"Virtual Switchboard" For Cell Phones/Small Business ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. have an interesting "does this exist question" I am involved in a small business startup. Each employee is going to have a cell phone (Probably Sprint PCS?), for business reasons, and we will also be getting an 800 number for the main business number. The question is, can we come up with some way, via the 800 number, to have the appearance that all these phones are land-lines, and in fact connected to a main switchboard/pbx? Hence my term a "virtual switchboard".

A. In our small engineering office of nine persons, each employee has a PCS phone. We use Centrex from the local Bell company. We selected Centrex so we could experiment with various features in our business. The main feature you need, I believe, is called "Off Premises Call Transfer". This allows a person or device to answer calls, offer choices, and transfer the call, thereby being available for the next caller. On our local listed telephone number, we use a Viking Model ACA-1A Automated Attendant. (see www.vikingelectronics.com). Our 800 number forwards to the local listed number. We also have several other Centrex lines for those people who spend much time in the office. For these people, their private Centrex line is setup with "no-answer call forward" so after two rings it forwards to their PCS phone. We can easily re-program the Viking unit anytime, however it is a little unhandy. I believe the Viking unit to be about $200 to $300. There are much better Auto Attendants on the market, and some with voice mail. We prefer to use the FREE PCS voice mail. You can also use some PBX systems, but you will require more lines from the phone company to transfer calls. A final note. Everyone expects a wired phone to always work! PCS phones do not always work indoors. Our PCS phones work generally OK because I arranged to have a "cell site" put on the roof of our office building during the network build out. Therefore, test, test, test, before you accept your solution. Most Voice Mail systems offer IVR facilities such as you require. All you have to do is connect the lines to 'em and program the system to your requirements. www.vodavi-ct.com are one vendor that I know for sure can do what you want. Now, what happens when I take a call from outside for someone else? NextLink has a Transfer feature that allows you to transfer an incoming call to another number. Could be one of my voicemail boxes, which are provided by an outside contractor (not NextLink), each with its own separate phone number. Could be a cell phone or pager, too. Could be anything with a phone number. Assuming that you're transferring to another landline phone, the caller may never even realize he's being transferred out of the office!!

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