Empowering Small Business

Chris runs a public relations firm that serves clients around the country, working with a team of writers, editors and researchers who are all independent contractors. In essence, Chris operates a one-person shop from a residential setting. Chris’ clients don’t know that, however. Chris has leveraged the use of a virtual phone number and virtual phone system to not only convey a “big-business” presence but also to ensure coverage during meetings or when otherwise engaged with clients. Whether Chris is working from home, running errands, traveling or meeting with clients, calls can be received—even forwarded, transcribed or otherwise managed to ensure that the business is covered.

That kind of seamless phone communication wasn’t possible even a few short years ago. But, today, virtual phone services are becoming increasingly popular—and affordable.

Why Virtual Phone Systems and Why Now?

There’s no doubt that the advent of the telephone has been a boon to business. The ability to communicate via voice in real time over long distances has allowed efficient, personal and fast communication between parties across the country and around the world.  Even younger generations are probably at least marginally familiar with how telephone technology progressed from switchboards and rotary phones to cell phones and digital technology. However, what many do not realize is that telephone technology remains incredibly dynamic.

Increasingly, businesses from large to small are turning to virtual numbers to replace their traditional phone systems. And that’s no surprise, given the many benefits virtual numbers offer.

While a virtual business phone number may sound complicated or expensive for those not familiar with this option, the technology is actually very straightforward and cost effective. And, it’s technology that has found increasing use among a variety of businesses of all types and all sizes. From a technical standpoint, many readers will undoubtedly be familiar with the underlying technology, which relies on cloud computing technology and data centers to host the software and information used to support the use of virtual numbers.

Cloud computing has become increasingly popular for a variety of uses, from storing data on your cell phone to utilizing software without downloading large applications onto the end user’s computer. The fact that cloud computing allows the data center infrastructure to be shared among many users is one of the primary reasons that the business costs of using a virtual phone number system can be kept to a minimum.

In this white paper, we’ll look at the evolution of the phone number and the underlying technology to see how we’ve gone from switchboard operators to the cloud-based systems that allow virtual numbers to exist. We’ll also discuss the benefits of a virtual phone number to businesses in terms of flexibility, cost, marketing, security and business continuity. Finally, we’ll address some of the common questions businesses have when it comes to implementing their own virtual business phone service.

Things You May Not Know About the History of Telephone Numbers

Before diving into more detail about virtual business phone numbers, it can be helpful to take a look at how our relationship with phones has evolved over time to provide some context and lay the foundation for understanding the benefits that virtual phone systems provide. VoIP is the modern means of utilizing a virtual business phone number without requiring multiple numbers as the POTS solution does.

Early Days of the Telephone

Ask anyone who invented the telephone and the first name you’ll hear is almost certainly Alexander Graham Bell. However, according to Elon University’s School of Communications, the development of the telephone was an iterative process that involved inventors in both the U.S. and Europe. It was actually an Italian inventor named Antonio Meucci who is credited with developing the first, basic telephone in 1849, and French inventor Charles Bourseul who developed his own in 1854. However, what truly mattered from a commercial standpoint, at least in the United States, was the first U.S. patent for the device, which was awarded to Bell in 1876.

While he may not have been the very first to successfully create a telephone, Bell and the companies he was associated with were certainly the most widely known driving forces behind the rapid growth in the use of the technology. “In 1877-78, the first telephone line was constructed, the first switchboard was created and the first telephone exchange was in operation,” according to Elon University. “Three years later, almost 49,000 telephones were in use.” Bell merged with others in 1880 to form what became known as the American Bell Telephone Company; in 1885 AT&T (American Telegraph and Telephone Company) came into being—and still exists today!

In the early days of the telephone, communications took place between small numbers of people located close to each other.

The First Phone Numbers

The complications involved in connecting caller and called increased in step with the exponential growth in the number of telephones in the country and their extended geographical reach. Elon University notes that as the number of telephones in the U.S. skyrocketed in the early years of the 20th century, and phone service became national rather than local, it became apparent to some that it would not always be feasible to rely on the fact that operators were acquainted with those communicating over the phone network. The invention of the telephone number is generally ascribed to Dr. Moses Greeley Parker, a physician residing in Lowell, Massachusetts. During an outbreak of measles in the 1870s, Parker was concerned that the town’s four telephone operators could all become ill with the disease, rendering the city’s telephone service inoperable. To simplify the process of operating the telephone network and thereby make it easier to train new operators, Parker developed a system of numbers and letters, which quickly caught on both locally and internationally.

Area Codes

In a system that should be familiar to present-day Americans, each number had three letters associated with it. Typically phone numbers used a system of letters followed by numbers, with two – four numbers to specify a town or location within a city. For large cities, there would often be multiple hubs within the city. These geographically based prefixes eventually led to the development of the numeric area codes we’re familiar with today.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has created a map of all area codes within the United States:

Eventually, as the number of phones increased, three-digit area codes were created to be dialed in front of the rest of the number. Today, we use 11 digits to contact people outside of our immediate area code: “1” to signify long distance, three numbers for an area code and a further seven digits unique to the person or business being contacted. This prefix area code system along with the 3-3-4 fixed length scheme were developed by AT&T in 1947, and became the standard for dialing 4 years later in 1951,

Many large businesses also use internal extensions to reach specific employees within the company.

Vanity Numbers

Psychologically, today’s phone numbers take some of the personal element out of connecting with others when compared to the early days of small pools of people connecting locally. Instead of asking an operator to call your friend John Porter on Oak Street, the growing number of users meant that you now had to pick up the phone and dial half a dozen numbers.

Not surprisingly, there also emerged a substantial commercial interest in telephones, in addition to the social element. It wasn’t long before businesses found a way to incorporate their brands into an otherwise bland array of numbers. Enter the vanity number which businesses began to incorporate into toll-free numbers to make it easy—and inexpensive—for consumers to reach out to them. You’ve certainly heard of 1-800-Flowers—that’s a vanity number. It’s also a website, and the name of the company, making it, possibly, the best example of aligning a phone number with a brand.

According to BeBusinessed.com, it was AT&T that created the first direct-dial, toll-free option, called “Inward Wide Area Telephone Service,” or InWATS. This first ever automated toll-free number did not require the use of a human operator and created the toll-free number format many of us would be familiar with today – one using the 1-800 prefix followed by the standard seven digits. The term toll-free really applies only to the person making the call. In effect, it was a form of collect call, where the organization hosting the toll free number pays the cost of the call to the phone company. Due to claimed violation of antitrust laws, the Department of Justice sued AT&T in 1974 and ultimately forced the breakup of the phone giant into what were known at the time as “The 7 Baby Bells.” The dissolution brought greater competition and lower prices to the marketplace.

An unintended side effect of the drop in prices, however, was what was known as The 800 Number Panic. BeBusinessed explains, “[E]ach number became like a modern-day web domain name. Smart investors would buy up as many 800 number combinations as they could while hoping for a nationwide 800 number shortage. They believed that once there were no 800 numbers left, businesses would pay thousands—if not millions—for the right to a number they owned in their ‘portfolio.’” Once again, the U.S. government stepped in with a pretty simple solution. In 1996, the FCC created the first group of 1-888 numbers, followed by 877, 866, 855 and 844 in subsequent years.

Clearly, the evolution of phone numbers has been driven by an array of factors. The initial use of phone numbers grew from an increasing network that made it impossible to expect operators to personally know everyone who might need a connection. The use of geographic prefixes and area codes resulted from the transnational nature of the telephone network. The latest revolution— the virtual phone number— has also been driven by outside changes.

How Does a Virtual Phone Number Work?

Let’s take a look at the latest entrant to the world of telecommunications: virtual phone numbers. From the perspective of someone placing a call to a virtual phone number, there is really no difference between a virtual phone number and a traditional phone number. The differences are in how that placed call is treated before it gets to the recipient and, as we’ll see, the cloud computing framework that underlies virtual numbers, allowing for some impressive advantages over traditional phone systems.

We’ll be focusing on the cloud-based, VOIP virtual phone number solutions; however, we should first point out for the sake of completeness that there are really two methods to implement a virtual phone number: POTS and VOIP.

Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS)

If the unabbreviated name of POTS – also know as a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) – sounds boring that’s because it’s fairly old technology. Here’s how Robert Pepper² explains it:

“The PSTN is a product of the twentieth century. Circuit switching is a type of communication in which a dedicated circuit is open for the duration of the transmission. Over the twentieth century, the method of making the connection changed from human operators to automated electronic switching to digital switching. The Public Switched Telephone Network is the network of copper and fiber-optic wires that criss-cross the globe. Until very recently, that meant calls were very expensive, because you were “renting” a length of copper wire that the telephone company “owned,” and you would pay more for being on the line longer, and also more if the line was physically longer (e.g. calling from L.A. to Philadelphia). International calls were extremely expensive.”

Enter VoIP.

Voice over IP (VoIP)

VoIP is the modern means of utilizing a virtual telephone number without requiring multiple numbers as the POTS solution does. In this case, your internet service provider (ISP) will assign you a number and associate it with your location. It can be any available number with any area code you choose. When someone calls this number, it won’t ring through a land line but will be connected to your phone’s IP address. VoIP has been a big deal ever since it emerged on the market in the 1990s. The VoIP Report offers a number of interesting facts about VoIP. For instance:

Here’s a particularly interesting point that the VoIP report calls out: “In some cases, installing VoIP services for one person can be as easy as inserting a $15-$20 pre-programmed dongle into a USB port.”

Virtual Numbers and Cloud Computing

A key piece of technology that a virtual phone number is dependent on is cloud computing. Most readers have no doubt heard the term cloud computing; however, many people are somewhat unfamiliar with how the technology works. The concept is perhaps best understood in relation to what it is meant to replace.

Local Storage

A typical data storage scenario involves data saved locally – i.e., on a hard drive or server in the same place as the user. This is how most people store files on their personal computers and how businesses traditionally saved their data. Whether servers – and how many servers – are needed by a business depends on the amount of data the business generates. Servers are expensive to purchase and also have high ongoing costs due to the need to keep them cool, which boosts electricity bills.

Some proponents of locally saved data argue that it is more secure, because the owner of the data also owns and controls the hard drive or server; however, as we’ll discuss later, there are strong arguments to be made for the greater security of cloud computing.

How Cloud Computing Works

As described by Indiana University, “Cloud computing is the practice of hosting files, computing operations, or technology services on remote servers connected via the Internet. It can allow people to access and share information at any time from multiple devices, rapidly deploy computing services without purchasing hardware, temporarily leverage massive computing power, and much more.”

As the University of California San Francisco’s IT department notes, the term “cloud” is not static, which can make it difficult to conceptualize for those unfamiliar with the concept. “The “cloud” is a continually evolving term which broadly references cloud services or cloud computing. Cloud services can mean collections of applications, information, infrastructure components, and/ or services which are provided as pools of resources.”

The term “cloud” derives from the fact that it’s difficult to say exactly where specific data is at any point in time. For example, you may have 50 physical servers in a particular cloud, and they may be geographically distributed and sending data back and forth constantly.

There are three primary types of clouds: public, private and hybrid.

Hybrid Clouds

Hybrid clouds, as the name suggests, have characteristics of both public and private clouds. A healthcare organization, for instance, may choose to use a private cloud for sensitive patient information, but a public cloud for other less sensitive data needs.

Data Centers

A data center is a location where the data within a cloud is physically housed. As previously mentioned, advanced clouds will typically have multiple data centers with data being transferred between locations constantly. Because clouds are storing data for potentially millions of users, these data centers can be massive, with a great deal of investment in security and energy usage required.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

The use of cloud computing has expanded greatly in recent years, and for good reason. There are numerous advantages to cloud computing over traditional data storage models. Pay attention to these general benefits of cloud computing, because they have direct relevance to the specific benefits of virtual numbers, which rely on this technology.

Price

Perhaps the most significant benefit of cloud computing for both individuals and organizations is cost. As mentioned above, storing data locally involves the use of costly servers. The use of cloud computing relieves business owners of the need to invest in hardware, software, licensing fees, or employee time used to update and upgrade servers and systems. Remember the old days when each employee’s desktop was loaded with an array of software programs licensed to that computer. Those days are, virtually, gone!

The scalability afforded through cloud computing solutions is a huge benefit for budgeting purposes. Instead of having to periodically expend large amounts of money to add additional hardware, or software, small business owners can increase storage capacity, and computing functionality, gradually and in closer proportion to their needs.

Storage Space

In the past, companies that housed their own data often ran into space constraints. Capacity limitations were an ongoing concern. As a business grows, at some point it needs to purchase new equipment and storage space. Not so with a cloud. While there is a finite amount of storage available even in the cloud, that space is controlled by large hosting companies, and it’s typically very easy for customers of those companies to increase storage whenever they need to. Conversely, if an organization is downsizing, it’s easier to reduce your cloud space and associated cost than it is to liquidate servers or reduce data center space for locally hosted data.

Backup and Recovery

One of an IT department’s greatest fears is losing data. Regardless of the type of business, the large-scale loss of data can be catastrophic, and this is a significant risk when that data is stored in a single location on a handful of servers. It’s the computing equivalent of putting all your eggs in one basket. By contrast, cloud computing has many “baskets” storing your data, often in geographically diverse locations. This means it’s very unlikely that a single event will result in the permanent loss of data. Furthermore, most cloud service providers have considerable resources in terms of staff and technology capable of recovering and restoring data.

Ease of Access

From a logistical standpoint, clouds are great solutions for easily accessing data. Have you ever needed to remotely access a presentation or document saved on your work or personal computer? This isn’t very easy with traditional storage methods. Sure, you could save the data on a portable flash drive – if you remember to do this. Have you ever emailed yourself a document to be able to access it remotely? This is using the cloud, because your email and its attachments are saved on the cloud of your email service provider. Similarly, if you have a cloud set up for personal or work uses, you can access that data remotely, depending on your cloud’s security and access rules.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

There really aren’t a lot of disadvantages to cloud computing, but there are some.

Because data saved on the cloud is hosted remotely, and accessed via the internet, it is always possible that there is some technical issue that temporarily prevents accessing the data. Even a poor internet connection can make retrieving data difficult. For example, if you need to access a document saved on your cloud while you’re in a plane without access to the internet, you may be out of luck if you don’t have a locally stored copy of that document.

Similarly, there are security risks involved in using clouds, because the data is on the internet, albeit in a secure section of the web thus, potentially, putting your company at risk.  

At the same time, cloud computing service providers put a tremendous amount of time and resources into security. Information security is, after all, a critical component of their value proposition and, therefore, the very survival of their business.

The rapid growth of cloud computing is a testament to the confidence that businesses of all sizes have placed in this technology and to the many benefits it offers. IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide indicates that worldwide spending will reach $122.5 billion in 2017, representing an increase of 24.4 percent over 2016.

As you can see, a wide range of businesses have found benefit through cloud computing. One important, and growing, area of impact is in the use of a virtual phone number and virtual phone systems.

Benefits of a Virtual Phone Number

We’ve talked about the benefits of cloud computing solutions generally, from financial to operational. Now let’s look at some of the advantages this technology lends to virtual phone number solutions.

We’ve grouped these benefits into three primary buckets, each of which have multiple specific advantages: operational, marketing and financial. We’ve also included some brief case studies to help highlight some of the key benefits of a virtual phone number by looking at real-world situations in which those benefits are realized.

Operational Benefits

We’ve already discussed the many benefits that cloud computing offers businesses. Above and beyond these benefits, though, there are some pretty significant advantages that a virtual phone number and virtual phone systems can provide to help businesses be more efficient.

For instance, your virtual phone system can be set up to triage phone calls based on different factors. Chris, the public relations firm owner we introduced at the beginning of this white paper, for instance, might want to have phone traffic directed to a landline at a specific location during business hours from Monday to Friday and to a cell phone after hours. This is simple to do using a virtual business phone line. No matter what time of day, or what day of the week, a customer calls they will use the same number, but the system can be set up to be smart enough to know where to direct those calls.

Now, let’s add a couple of employees to this equation. Let’s assume Roger works the night shift and Rachel works the day shift. A virtual phone number can route calls to the appropriate employee depending on the time of the call. There’s no need to have employees share an on-call phone linked to a particular number. And, they can link their personal cell phones to the virtual phone number just as the owner does.

What if nobody is in the office or on call? No problem. You can tie your virtual phone number to an automated answering service that could, for example, allow a caller to leave a message or receive pre-recorded information for standard inquiries—or reach the owner of the company on a cell phone in case of an emergency or critical situation.

Case Study: The Real Estate Company

A Florida-based real estate company was realizing great success. The business was booming and had a growing number of clients and agents. Growth comes with challenges, of course. The challenge for this company was keeping everyone in touch. As the business grew, it became increasingly difficult to triage calls meant for the central office versus individual agents. Agents, of course, spend the majority of their time out in the field, meeting with clients and touring homes.

The Solution: Access Direct set this real estate firm up with a virtual number and an auto-attendant. Through this system, each agent was able to have a unique extension; incoming calls through these extensions were forwarded to agents’ cell phones. This simple solution ensured that agents could be readily reached whether in the office or out in the field.

There are clear benefits for remote workers as well. Think about Chris, our public relations company owners, for instance. Chris relies on remote workers to staff her company—they’re based in different cities and states. But, using a virtual phone system allows Chris to simply set up a new virtual number—or extension—instead of installing a separate phone line. Virtual systems also allow the flexibility to easily move numbers from one person to another as business needs require.

So, for instance, if your business is experiencing turnover with new employees coming and going frequently, there’s no need to keep track of work phones and juggle numbers. The virtual phone system can transition between employees easily.

The same is true if your business needs to move to a new physical location. There’s no downtime required to transfer a cumbersome, traditional phone system and go through a lengthy and expensive setup process at the new location. And there’s no need to get a new phone number because you’ve moved to a different area code.

Case Study: The Relocated Hunting Business

A hunting supply company in Alaska was faced with the prospect of moving the business to Idaho. To complicate matters, there would be a transition period during which the owners were winding down operations in their Alaska location while at the same time trying to establish their presence in Idaho. Fortunately, despite all of the hassle of moving both business and home locations, one thing that proved easy to manage was the phone system.

The Solution: Even though the original business line was a local number tied to a physical location in Alaska, Access Direct was able to work with this hunting company to set up a local Idaho number. This allowed the company to continue to use their Alaska number while winding down operations in Alaska, while concurrently establishing a local presence using an Idaho number. Regardless of which number customers called, the calls went to the owners’ cell phones, helping to ease the transition. Once customers because familiar with the new number, the company was able to phase it out. The company’s owners told us that the easiest part of their move was the virtual phone number change!

Marketing Benefits

The marketing applications of a virtual phone system may not be obvious at first; however, there are numerous ways in which phone numbers in general, and a virtual phone number specifically, can add an edge to your marketing efforts.

For starters, the area code a business is associated with can have a very significant impact on consumer perception. For instance, a New York City-based start-up in the financial industry might be physically located in Queens to keep costs low; however, instead of using the 718 area code associated with Queens, it could acquire a 212 area code, which potential customers would associate with the more established, and more prominent, Manhattan area. It’s a popular area code, for obvious reasons. But that popularity has made it a difficult one to access—but not for AccessDirect.

Our public relations agency owner, Chris, is located in a very small rural community in the Midwest. Not such a great image to convey to potential clients located in more urban settings. So, Chris is able to attain a 612 area code tied to Minneapolis—a hub for PR and advertising agency activities.

Depending on the type of business you operate, and the customers you serve, having local area codes may also convey a sense of comfort and security to those potential customers who may not trust a non-local business with an unfamiliar area code.

Case Study: The Florida Martial Arts Business

A new martial arts studio in Florida wanted to establish a strong local presence. The owners, though, were from out-of-state and had out-of-state phone numbers. That could be a potential negative factor for a business trying to establish a presence in a new location. Before cell phones, when someone moved out of state, whether an individual or a business, they needed to get a new phone number with a new area code. Now, because cell phones are mobile, the number associated with the cell phone doesn’t need to stay in the geographic location where the phone was issued.  

The Solution: AccessDirect worked with this martial arts studio to provide a local number that would be forwarded to their cell phones. They were able to use that local number to promote their presence in the community, providing an immediate local connection and increasing credibility. Launching a start-up can be tough; Access Direct can help.

While area codes certainly send a strong psychological message to consumers, those final seven digits have an impact as well. As we discussed earlier, the use of vanity numbers can provide businesses with the opportunity to emphasize their business and brand in a very functional, and impactful, way. A phone number could just be a generic jumble of digits, but there are multiple ways to gain a marketing advantage based on the number. For example, a bakery launching a new promotion might already have a primary phone number. But to draw attention to specific initiative, it could generate a virtual phone number that translates to 555–BEST–PIE to highlight a promotion celebrating a recent local award. And, of course, because of the flexibility of a virtual phone number, customers dialing those vanity digits will still be routed to the original primary number.

Case Study: The Entrepreneur with Multiple Businesses

An electronics resale business had two, separate, resale businesses that were being operated from the owner’s personal cell phone. The owner wanted a more distinct delineation between the two businesses.

The Solution: AccessDirect set up two, separate, virtual phone numbers for the company, allowing the owner to promote a distinct identity for both businesses by using separate numbers for each, even though both rang to his personal cell phone. Even better, the owner can easily tell which company the call is for, and can answer the call accordingly. We also set up separate call logs for each number, so the company can readily keep track of customers for each individual business.

This case study brings up another important marketing benefit that a virtual phone number can provide: the ability to collect and analyze data from incoming calls. As marketers know, it can be hard to measure the impact of a marketing campaign and tie an increase in sales to a specific marketing effort when there are multiple campaigns ongoing at any given time. A virtual phone number can provide a convenient way to track these efforts.

Consider a hypothetical real estate company advertising the same portfolio of properties through multiple channels. If the company provided the same phone number on each of its marketing channels, it wouldn’t be able to tell which channels were driving the most activity. The company could survey potential customers about how they heard of a particular property, but the accuracy of their self-reporting would be questionable. However, if that company instead used one number for its TV commercial, another for its online ad, a third for its print ad in the Post, a fourth for its print ad in the Herald, etc., it could easily track how many calls it received on each virtual phone number, and therefore each platform, without having to survey anyone—and with a much higher degree of accuracy.

Financial Benefits

Operational and marketing benefits are obviously important, but there’s another area where small businesses are hoping to gain benefit—financial impact. Virtual phone systems really deliver here, as we’ve previously discussed. There’s no need to purchase and maintain a sophisticated phone system at the company headquarters or to provide employees with multiple company-issued cellphones tied to different numbers. Costs related to moving facilities, or changing locations, are eliminated—and costs related to tracking the effectiveness of various marketing communication efforts are slashed.

According to TechSoup, “Even though the prices are comparable (about $25 per line for either a POTS or digital line, depending on your region), any sizable business is more likely to be using digital than POTS phone lines. Why? Because digital lines allow for more flexibility in allocating these lines, and more advanced features.” PC Mag argues that services like VoIP are actually significantly less expensive than traditional phone services, and offers a comparison of different providers.

Another financial benefit is the ability to implement a virtual answering service along with your virtual phone system. Rather than hiring one or more receptionists to work a set number of hours, you can set up a virtual service to answer calls any time, day or night. No need to worry about your receptionist calling in sick or hiring multiple staff to cover different shifts.

Isn’t It Time You Went Virtual?

When new technologies emerge, there are essentially two paths businesses can take. They can become first movers, jumping right in to take advantage of added efficiencies, costs savings and competitive advantages, while taking a risk that the promises of that technology are not all they appeared to be. Or, they can be cautious, let their competitors be the first to implement the new technologies and learn from competitors’ successes and potential failures.

Virtual phone systems aren’t that type of technology! The use of a virtual phone number is firmly established and already battle-tested with thousands of businesses already reaping the benefits of the flexibility and freedom a virtual phone number provides.

A Wide Range of Features

One of the reasons that virtual phone systems are so attractive to businesses of all sizes, but particularly small businesses, are the many customer service and productivity enhancing features that these cost-effective solutions provide. For example:

Bottom line: the flexibility that a virtual phone number provides will help you manage your business in a way that best meets your needs. Isn’t it time to make your move?

Make Your Move Now

We’ve reviewed the development of virtual numbers and where they fit on the overall timeline of the telephony revolution. We’ve discussed the technology that underlies the virtual phone number and how that technology makes virtual phone services possible.  

We’ve also looked at how a virtual phone number can allow businesses physically located anywhere convey a local presence in geographically diverse markets, how they can add security through disaster recovery and privacy controls, how they can provide flexibility by allowing easy transfer of phone numbers between staff and between business locations and by connecting multiple numbers to a single device, how they can reduce costs through cloud computing and many other benefits.

Armed with this information, readers should be well-positioned to evaluate the potential benefits to their own businesses through the transition to virtual telephone systems and take the next step in driving a simple, yet profoundly effective change for their organizations. What are you waiting for?

Frequently Asked Questions

We’ve spent enough time working with small businesses to set up their virtual phone number solutions that we’re familiar with the most common areas of uncertainty. Here are some frequently asked questions and our responses based on years of experience.

References