Answering and routing
Auto Attendant
The recorded menu that answers and points callers at the right place.
You record a greeting and map each key to a destination: a person, a ring group, a queue or a mailbox. Callers who press nothing, or press a key you have not used, get sent wherever you nominate rather than hearing silence. You can run different menus for open hours, after hours and holidays, and nest a second menu under an option if one department needs its own.
- Good for
- Any business where callers want more than one department, and any business that wants the phone answered instantly at 5pm on a Friday.
- Setting it up
- We build the menu with you before you go live, from a call flow sketched on a single page: what the options are, where each one goes, and what happens out of hours. Recording the greeting is the only part you have to do yourself, and you can re-record it from a handset whenever it changes.
- Worth knowing
- Keep the top menu to four options or fewer. Callers do not remember more than that, and the ones who get lost press zero anyway, so make sure zero goes somewhere sensible.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Ring Groups
Rings several phones at once for one number.
Put everyone who should hear a call into a group and point a number, a menu option or an extension at it. All the phones ring together, or in a sequence you set, and the first person to lift the handset takes the call. If nobody answers within the time you set, the call moves on to voicemail, another group or an outside number.
- Good for
- Sales, service desks, and any small team where whoever is free should pick up.
- Setting it up
- Tell us who belongs in each group and whether they ring together or in order, and we set the ring time and where the call goes if nobody picks up. Adding or removing somebody later is a same-day change, and you can do it yourself in the portal.
- Worth knowing
- Sequential ringing is useful when you want a specific person to get first refusal, but it adds a few seconds of ringing per hop. For anything customer-facing, ring them all at once.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Call Queues
Holds callers in line when everyone is busy.
Callers hear a greeting and hold music, keep their position, and are handed to the next free agent. You choose how calls are distributed: longest-idle agent, round robin, or all at once. Agents can log in and out, so the queue only rings people actually on shift, and you can set what happens when the wait gets too long or nobody is logged in at all.
- Good for
- Anywhere the call volume sometimes exceeds the number of people, and a busy tone would lose the customer.
- Setting it up
- We set the distribution order, the hold audio, the wait announcements and the overflow, then log your agents in. Expect a short conversation about what counts as too long a wait for your callers; that one number decides more about how the queue feels than anything else.
- Worth knowing
- Set the overflow before you go live. A queue with no overflow will happily hold somebody forever if every agent is logged out.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Queue Call Back
Offers to ring the caller back instead of making them wait.
When the wait passes a threshold you set, the system offers to take the caller number and call them back. They hang up, keep their place in the queue, and the system rings them and connects them to the next free agent when their turn arrives.
- Good for
- Queues that spike, where the alternative is a long hold or an abandoned call.
- Setting it up
- Switched on per queue with a threshold and a number to call back from. Nothing to install and nothing for the caller to learn, because the offer is a recorded prompt added to the queue you already have.
- Worth knowing
- It measurably reduces abandoned calls, and it costs you nothing extra to switch on. The main thing to get right is the threshold: offer it too early and everybody takes it.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Call Forwarding
Sends calls somewhere else when you are not at the desk.
Forward all calls, or only when the line is busy, only when there is no answer, or only when the phone is unreachable. The destination can be another extension, a ring group, voicemail or an outside number such as a mobile. You set it yourself from the handset or the web portal, so it does not need a support call.
- Good for
- People who move between sites, on-call rotas, and anybody covering for a colleague.
- Setting it up
- Nothing to configure in advance, as it is on every extension from day one. Each person sets their own from the handset or the portal, and we show everybody where it lives on install day.
- Worth knowing
- Forwarding to a mobile keeps the caller ID of the original caller, so you still know who is ringing before you answer.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Call Waiting
Tells you a second call is coming in while you are on one.
A tone in the earpiece and a prompt on screen showing who is calling. You can put the current call on hold and take the new one, swap between the two, or leave it to go to voicemail. If you would rather never be interrupted, it can be turned off per extension.
- Good for
- One-person offices and anybody who cannot afford to miss a second caller.
- Setting it up
- On by default and turned off per extension on request. Worth deciding at install which roles should have it off, because it interacts with queues and ring groups.
- Worth knowing
- If you have a queue or a ring group, you usually want call waiting off for the people in it, so the second call goes to somebody actually free.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Call Parking
Puts a call in a numbered slot anyone can pick up.
Park the call and the system tells you the slot number. Announce it over the paging system or shout it, and whoever is nearest a phone dials that slot and picks the call up. If nobody collects it within the timeout, the call rings back to the phone that parked it rather than being lost.
- Good for
- Shops, workshops, warehouses, anywhere the person wanted is not sat at a desk.
- Setting it up
- We set how many slots you have and how long a call waits before it rings back to you. If you want the slots on handset keys rather than dialled, say so and we program the keys before the phones ship.
- Worth knowing
- Better than a transfer when you do not know where somebody is. A blind transfer to an empty desk ends in voicemail; a parked call comes back to you.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Directed Call Park
Parks a call in a slot you choose.
Instead of taking the next free slot, you pick the one to use. That means the same slot can be reserved for the same purpose every time, and staff learn it: parts always parks on 71, service on 72.
- Good for
- Larger sites where several calls may be parked at once and a wrong slot means the wrong person picks up.
- Setting it up
- You choose the slot numbers and what each one is for, and we program and label them. Keep the list short; one slot per department is plenty.
- Worth knowing
- Put the slot numbers on a sticker by the phone. It is the sort of thing everybody knows for a week and then forgets.
Every plan
Answering and routing
Hotdesking
Lets somebody sign in to any phone and make it theirs.
Sign in at any handset with your extension and PIN. That phone becomes your extension: your number, your speed dials, your voicemail, your call history. Sign out, or let it time out at end of shift, and the phone returns to whatever it was before.
- Good for
- Shift work, shared desks, hot desks, and offices where people move between rooms.
- Setting it up
- Each person gets a PIN, and we set which phones allow sign-in and when they sign out automatically. The handsets need no per-person configuration at all, which is the whole point of it.
- Worth knowing
- Worth setting an automatic sign-out at the end of the day, or the night shift inherits the day shift extension and the calls go to the wrong person.
Every plan
Voicemail and notifications
Voicemail to Email
Sends voicemails to your inbox as audio files.
Every message arrives as an email with the recording attached and the caller number in the subject. You can listen on a phone, forward it to a colleague who needs to deal with it, or keep it as a record. You choose whether the message also stays on the phone system or is removed once it has been emailed.
- Good for
- Everybody. It is usually the first feature people notice they cannot live without.
- Setting it up
- We need one email address per mailbox, and a decision on whether messages stay on the system after they are sent. Both are changeable later in the portal without a support call.
- Worth knowing
- Decide whether messages are deleted from the system after emailing. Leaving them on means a full mailbox eventually stops taking new ones.
Every plan
Voicemail and notifications
Voicemail Transcription
Turns voicemail into text you can read.
The message arrives written out in the body of the email with the recording still attached. You can read it in a meeting, search your inbox for it later, and decide whether it needs a call back without listening to ninety seconds of someone clearing their throat.
- Good for
- Anyone in meetings all day, and anyone who gets more voicemail than they can listen to.
- Setting it up
- Enabled per mailbox, with no software, no app and nothing for the user to do. The text simply starts appearing in the emails you already get.
- Worth knowing
- Transcription is good, not perfect. Company names and accents are where it slips, so the audio is always attached as well.
Standard and Advanced
Voicemail and notifications
Customizable Greetings
Different recordings for different situations.
Separate greetings for your normal hours, after hours, holidays, and when your line is busy. Record them from the handset or upload audio from the portal, and schedule which one plays when so nobody has to remember to switch them over.
- Good for
- Anywhere the right answer at 2pm on a Tuesday is not the right answer on Christmas Eve.
- Setting it up
- Record them from a handset, or send us audio files and we load them for you. The schedule that decides which greeting plays is set once against your opening hours, and we load the holidays for the year ahead so nobody has to remember to switch anything over.
- Worth knowing
- Record the after-hours greeting with your opening time in it. The most common reason people ring back annoyed is that they did not know when you open.
Every plan
Voicemail and notifications
Name Recording
Your name in your own voice in the company directory.
When a caller uses dial-by-name, they hear you say your own name rather than a synthesised version of the spelling. It takes about ten seconds to record from your own handset. The recording is then used anywhere the system would otherwise spell your name out: the dial-by-name directory, transfer announcements and voicemail prompts.
- Good for
- Businesses with a dial-by-name directory, particularly where names are commonly mispronounced.
- Setting it up
- Ten seconds per person from their own handset, following a spoken prompt. Best done as one lap of the office on install day, because otherwise it never gets done at all.
- Worth knowing
- Worth doing on day one for everyone. It is the difference between sounding like a company and sounding like a phone system.
Every plan
Voicemail and notifications
Email Notification
Tells you by email when something happens.
New voicemail, a missed call, or a change to your extension settings arrives in your inbox. You choose which events you want and which address they go to, so an office manager can be told about the main line without being told about everybody personal calls.
- Good for
- Anyone who lives in their inbox more than on their phone.
- Setting it up
- Tell us which events matter and which address each one goes to. It is set per extension, so the office manager's rules can be completely different from everybody else's.
- Worth knowing
- Point shared-line notifications at a shared mailbox rather than one person, or they stop when that person is on holiday.
Every plan
Voicemail and notifications
Missed Call Alerts
A note of the calls you did not catch.
Who rang, the number, and when, sent to you as soon as the call ends. It covers calls that rang out as well as calls that went to voicemail without a message, which is the category people most often never find out about.
- Good for
- Sales teams, and anybody where a missed call is a lost job.
- Setting it up
- Enabled per extension with an email address, and no change to the phones. It picks up the rang-out calls automatically rather than needing a rule written per number.
- Worth knowing
- The calls with no voicemail are the valuable ones. Most callers will not leave a message but will answer if you ring straight back.
Every plan
Apps, desktop and the portal
Mobile App
Your extension on your phone.
Make and take calls on your work number from a mobile, with the same extension, transfers, voicemail and caller ID as the desk phone. Calls go over data or Wi-Fi rather than your mobile minutes, and your personal number is never shown to the customer.
- Good for
- Field staff, owners, on-call, and anybody who takes work calls outside the building.
- Setting it up
- Install it from the app store and sign in with the credentials we send; there is nothing to type in by hand. Do allow notifications, because otherwise the phone will not ring when the app is closed, and that is the one step people skip.
- Worth knowing
- It keeps your personal number private in both directions, which is the reason most people stop giving out their mobile.
Every plan
Apps, desktop and the portal
Desktop App
Your extension on your computer.
A softphone with your directory, call history, presence and transfers, using a headset. It runs alongside the desk phone rather than replacing it, so people can use whichever suits the task. Calls, transfers and voicemail all work away from the office over any internet connection, and the number customers see is the same one the desk phone shows.
- Good for
- Remote staff, laptop-based teams, and anyone who would rather type a name than dial a number.
- Setting it up
- A download, a sign-in and a headset. It works from home over any internet connection with no VPN and nothing to open up on a router.
- Worth knowing
- For home workers it is usually the whole setup: no desk phone to ship, no cable to run, nothing to configure at their end.
Every plan
Apps, desktop and the portal
Click to Call
Dial by clicking a number on screen.
Phone numbers in your browser, CRM or spreadsheet become clickable. Clicking one rings your phone, and when you pick up it dials the number for you, so nobody mistypes a digit or looks up the same number twice.
- Good for
- Anyone making a lot of outbound calls from a list or a CRM.
- Setting it up
- Either a small browser extension or a dialler link from your CRM, if it offers one. Tell us which CRM you use and we will confirm what it needs before you buy anything.
- Worth knowing
- It sounds trivial and saves a surprising amount of time once you are past about twenty calls a day.
Every plan
Apps, desktop and the portal
Web User Portal
The page where you change your own settings.
Sign in to set forwarding, record and schedule greetings, manage voicemail, look at your own call history and set up speed dials. It is per-user, so people change their own settings without raising a ticket or waiting for anybody.
- Good for
- Everyone. It is also how managers make changes without calling support.
- Setting it up
- Nothing to install, because it is a web page, and every user has an account from day one. We walk through it on install day and leave a one-page cheat sheet behind.
- Worth knowing
- Show people the portal on install day. The single biggest driver of support calls is not knowing you can change it yourself.
Every plan
Apps, desktop and the portal
Team Presence
Shows who is free, busy or away.
Status appears next to each colleague in the apps and on the handset keys: available, on a call, do not disturb, or offline. It updates live, so you can see whether it is worth transferring before you commit to it.
- Good for
- Reception, anyone who transfers calls, and distributed teams who cannot see each other.
- Setting it up
- It works as soon as your extensions exist. Who appears in whose list is something we set, so tell us if a team should not see the others.
- Worth knowing
- Presence is what stops the classic transfer into a ringing phone in an empty office.
Every plan
Apps, desktop and the portal
Phone Status
The same status on the handset keys.
Busy lamp field keys on the desk phone light up when the colleague they are assigned to is on a call. One glance tells you who is free, and pressing the key transfers to them or dials them directly.
- Good for
- Front desks, dispatchers, anyone covering a team from a physical phone.
- Setting it up
- We program the keys before the phones ship, so they arrive labelled and already working. Changing who sits on which key later is a request, not a site visit.
- Worth knowing
- This is what the GBX20 sidecar is for. Once you are watching more than a dozen people, they will not fit on the phone itself.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Three-Way Call
Add a third person to a live call.
Put the current call on hold, dial the third person, and join the two together. Nothing to book and no dial-in details; it happens mid-conversation from the handset or the app. Either of the other two can be dropped again without ending the call, so you can pull a colleague in, get the answer and let them go.
- Good for
- Bringing a colleague or a supplier into a customer call on the spot.
- Setting it up
- Nothing to enable and nothing to book. It is two button presses, and worth practising once so nobody is learning it in front of a customer.
- Worth knowing
- For anything bigger than three people, use a conference room instead. Three-way calling is for the unplanned ones.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Conference Bridge
A dial-in number for group calls.
A number and an access code that people ring from any phone, anywhere, to join the same call. No app and no account required for the people joining, which matters when half the attendees are outside your business.
- Good for
- Regular team calls, supplier calls, anything where attendees are on the road.
- Setting it up
- We give you the number and the access codes. Put them in your calendar invitations once and you are finished.
- Worth knowing
- A dial-in bridge is still the most reliable option when somebody is driving or on a poor connection, because it does not depend on their internet.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Multiple Conference Rooms
More than one conference running at once.
Several separate rooms, each with its own number or code, so two meetings can run at the same time without colliding. Rooms can be permanent, so the same team always uses the same details. Each room has its own audio and access code and is completely separate from the others, so there is no chance of somebody dialling into the wrong meeting and hearing something they should not.
- Good for
- Businesses with more than one team holding regular calls.
- Setting it up
- Tell us how many rooms you want and who owns each one. Permanent rooms keep the same details indefinitely, so the invitation text never has to be rewritten.
- Worth knowing
- Give each department a permanent room. Meeting details that never change are details nobody has to look up.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Video Conferencing
Meetings with video, not just voice.
Start a video meeting from the desktop app or a browser link, with screen sharing so you can show a document or a screen rather than describe it. Participants join from a link without needing an account. Meetings run in the same app as your calls, so there is no separate account to administer and no second license to buy.
- Good for
- Client meetings, remote teams, anything that goes faster when people can see the screen.
- Setting it up
- Sign in to the desktop app; the people you invite need only the link. Nothing to install at their end, which is the whole reason it is worth using.
- Worth knowing
- The browser join link is the important part. Anything that makes a customer install software before a meeting loses some of them.
Standard and Advanced
While you are on a call
Call Recording
Keeps a copy of the call.
Record on demand by pressing a key mid-call, or automatically for chosen extensions or queues. Recordings are stored against the call record and downloaded from the portal, so you can find one by date, number or extension later.
- Good for
- Training, disputes, order accuracy, and any business with a compliance obligation.
- Setting it up
- We enable it per extension or per queue, set where recordings are kept and for how long, and add an announcement to your greeting if callers need to be told. Agree the retention period before go-live rather than after, because it is far easier than working back through recordings later.
- Worth knowing
- Check what you must tell callers before switching on automatic recording. Rules differ by state and by industry, and a recorded announcement is the usual answer.
Standard and Advanced
While you are on a call
Music-On-Hold
What callers hear while they wait.
Upload your own audio or use the default. You can set different hold audio in different places, so a queue can carry an announcement about opening hours while a normal hold is just music.
- Good for
- Everyone. Silence on hold makes callers think they have been cut off.
- Setting it up
- Send us an audio file, or start with the default and change it whenever you like. If you would rather callers heard a spoken message than music, record it on a phone and send it over; it does not need a studio.
- Worth knowing
- Use hold audio to say something useful: your website, your hours, the fact that you are busy. It is free advertising to a captive audience.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Intercom / Paging
Talk through the speakers on the handsets.
Dial a code and speak; the target handsets answer automatically on speaker. Page one phone, a group of them, or the whole building. Overhead speaker systems can be included by connecting them through an analog adapter.
- Good for
- Warehouses, workshops, shops, schools, anywhere you need to find somebody quickly.
- Setting it up
- Paging between handsets works from day one with a short feature code. Overhead speakers need an analog adapter and usually an amplifier, which is often already on site, so we check what you have before quoting anything.
- Worth knowing
- Pair this with call parking: park the call, page the person, they pick it up from the nearest phone.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Barge In
Join a call already in progress.
A supervisor can enter a live call and speak to both parties. Normally used after listening in, when a call needs escalating or rescuing rather than observing. The agent is not dropped when a supervisor joins. All three are on the call, so the customer never has to be handed over and re-tell the story from the beginning.
- Good for
- Supervisors in a call center or a busy service desk.
- Setting it up
- Off unless you ask for it, and then only for the extensions you name. We set the permissions, and they are not something a user can grant themselves.
- Worth knowing
- Restricted to the people you nominate. It is a supervisor tool, not something every extension should be able to do.
Advanced
While you are on a call
Listen In
Monitor a call without being heard.
Silent monitoring: the supervisor hears both sides and neither party hears them. Some systems also allow whisper, where the supervisor can be heard only by the agent. Nothing appears on the agent's screen and there is no tone, so monitoring does not disrupt the call, which is exactly why the policy around it matters more than the feature does.
- Good for
- Training new staff, quality checks, and coaching without taking the call over.
- Setting it up
- The same as barge in: nominated supervisors only, configured by us. Decide who genuinely needs it, and tell your team it exists before the first time it is used.
- Worth knowing
- Tell your staff it exists and when it is used. Silent monitoring discovered by accident does more damage than it is worth.
Advanced
While you are on a call
Do Not Disturb
Stops the phone ringing.
One button on the handset or a toggle in the app. Calls go straight to voicemail, or to whatever you have forwarding set to, and your status shows as unavailable to colleagues so they do not transfer to you.
- Good for
- Meetings, focused work, and anybody who needs an hour without interruptions.
- Setting it up
- Already present on every extension, handset and app. Nothing to enable and nothing to ask for.
- Worth knowing
- Because it changes your presence too, colleagues can see why you are not answering rather than assuming you are ignoring them.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Caller ID
Shows who is calling before you pick up.
Inbound calls show the name and number on the handset screen. Outbound, you control what customers see: the main company number rather than the direct line of whoever happens to be dialling, so returned calls come back to the right place.
- Good for
- Everyone, and particularly any team where individual extensions should not be published.
- Setting it up
- We set what your outbound calls display when the numbers are provisioned, normally the main company number for everybody. Inbound name display needs nothing from you; if you want your business name shown on outbound calls rather than just the number, that is a separate carrier registration we handle.
- Worth knowing
- Setting every outbound call to show the main number is the usual choice. It stops customers building up direct numbers for individuals who then leave.
Every plan
While you are on a call
Caller Block
Stops specific numbers getting through.
Add a number to the block list and it no longer rings any phone. Blocked callers can be rejected outright or sent silently to voicemail, depending on how much you want them to know. The list is per business rather than per handset, so a nuisance number blocked once is blocked everywhere and nobody else has to deal with it.
- Good for
- Persistent nuisance callers and repeat spam numbers.
- Setting it up
- You add and remove numbers yourself in the portal, with no ticket needed. We set whether a blocked caller is rejected outright or sent quietly to voicemail.
- Worth knowing
- Sending them to voicemail rather than rejecting is often better: they believe they got through, and they stop trying different numbers.
Every plan
Messaging
Business SMS
Text from your business number, not a personal mobile.
Send and receive texts on the number customers already have for you. Messages appear in the app for everyone with access, so a conversation is not stranded on one person handset, and the history stays with the business rather than leaving when they do.
- Good for
- Appointment reminders, job updates, quotes, and any customer who would rather text than call.
- Setting it up
- The 10DLC registration comes first and it is the long pole: a form about your business and how you intend to use texting, then a few weeks of carrier review. We fill it in with you. Once it clears, texting works in the app you already have.
- Worth knowing
- Texting a business number requires 10DLC registration first. It is a form-filling exercise, we handle it with you, and it takes a few weeks to clear, so start it before you need it.
Standard and Advanced
Messaging
MMS
Pictures and attachments by text.
Send and receive photos and documents in the same conversation as the texts: a picture of a part, a job sheet, a meter reading, a signed quote. Attachment size limits come from the carriers rather than from us, so a very large file is still better emailed, but a photo taken on a phone is comfortably within them.
- Good for
- Trades, service businesses, anyone where a photo settles a question faster than a description.
- Setting it up
- Nothing separate to enable, because it rides on the same 10DLC registration as SMS. If texting works, pictures work.
- Worth knowing
- MMS costs more per message than SMS. It is worth knowing before somebody starts sending photo galleries.
Standard and Advanced
Messaging
Group Messaging App
A shared inbox for business texting.
The whole team works one conversation. You can see who replied, hand a thread to somebody else, and pick up where a colleague left off, rather than messages sitting unread on one person phone while they are off.
- Good for
- Any business where more than one person should be able to answer a customer text.
- Setting it up
- We agree with you who can see and reply to which number, and then it is the same app. Point the main business number at the shared inbox rather than at one person, or you have simply recreated the problem you were solving.
- Worth knowing
- This is the difference between business texting and somebody using their own phone. When they leave, the conversation history stays with you.
Standard and Advanced
Fax
Fax to PDF Email
Incoming faxes arrive as a PDF.
Your fax number keeps working exactly as it does now, but nothing prints. Incoming faxes are converted and emailed as a PDF attachment, which can go to one person or a shared mailbox.
- Good for
- Medical, legal, insurance and anybody whose suppliers still fax.
- Setting it up
- We port the fax number like any other number, then point it at an email address instead of a machine. The only real decision is whether that address is a person or a shared mailbox, and shared is almost always the right answer.
- Worth knowing
- You keep the number, so nobody has to be told anything changed. The fax machine, the second line and the toner all go away.
Standard and Advanced
Fax
Email to Fax
Send a fax by sending an email.
Attach the document, address the email to the destination fax number, and the system sends it as a fax and emails you a confirmation of whether it went through. The confirmation names the destination, the number of pages and whether it succeeded, so there is something to keep with the record.
- Good for
- Anywhere you still have to fax a form back to somebody.
- Setting it up
- We authorize the email addresses allowed to send, so nobody can fax from your number just by guessing the format. After that it is an ordinary email with an attachment.
- Worth knowing
- The delivery confirmation matters. With a fax machine you got a printed report; here it comes back as an email, which is easier to keep with the record.
Standard and Advanced
