Our Guide to Setting Up a VoIP System for Your Home Office
More and more companies are shifting to work-from-home arrangements for their teams these days. While distributed work has its benefits, it does take a while to set up a home office that matches the optimizations that companies have at the office.
One way to make the transition smoother is by getting on a VoIP or voice over internet protocol system, which lets you make and receive calls online. Here are the first things to know about setting this up for your office.
Get to know your VoIP admin portal
If you are the admin of a hosted system, you have access to a wide array of features that can make handling calls easier for your team. On your browser, you can customize call features, purchase numbers, add users, configure call routing based on your organizational structure.
Even if you are working from home, you can have full access to your VoIP service’s admin portal as long as you have the login credentials. At this stage, it would also help if you printed out a call routing tree, which you can disseminate to your teammates.
Configure users and portals for teammates
Ensure that all your employees are on the VoIP service as “users,” and that their contact information is properly encoded. Things like their work email and unique extension number are essential in keeping the flow of calls smooth. Make sure that staff members know the extension numbers of their colleagues, so they just have to dial it when making a call.
The configuration of your business’ extension numbers relies on you. Avoid extensions that start with “91” or “41,” though, as this might lead to accidentally dialing emergency numbers or information directories. A good heuristic for this is taking the last two digits of your business’ founding date or any other numbers that are meaningful to your company.
Use an auto attendant for clients or customers
An auto attendant is a recorded series of messages for inbound calls. These recordings present callers with a menu of options; for example, your attendant can say “Press one for business development, press two for sales, press three for marketing,” and so on.
You can access the configuration menu for the auto attendant in the admin portal of your service. Setting this up for your system allows you to provide a smooth customer journey for callers and maintains the corporate feel of your company.
Set up a voicemail box for your teams
A voicemail box allows your employees to accumulate calls that they are unable to receive. You can set up mailboxes and corresponding PIN numbers in your admin portal. Instead of calling their voicemail, your employee can just go to their email to see what calls they have missed.
Create ring groups for call distribution
Creating a ring or hunt group is also a good way of distributing calls. In your admin portal, you can group teams according to their function or their ongoing projects. You can have groups containing entire departments.
Ring groups are useful when you have several people who can respond to a client request or query. If your operator directs a call to a ring group, all of the members’ phones will ring, and whoever is available can pick it up.
Conclusion
A VoIP phone lets you take and make calls wherever there is an internet connection, making it great for companies with employees who work in different geographic locations. Properly setting up your system will allow you to network as if you are working in the same building.
Set up your home office for success with Improcom. We are a business-class VoIP service enabling unified communications systems for thousands of small and medium enterprises. Contact us today for more information.