Be honest: when you make a call you want to talk to a real “live” person. Guess what? So do your clients and sales prospects. A valuable tool you can use to ensure that your calls can always be answered is your telephone company’s call routing features. You can use them to route calls to a different location during lunches and staff meetings, after-hours, during holidays and for overflow when all of your lines are full.
Call Routing Techniques
Manual Call Forwarding Feature
This feature is added to your first main line. Whenever you want to route calls to another location, you simply pick up on your first line, dial in a code (typically 72#, you can confirm this with your telephone company) and you will hear a dial tone. Then, you enter the telephone number of the location you want to route your calls to. When you hang up, all subsequent calls will be routed to the telephone number that you designated. This feature also blocks roll-over to your other lines and continues to route additional calls to the other location. Whenever you want to pull the calls back, you pick up on the first line, dial in a code (typically 73#). You will hear three beeps and then you will hang up. From that point forward, calls will again ring in at the original location.
Call Forward No Answer Feature
This feature lets you set a ring count. If you don’t pick up a call within that number of rings, it will automatically roll over to another telephone number that you have designated. Your telephone company will ask you for the number when you order the feature. NOTE: You must put this feature on every line not just the first line because it does not block rollover.
Call Forward Busy Feature
If you order this feature and all of your lines are full, subsequent calls don’t get a busy signal; they will roll-over to another telephone number that you have designated. Your telephone company will ask you for the number when you order the feature. NOTE: You only need this feature on your last line.
You can use all of these features if you choose to. The Manual Call Forwarding will over-ride the other two whenever you activate it.
These features are very inexpensive and many telephone companies will offer all three in a bundled package. You can use these features to get immediate improvements in your service levels. The result will be happy loyal customers that come back again and again and more opportunities to close new prospects.
Can you afford to lose new business or aggravate clients because there are times when they can’t get help?
This blog was written by Laurie Leonard, the President of SUITE 1000, a U.S. based national telephone answering service, inbound call center and outsourced call center service. Her company has specialized in handling legal intake, sales leads, email lead response, appointment scheduling, customer service and help desk calls for over 20 years.
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