An overview of the virtual office phone service
The success of your enterprise is dependent on seamless communication with your customers and amongst the employees. In case you are having issues with costly hardware, dropped calls, or lack of mobile phones and Internet capabilities, it may be time for you to invest in a virtual phone system. If your startup is dependent on personal phones or Skype, a virtual phone system can be an inexpensive and convenient manner to optimize your business communication.

Many virtual phone systems are designed especially for small enterprise to lessen their telephone costs. These systems are also referred to as VoIP systems as they pass your call over the Internet instead of traditional phone lines. The virtual phone systems let you make and receive calls from your smartphone. Calls will show up as your virtual office phone number and not your personal number. They may be softphones with simple software or customized hardware systems that could look very similar to a regular phone or a cordless phone.

You can easily set up your system and make modifications through the carrier providers’ online portals. These capabilities include adding or reducing numbers, customizable voicemail, call forwarding, and contact logs. All these are immediately available on your account.

Below is some information about the virtual office phone system that can help you make a decision.

What do you mean by a virtual office phone system?

• A virtual office phone system is hosted VoIP or an Internet-based business phone system.
• This cloud-based phone system is a platform in which the application is kept on the cloud or the Internet.
• As a subscriber, you connect to this cloud-based phone system by taking a monthly subscription at a predecided fee.
• The cloud-based phone system is rather a new term that means a phone service is delivered through your Internet connection.

How does the virtual phone system work?

• While you shift your office to virtual telecommunications, you uphold your communications professionally without negotiating on reliability.
• For example, when your local company number or your 1-800 number is dialed by a customer he or she will be automatically greeted by an auto-attendant.
• Your enterprise name will usually be stated by the customized greeting and may also include commonly dialed extensions and departments, routing callers to the appropriate extension.
• Greetings can even be customized so as to match your hours of operations.
• If a customer calls after business hours, an after-hours message will play with an option for the customer to leave a voicemail.

What are the call charges with the virtual phone systems?

• Usually, call charges with virtual office phone system are much affordable as compared to the conventionally based carriers on local, mobile, and international calls, which makes it more cost-effective to maintain a trustworthy business phone system.
• Whenever you have got an Internet connection, you have access to the charges you have agreed to, so costly roaming prices for overseas communications won’t apply if you decide to use the virtual landline abroad.
• Your number is hosted in the cloud, so there is no need for high-priced line rentals as well as all the system maintenance is handled by your provider and there are fewer setup expenses.

How does a virtual phone system help in improving your professional appearance?

• Small enterprises and start-up organizations are very dynamic and constantly changing according to the challenges being thrown at them.
• This may lead to problems for those entrepreneurs who are working out of traditional office spaces or moving offices.
• The virtual phone numbers move along with you, irrespective of how frequently you move, and landline numbers (which may be diverted to a mobile) instead of a mobile number can give the impression of the company being more stable and large.

What makes a virtual phone system flexible?
Below are some factors that make a virtual phone system flexible:

• You may need a local phone number, but which is based elsewhere or even overseas.
• A virtual phone system for an instance, allows you to have a London phone number that may be located physically anywhere in the world.
• Often phone numbers that are given by the business incubation units or serviced offices belong to them, so if you are planning to move anywhere in future there is a risk of losing those phone numbers around which you already have built your business.
• Opting for a virtual or hosted phone number solution provides you flexibility for the future.