant or a virtual receptionist can do to enhance the work of a phone receptionist. Suffice to say, however, anything that can help one of a company’s most important employees be better and more efficient at their job is something that should be investigated by any organization. Auto Attendants powered by Dash VoIP Plans are and do exactly that.
What You Need to Know About Having a Live Receptionist With VoIP
Posted on June 7, 2018 by Dan Quick
A live receptionist is often the first line of contact for a business with its customers, and needs to possess a wide range of institutional knowledge to field calls, answer questions, and direct topics to their best possible outcome. The importance of having the right person in this role underscores the commonly held notion that a business’s greatest assets are the people who work there. Certainly, we’ve had a lot of fun investing in our human capital, ourselves, because we also attribute our growth and success to the hard work and irreplaceable personalities that make VirtualPBX who we are. Combine that idea with the old adage that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and you’ve got a situation whereby the front lines employees are staggeringly important to the success of an organization. Many of our customers are small, scrappy, and resourceful entrepreneurs who handle every aspect, from the front of the house to the back, on their own. But other companies with a few more employees make one of their first hires an administrator who can handle the logistics of an office. This person ends up with plenty of responsibilities, and more often than not those include acting as the live receptionist for all inbound calls. There is really no replacement for the personality that some of my favorite administrators have and how that, in turn, elevates the brand they represent.
That’s why many organizations also have anxiety over bringing in an advanced business telephone service like feature-rich hosted VoIP for fear of them losing the need for a live receptionist altogether. Even though some businesses enjoy employing an Auto Attendant in lieu of a live receptionist, mandating that never has to be the case. Over the course of this post we’ll illustrate how a live receptionist and an Auto Attendant are not mutually exclusive and can, in fact, complement each other quite nicely. There are several compositions this can take, too, each of which provides specific support for live receptionists only, exclusive use of Auto Attendants, and any number of hybridizations of the two.
Having A VoIP Plan With a Live Receptionist
We aren’t going to deny that one of the most consistently popular features on any of our VirtualPBX cloud phone systems is the Auto Attendant. An Auto Attendant can route calls, forward to groups or individuals, be programmed to adapt to time changes and holiday schedules, and even field questions or direct to voicemail. With all of that ability packed into a free Auto Attendant, it’s easy to see why companies without the capital to hire new administrators find it to be such a helpful feature. That said, there is no need to use this feature to replace a live receptionist. When properly executed, an Auto Attendant can actually serve as an assistant and enhancement to the operations of any live receptionist. Here are a few of the ways a live receptionist can benefit from an Auto Attendant:
- Added Coverage Being able to field multiple lines of call traffic is one of the most important duties of a live receptionist, but it may also prematurely interrupt the conversation he or she is currently on. With an Auto Attendant, you can arrange to have those alternate calls be answered by the phone system if the main line is busy.
- Specific Design for Live Receptionists Fielding calls within an organization is much easier when live receptionists can use Advanced Transfers to ensure swift and accurate call transfers. Plus, for critical conversations that need to put on hold, calls can be parked and this and a host of other useful features can be accessed right from a handset with Feature Codes, too.
- Pinch Hitter Being able to call in a back-up to bat for a team member is a great advantage in baseball, and the same can be said for a live receptionist, too. Fielding phone calls is easier when you don’t have to be stationary at a desk, so if a cordless VoIP office phone isn’t available, knowing that an Auto Attendant will answer calls in your absence is a huge relief when you need a moment of, well, relief.
- Professional Representation As we’ve mentioned, the best live receptionist can do more than just act as an operator, he or she can also be the company’s best brand ambassador, too. Fortunately, a virtual receptionist can do the same thing. By being able to customize everything from on-hold music to automatic and professionally recorded messages that dynamically change for holidays or promotions, a live receptionist never has to worry that a virtual replacement isn’t pulling their weight.
- Infinitely Expandable The only real threshold that even the most capable and competent employee encounters is that of scalability. Because an Auto Attendant never needs to take a lunch break and can handle multiple concurrent calls without any attrition to the quality and polish of each one, there’s no need worry about overloading the system. Plus, because all of VoIP Phone Plan features are hosted in the cloud, they can be scaled up or down as needed to grow with a company with just a few clicks, too.
Auto Attendant is Just One Way to help a Live Receptionist
The above list barely scratches the surface of the examples on how an Auto Attendant can help any live receptionist be better and more agile at work. The ways a live receptionist can benefit from a VoIP plan are as many and as creative as the administrators thereon. Because companies can add dozens of recording options, add department groups at will, and have infinitely customizable voicemail, faxmail, and greeting options, this literally is just the tip of the iceberg. Plus, add into the fact that all of those presets can be dynamically programmed to act differently for night/day hours and holidays, too, and you’re left with a system that is almost as dynamic as your live receptionist. Of course, no program will replace him or her, but this one sure does come close.
For information on how to get your own Auto Attendant, you can sign up for a free VoIP trial right now, or just hit us up on Twitter and Facebook with your questions. Also, if you already have your Dash Plan and Auto Attendant and need a little help setting it up, we have online call handling support available and you can even call us right from those resources if you want, as well. If you do, don’t be surprised if you are wildly impressed with our combination of automated and live receptionist skills, either.
How to Get Your Free Auto Attendant Right Now from VirtualPBX
Posted on June 5, 2018 by Dan Quick
Arguably, there are some promotional deals that are more attractive than others. Being in the heart of Warriors country and it being the eve of game 3 of the NBA Playoffs, I’m naturally keen on Taco Bell’s “Steal A Game, Steal A Taco” promo. This is where the entire country (you read that correctly) can get a free taco at participating Taco Bell locations if the visiting team “steals” a win on the road at any time during the finals. The attraction to free tacos is palpable, obviously, but the problem with this is that free crunchy goodness doesn’t come your way unless a group of athletes halfway across the country out-preform another group of talented athletes. And herein lies the problem. Whether it’s free-ish tacos or massive “savings” on airline baggage fees with the purchase of a subscription package, companies rarely offer premium features or products for anything short of, well, a premium. Rarely, that is. Because VirtualPBX hosted business phone plans are some of the longest-running and most comprehensive unified communications options available on the market, they boast an array of premium features that are included with even the most affordable Dash Basic Plans. Because there are literally dozens of features that other service providers would charge extra for that would take too long to go over one-by-one, we’ll focus one of the most popular of all, the totally free Auto Attendant.
There Really Is Such a Thing as a Free Auto Attendant!
As we mentioned, every Dash Service Plan Agreement comes with a host of valuable and time-saving features. And though some premium offerings like Salesforce CRM Integrations and ACD Queues are available, no VirtualPBX service comes without at least a free Auto Attendant. The Auto Attendant is one of the perennial favorites among our customers and has been for ages. In fact, early versions of the free Auto Attendant came on legacy business VoIP platforms that we operated years ago and it was an immediate success from the start. Since then, and like all of our products and services, the Auto Attendant has received successions of updates and improvements, all of which have combined to bring it to companies in its most advanced state yet. And in spite of all of the award-winning advancements the VirtualPBX engineers have applied to and all of the other features along the way, Auto Attendant has stayed (and will remain) completely free and included in every Dash account.
What’s so Special About a Free Auto Attendant?
Well, other than the obvious, “free,” part of that question, there really is a lot a company can do with an Auto Attendant that makes it so popular. Any virtual receptionist can answer a call and shoot the caller to voicemail, but the free Auto Attendant from VirtualPBX can perform any one of a litany of Call Answering Services. Being able to customize the inbound caller’s journey with specific greetings, audio of your choosing (including professional greetings and on-hold music), send callers to any department or individual, and the ability even change all of those aspects to accommodate night/day or office hours is all just a fraction of the functions that can be performed by an Auto Attendant. And sure, Auto Attendant is included for free in the native feature set of a Dash Business Phone Plan, there’s no way you can get into one of those for free, right? Wrong! In fact, between our 30-day no questions asked money-back guarantee, and the chance to preview Dash for free for up to two weeks right now, you really can try it before you buy it. It may not be as tasty, but try doing that with a taco!
Free Web Phone from VirtualPBX: When Free Actually Means Free
Posted on May 1, 2018 by Dan Quick
There has been a lot of talk lately about the “freemium” business model that many popular apps have to entice users. Rightfully so, too. In the light of the fallout that came from the recent illumination into the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica privacy violations, the topic of what free actually means in the internet era has taken more of priority for many. This event struck such a chord with the public because tens of millions of Facebook users learned their personal information was used in direct violation of their understanding of the platform’s privacy agreement. Additionally, the social media site’s other billion-plus users were dismayed to learn that they had unknowingly been allowing their friends’ applications to mine their own data regardless of what the privacy settings they had chosen for themselves were. Basically, the net result here (in addition to a Congressional hearing for mister Mark Zuckerberg, himself) is that the saying that, “If the product is free that’s because you’re the product,” rings truer now in the minds of internet users than ever before. This is where we’d like to suggest that, though there are some suspiciously good deals out there to be wary of, every now and then you can come across one that actually holds water, too. Specifically, the all new and free Web Phone from VirtualPBX is our gift to the VoIP community in that it’s our very first, completely free VoIP phone option.
How Can a Free Web Phone Actually Be Free?
At this point, a healthy level of skepticism about anything free, especially in the tech space, isn’t out of line at all. What makes the free Web Phone from VirtualPBX so special is that we’ve built it ourselves, in-house. Using the open-source WebRTC (Web-based real-time calling) platform and leveraging our decades of hosted telecom expertise, we were able to construct a nimble, clean, and simple VoIP phone that we can offer to our customers. Plus, because we built it ourselves, there’s no licensing fee that users need to pay to third-party developers. Additionally, all of our work is already completed and because it’s a digital property, it’s not like we have inventory to pay off or anything. That’s why we get to offer the completely free Web Phone to all of our customers without a moment’s hesitation. And maybe you caught the only catch in that sentence, but it’s only free to our customers. The VirtualPBX Web Phone could theoretically manage all hosted communications for any user, anywhere. But because we want to continue building value for our VoIP users, the VirtualPBX Web Phone is exclusively available to users on a Dash VoIP Service Agreement.
How Does a Free Web Phone Work?
The way the free Web Phone from VirtualPBX works for Dash VoIP users is identical to how any VoIP phone works on Dash. That is, minus the cost of buying it, of course. Either way, Dash customers can get access to the free Web Phone for all of their users and whenever it’s used, the only cost is that the minutes are drawn from whatever pool of minutes that account has. Plus, because the VirtualPBX Web Phone works on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and is totally supported by our engineers according to our exacting standards, it can be operated on literally any web-enabled device, tablet, or telephone. That’s the kind of flexibility and service that VirtualPBX customers have come to expect, and it’s also proof that the free Web Phone from VirtualPBX is the one time when free, actually means free. Switching to VirtualPBX is easier than you think, too, and if you take advantage of this limited time offer, you can switch to VoIP on VirtualPBX and save!
