Phone Solutions For Remote Workers

If you have a mobile workforce, employ Work-at-Home Personnel, or you have satellite offices, it's important to tie all your workers together in a unified phone system for easy access.

Some PBX phone systems allow programming extensions to route calls to remote locations. If you have that feature, create extensions for all remote personnel who need to be accessible through your phone system.

Remote Forwarding

Consider how the transfer should be done. If your remote personnel have a home answering machine with a greeting that does not make sense for business calls, then it is best to use a "call screening" feature so that the caller does not hear the personal greeting on the home machine. Call Screening lets the recipient of the call hear who's calling before they connect. Then they can select to connect or to send the caller to voice mail. The default is to go to voice mail. So if their answering machine answers, the caller does not hear that greeting. They are sent to voice mail on your business phone system and they hear the more business-like greeting from that mailbox.

Proper Use of Extension Cellphones

If your remote personnel are in the field and not at a specific fixed location, then they probably are using cellphones. You can do the same thing as above, program extensions to route calls to their cellphones.

In this case, you may want to consider the fact that missed calls left in voice mail may not be picked up and returned in a timely manner. A solution is to disable call screening and let all calls drop into their cellphone's voice mail if there is no answer. The benefit is that they will not have to check for messages in two places. They just need to check the cellphone, which probably has a message-waiting signal to indicate a missed call.

Keep in mind that the caller WILL hear the personal greeting on the cellphone if there is no answer. So the greeting has to be correct for the business use of the phone if this method is used.

Another thing to consider is how your remote personnel pick up their messages. If they spend most of their time in front of a computer, they may prefer having messages routed to their email as an attached WAV file. Most Virtual (hosted) PBX services include this ability. But in-house phone systems that don't interface with the Internet can't do that. If you are a small business with a limited budget and if this is an important feature, then an in-house system may not be right for you.

Proper planning is required before haphazardly assigning extensions. The final result will make a great impression on your callers when they find it easy to get in touch with the appropriate personnel to achieve what they have intended. This benefits both you and your clients in a positive way.