How hosted VoIP can improve your holiday business

Hosted VoIP services have numerous advantages over on-premises PBX boxes and ageing copper landline phone systems. While a number of these features make business life in the office far easier, some of its advantages are more apparent when you're not in the office.

So if you're planning on going on holiday or need to take a random day off while waiting for a vital business call, here's how hosted VoIP can help.

Out of Hours call handling keeps it flexible

Out of Hours call handling via our time diary function can prove a very flexible solution for when you're out of the office. While it would be easy to just pack your bags at the end of the working day, lock the door and head off home, if you haven't got your out of hours call handling in place, customers calling your premises will be left stewing as the phone rings and rings. The same goes for leaving your store when you're on holiday.

Smart out-of-hours options let you manage your call routes with regular workweek scheduling or even custom scheduling for bespoke blocks of time, such as when you're away on holiday or over the Christmas break. This feature provides you with a few options including forwarding calls to alternative phone numbers, extensions or even sending customers to a voicemail.

Out-of-hours call management also helps when you need to leave the office early for the day, with custom scheduling letting you change closing time settings and call routing whenever you want.

This all guarantees that anyone calling your business premises when it's either closed or unattended will still be left with a strong impression of your company.

Don't miss vital business calls

Some phone calls can be crucial to your business and you might want to receive them even while on holiday leave. In these cases, you can use conditional call routing to pick up your business calls while you're playing building blocks on half-term holidays with the kids. Waiting for a particular call? Set up the business phone system to let calls from that phone number come to you and the rest to go to the office.

Take your work, and your VoIP phone, home with you

Dedicated to working on your week away from the office? With a VoIP phone system, you can also take your desktop VoIP phone and plug it into your router at home, thereby benefiting from all the call features available on your office business phone. Alternatively, configure a softphone on your desktop computer or smartphone by downloading our app to receive calls wherever you are. As long as you have a WiFi connection, you'll be able to make and receive calls from the comfort of your own home or even from the side of the hotel pool.

Give your callers a holiday greeting

There might be certain instances when you're out of the office and want to divert calls to a voicemail message. A hosted VoIP service can help here too. You can record a bespoke holiday greeting that's sensitive to your callers' needs. Plus, customers aren't left hanging or thinking you've gone out of business. Callers can also leave a message for you to pick on your return, so you should never miss a lead. 

In cases where your business has a half-term or Christmas offer available, you could even decide to promote a limited holiday offer message when callers phone you.

Group it together with hosted VoIP

With complete control over permissions and extensions, it's possible to set up phone Groups to ring only for incoming calls to a specific phone number via user extensions management. VoIP phone systems are really flexible though, so if an employee's out of the office on holiday and you don't want their phone to ring, then all it takes is a few clicks to take them out of the Group.

See what hosted VoIP can do for you

Of course while these business features really come into their own when you're on your holidays, they are also extremely helpful all year round. So while you'll discover the many advantages to using VoIP in the office, the benefits when you're not there are just as huge too.

Be sure to check out the other features included with a VoIP phone system and see how they can help your business even when you're sipping Sangrias by the beach.