One of the fantastic things about signing up for Cloud Phone is that in just about 2 minutes you have a fully functional, and ready-to-use, business phone system. The service simply works, and without the complicated configuration common in other solutions.
Not everyone has the same needs though, and not everyone wants the system to work the way it's automatically configured. In this post, I'll show you the two most common ways that customers configure their accounts and show you how to make the most of the Cloud Phone mobile app.
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To get started let's talk about how we make sure your account is ready-to-use immediately after you sign up for an account.
Company Information
During sign up, the most important part of the process is the ability for you to pick your virtual phone number. You should think about this number as your company's main phone number. Today, you can choose a toll free number or a local number from the United States or Canada. Your Caller ID settings are configured automatically to use this number and our cloud based platform instantly configures the routing on our platform to ensure the number reaches you. (Coming soon! New interface for picking numbers and international numbers.)
The name and company fields aren't just used for profile settings. They get added to a company greeting template that is used when someone calls your business number. Calls are automatically routed to the pre-configured auto attendant which plays the greeting.
"Thank you for calling COMPANY. Please dial 1 for NAME, or 9 to leave a message."
To really make the service work immediately we take the mobile number you enter during signup and use that as the location where we route calls from your business number. We also send notifications for voicemails and faxes here.
All of these settings are configurable, but these are the default settings.
So to recap;
Now, on to the 2 most common configurations...
Configuration #1: Small Business Is Big Business
I really like this setup because it provides significant benefit to our customers. Regardless of the size of a business, where they work from (office, home, coffee shop, the car, etc...), or how successful they are --- this is the plan that supports the dream of every business owner.
What does that mean? It means that no one gets into business to not be successful. Everyone starts with a dream, and hopefully they dream of making it big and their idea turns into a huge success --- but we all have to start somewhere, and often that somewhere is a business of just one person!
Here's a notable statistic; there are over 33 million MSME's in North America1. MSME stands for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and they are normally defined as a business with less than 10 employees.
When you are a business of just one, or just a few - you can't afford to appear less than professional or to miss out on opportunies. This configuration plays off these key features;
Here are the basic steps to setup this option;
Now your new business number is configured and ready to use.
Configuration #2: All Work No Play
One of the most common requests we get from customers is, "How do I get calls to just ring through to me?". When I think about this persona, I imagine the always on the go entrepreneur. Perhaps it's a busy real estate agent, an event planner, or an online seller - but it's someone who knows that connecting with their customer is critical to their business. These "go-getters" don't want to put their customers through a series of menu options or screen the calls, they want to connect as quickly as possible.
They need a dedicated business number that just forwards to them, wherever they are.
Here's how to set it up;
That's it! Now calls to your business number will bypass the Auto Attendant and ring directly to your phone. Callers won't be screened and you'll be able to connect to them quickly and efficiently.
Bonus Tip: Download the Mobile App
We recently released our mobile app which gives you full access to manage your virtual phone service and access additional features like call recording, conference calling, eavesdrop and flip.
Most importantly the app is the first product from Voxox to leverage our patent pending voice codec which greatly out performs other apps when it comes to call quality.
In conclusion, I hope your takeaway from this is that Cloud Phone is powerful, yet simple solution to simplify your business communications. Eliminate the expensive, hardware based solutions and join us in the cloud.
As always, if you need any help with your Cloud Phone account you can always reach out to our amazing support team or message me directly.