Looking to streamline your business with a VoIP phone system? Smart choice! VoIP telephony is an excellent solution for modern businesses largely because they simplify technology. With a streamlined, hardware-free approach, you can adjust call settings with ease. Landline phones formerly required rewiring and close contact with the phone company when these types of changes needed to be made. With cloud-based VoIP technology, however, adding users, creating phone numbers, recording voicemail messages, and setting business hours is simpler than ever.

However, fully setting up your VoIP phone system involves a lot of specific requirements and details. With Impact 51 Electronics on the job, installation and implementation of a cloud-based VoIP app can be completed in as little as five minutes, depending on the provider and customization desired. When switching from landline service or another VoIP vendor, there are additional technical aspects to consider; which may take a little more time. But whatever service is needed, we will assist you from start to finish with all aspects of setting up your VOIP phone system including:

• Designating Admins and Users
• Creating Voicemails and IVRs
• Setting Calling Hours
• Integrating with other workflows
• Number Porting
• Simultaneous Ring
• Call Routing
• Shared Inbox

1. Designate Admins and Users

Admins are the employees who will be controlling your phone system’s settings and managing other agents. More specifically, admins are the employees who have access to your phone system’s control dashboard. Designating these representatives early on means they’ll be present for all the training and onboarding activities, becoming go-to experts at navigating the platform.

Users are the representatives that are on the phones every day. Admins should get a fairly precise estimate of how many users they’ll be adding and how these telephone numbers will fluctuate as the business grows, scales with seasonality, etc., since nearly all phone systems have additional costs affiliated per-user.

Also, these users will need to be assigned teams when building your incoming call structure. Thinking about this delegation at an early phase will help when you actually begin fielding calls.

2. Create Voicemails and IVRs

Interactive voice response (IVR) is an automated system that lets users interact with a smart call routing system. Ideally, the IVR will help your customers find the desired information on their own, avoiding unnecessary touches and leading to fast resolutions.

Additionally, as one of the first actions, each individual user should create a unique and personable voicemail message. Customers see the phone as a direct way to reach brand representatives. Endless ringing leaves the wrong impression. A well-designed voicemail message goes beyond formalities — it helps create a cohesive brand identity and build empathy with customers.

3. Set Calling Hours

It’s an incredibly basic step that’s easy to overlook, but failure to set functioning hours for your business as a whole (and individual lines) can lead to a lot of frustrated customers.

If the phones ring and nobody answers, customers will feel like they’re being ignored. If they receive a message letting them know to call back at the correct time, they’ll at least have realistic expectations.

Remember to set opening and closing hours for both your main lines and individual extensions. Take time differences into consideration if you’re operating in multiple locations, and consider alternative work arrangements to accommodate non-local business.

4. Integrate with other workflows

The most powerful advantage of using VoIP technology is the ability to connect your phone with other communication tools.

These assets used to be isolated; any information collected via one channel had to be manually copied and updated in another. As a result, communication within teams suffered, and customer experiences were eroded by bureaucracy!

No more. Vital information collected within your phone system is automatically updated within customer management and lead-tracking software. Furthermore, this info is accessible across teams, which means your customer experience won’t suffer when handoffs between employees occur.

5. Number Porting:

Discussed in detail below, if you want to keep the same phone numbers you’re currently using (you do), you need to budget one-to-two weeks for the porting process. This variable timeframe exists since phone numbers must first be released from your previous carrier.

(Note: Number porting usually involves a small, one-time transaction fee.)

When switching from landline service to VoIP (or between VoIP vendors), you don’t want to lose your current phone numbers. They’re posted on social media, your website, industry sites, and email signatures. It’s how your customers have learned to reach you.

Switching to new numbers would result in weeks of system updates, frustrated customers, and lost business opportunities.

Number porting is a standard procedure for VoIP solutions, whereby you keep your same numbers when transitioning to a new phone system.

Porting involves four essential parties: you, your current provider, your new provider, and a network carrier. Fair warning, it’s not a super simple process. But if you have the right documents ready, it can be completed quickly and painlessly.

• For one, your new phone service will take care of the vast majority of paperwork (if they cannot do this for you, we recommend finding another system!). All you need to supply is:
• The name of your current phone provider
• The name of each number’s account owner
• A full address associated with each number
• A copy of the last bill for each number
• All area-code based phone numbers have a Customer Service Record (CSR). If you can provide this document, it contains almost all of the necessary information, thus expediting the process.
• After this step, you can be completely finished with your former phone provider. Your new business VoIP service will handle all interactions from here out.
• A Letter of Authorization (LOA) will be submitted to your old system, and porting requests will be scheduled with a carrier (e.x. Voxbone or Twilio). This ensures your numbers are officially active and accessible.

The porting time is based on the customer and their current carrier. What are your current contractual engagements and what information will need to be validated? Additionally, the country and service they are porting to/from is also relevant. In Europe, it’s often a minimum of 14 business days and can last up to several months. You will also need to provide address/id documentation for activation.

6. Simultaneous Ring:

Customers use the phone when time is of the essence. Simultaneous ring setups make sure an agent is there to take the call, no matter what. Each agent will be notified of an incoming call, and whoever is available first will answer.

7. Call Routing:

Finding a representative is important, but so is finding the right representative. A cascading structure tries to ring just one line at a time in order of relevancy.

For example, multiple support representative may be able to assist with billing inquiries, but it makes sense to start with your accounts payable representative. If they’re unavailable, the call will automatically be directed to another customer support associate. If no customer support rep is available, perhaps the next step would be to ring the support team manager.

The goal here is to connect the customer with a knowledgeable representative, regardless of individual availability.

8. Shared Inbox:

Support and sales teams need to work together seamlessly. No customer inquiry should go unanswered, nor any sales qualified lead go unpursued. Giving multiple users access to the same voicemail inbox improves response-time, time-to-resolution, and deals won. Adding users to a shared inbox is an easy step that instantly leads to positive results.