Getting your calls to us
The calls have to get to us somehow in order for us to answer them. All the
possible options are below. If you're not sure what would suit you best, contact
us and we'll be happy to go through them with you.
Call-Forwarding
Most of our clients use the Call-Forwarding service from their
telephone company to get their calls
to us. Punch in a code on your phone when you leave the office and we
answer all the calls. Punch in a code when you return and the calls ring
at your office again. For most offices, you only need Call-Forwarding on the
first line in a multi-line system because the number on the first line is the
only number people use to call you.
Simple Call-Forwarding works well, but nowadays there are a few other
services available from most local telephone companies that either work well
with or instead of Call-Forwarding.
Remote Call-Forwarding
A real no-brainer to add to your normal Call-Forwarding is something called Remote
Call-Forwarding. Telephone companies don't charge very much for it and
it allows you to forward or un-forward your line from any phone.
Let's say you leave the office in a hurry and half-way through your 45 minute
commute back to the house you realize you forgot to forward the phone to us.
Without Remote Call-Forwarding, you'd have to drive back to the office.
With this service, you could forward the office line from your cell phone or
when you got home.
You can even instruct us to check your line for you at a certain time each
evening and, if the line's not forwarded, to forward it for you using your
Remote Call-Forwarding service. We'll just leave a message for you on your
account informing you we discovered your line off forwarding and fixed it!
Call-Forward Busy Line/Don't Answer
Ever wish you had an extra receptionist? VoiceLink can help. Get Call-Forward
Busy Line/Don't Answer and whenever your line rings over a certain number of
times (say, 3 or 4 rings), or if the line is busy, the call is switched to us
automatically. We answer in your company name, take a message, and e-mail
it or fax it over to
your office (or follow any other instructions you might provide). If you have multiple lines and sign up for this service, get
the "Call-Forward Don't Answer" part on all lines but the last one. On the last
line, get Call-Forward Don't Answer and Call-Forward Busy. Contact
us if you need help!
Simultaneous Call-Forwarding
Do you get a lot of calls after hours? If so, you may wish to consider Simultaneous
Call-Forwarding. With standard Call-Forwarding, only one call at a time can
be forwarded. If a second call comes in, the caller will get a busy signal.
Calls through an answering service are usually very short (about 30 seconds), so
it's probable that callers should rarely get a busy, and if they call right back
the previous call will often have been completed and they'll get right
through. However, if your after hours call traffic is particularly high
(say, over about ten urgent calls a night) or you are particularly sensitive to
even a low occurrence of busy signals on your line, you may want to request this service
from your telephone company.
Be forewarned, though, that the telephone company will probably charge a
significant amount for each additional Call-Forwarding "channel." Each channel
will allow just one additional call to be forwarded simultaneously.
If you're having complaints of callers getting a busy when they call your
line after hours but don't want the added expense of Simultaneous
Call-Forwarding, there's a couple things you can do to alleviate the problem.
First, make sure any of your employees who calls us after hours (e.g., to
return a page, tell us where they can be reached, etc.) dials the
call-forward number for your account. This number comes directly to us and
therefore does not use the call-forward channel from your office to us.
Second, avoid having us patch calls to your on-call people. If someone calls
in to your office and your instructions are to have us patch the call directly to your
on-call person, and they then talk for 20 minutes, no other calls can come
through the Call-Forwarding during this time. Whenever possible, have us get the
number of the caller and have your on-call person call them back directly. If
you must have us patch calls, you may need the Simultaneous Call-Forwarding
service mentioned above.
Using your in-house phone system
If you have a fairly sophisticated phone system or PBX, your equipment may
well support a feature that can re-direct calls to another number. The way this
works is that the phone system receives an incoming call, then automatically
grabs an outgoing line, dials another number, then patches the incoming and
outgoing lines together.
If you use this method, you should be aware of its limitations. Whenever two
lines are patched together in this manner, there is a resulting loss of volume
on the resulting connection. This makes it hard for our operator to hear your
callers (and vice versa). There is also often a delay after us receiving the
call before the "patch" is completed. We therefore hear silence on the
line and sometimes might hang up, thinking someone called us in error.
Because of these limitations, we recommend our clients use some type of
Call-Forwarding to get calls to us whenever possible. However, if you must
use the re-direct features of your PBX system, we will work with you to make
things function as smoothly as possible.
Giving out our number directly
You may give out the unique telephone number we give you (either local or
toll-free depending on your needs and location) directly. We have two types of
clients who use us in this way.
Some clients use us as their virtual office. They give out our number and we
are, essentially, their receptionist.
Other clients have their own number, but use the number we give them for some
special purpose application. A common example of this is a large corporation
that wants us to answer an "emergency line" of some sort.
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