Call Forwarding: How to Forward Business Phone Calls to Mobile Phones
It’s a busy, busy world out there, and as a sales consultant you are constantly on the go, visiting clients, checking up on operations, or helping out your sales team. For most business owners, whether they are solopreneurs or heads of large corporations, mobile phones are your lifeline to the business. A recent study showed that sixty-six percent of small business owners use mobile technology for their business.
You can’t afford to miss any important calls even though you’re not in the office. There are times when you need to forward your business calls to your cell. If you’re a small operation involving just a couple of people, call forwarding is a simple, do-it-yourself operation. If you work for a global corporation, getting calls to your extension forwarding to your mobile may be slightly more complicated - but possible with the right system.
Mechanics of Call Forwarding
For example, on a Verizon system, pick up your office phone and dial *72. Once you hear the tone, dial the cell phone number that you want to receive your forwarded calls. Once the cell phone answers, then call forwarding is enabled. Simply dial *73 on your office phone to disable the forwarding.
This system is fine for a very small business, but won’t work in a larger operation. You may want to forward calls to a series of employees’ mobile numbers until you get an answer. Remember, you don’t want to leave a customer hanging without help or without service if they are in urgent need of something, and you especially don’t want them to go to voice mail.
Global Reach, Local Response
Call forwarding also lets a business expand its footprint by having several numbers forwarded to the same location, and answered promptly. This allows out-of-town customers to dial a local or a toll-free number, which in turn forwards their calls to the business’ main line. This means customers can avoid long-distance charges, and at the same time be convinced that the business is at their service when they need it.
Of course, if they are calling from different time zones, there may not be anyone in the office to take their calls. You are going to need a call forwarding provider to distribute these calls to the appropriate mobile phones or call center. For this, there is “follow the sun forwarding”where incoming calls get re-routed sequentially to any phone in the world where your representative can take the call. Combining that with voice menu options means that every incoming call can be handled in the best possible way.
Quality
You need a call forwarding provider who delivers a clear, noise-free connection that doesn’t sounds like it’s coming from another part of the world, even when it is. For this reason, you should consider a system that relies more on public switched telephone network (PSTN) rather than voice over internet protocol (VOiP). Anyone familiar with a VOiP service like Skype knows that while Skype can deliver calls cheaply, its sound fidelity is often quite inconsistent.
As to what else you should look for in a forwarding provider, make sure you find one that that doesn’t require any equipment to buy, setup fees to pay, or penalties if you need to cancel. Let them look after all the technology while you can focus on your own business.
Control
You need a forwarding system that allows you to control exactly when and where each incoming call is forwarded to. Some providers offer online control of the forwarded calls, so you can change the direction of any call with the click of a mouse, 24 hours a day.
You can program calls coming in at certain times, or from certain places, to be forwarded to certain phones. You can also get access to real-time call records that lets you track where and when the calls came in, and how they were processed.
And even if the incoming call comes in the middle of the night, the employee can leave a personal message on their mobile voicemail that assures the caller that their call landed in the right place, and with the right person to deal with their needs as promptly as possible.
Ideally, all of these control functions should be handled through a user-friendly online console, so you can see all the details of your online forwarding in one place.
Stay Connected To Your Customers
It’s a 24-hour wired world nowadays, and businesses can’t afford to leave any stone unturned. If there are incoming calls that your company is missing, it is costing you money. You have potential customers all around the country, and all around the world. Why not try and make it easy to talk to as many as you can?