Internal Phone Systems are Limited by the Number of Phone Lines and may Choke a Small Business

Using an auto attendant will make your business run more efficiently if you need to transfer calls to cell phones.

Phone systems have limitations that may choke a small business. During normal call situations a small business phone system should be capable of handling several calls at once. If the system can't manage more than a couple of calls then the system may be loosing customers.

I used to work in the television industry, I was and engineer and ran a satellite uplink truck and production trailer. It was a small company based in Boise Idaho and I was in Denver Colorado. I had a company cell phone and took calls that were routed from the Boise office often.

We had a phone system in the Boise office and three phone lines going into it. It was designed to ring in the office then play a menu (Auto Attendant) giving the caller options to transfer to someones cell phone. If the caller selected one of us it would use a second line to try our cell phone. If we answered the call on our cell phone the one call would tie up two of the three phone lines until we hung up the call. If a second call came into the office there was only one line available so if we were all out of the office that second call could only go to voice mail.

I know we lost business because a client could not reach us when the first call was tying up two of our phone lines. This is how phone systems work, they are limited by the number of phone lines that come into them.

External phone systems or virtual phone systems can transfer calls without the limitation of how many lines come in. Calls are forwarded to the system if all of the office phone lines are busy or they are not answered  after a few rings (a feature of most phone companies). The virtual phone system can then play a recorded menu for the caller and allow them the options the business has.

With this type of phone system the phone lines are open more often, callers can reach the person they are calling for on their cell phone more reliably, there is NEVER a busy signal, the caller does not have to hang up and redial, in short it's just more efficient.

I wish my old company would have had this type of system rather than the internal phone system they bought. It would have worked much better and perhaps we could have had more business.