How to Efficiently Share Phone Numbers With VoIP

With cloud-based phone systems, however, sharing the same line across multiple offices isn’t a problem anymore. In fact, SMB owners can simply pick a business VoIP service provider and then simply configure the system in such a way that every employee be a part of the same network, even if they don’t work at in the physical place that the system is managed from.

Why is one line more than enough?

Being entirely internet-based has another advantage, too, namely that the phone system can be used anytime from anywhere by anyone that has the necessary permission to join. This means that it doesn’t matter whether employees are in the headquarters of the company or are working in one of the branch offices, because all they need is a device that connects to the internet – an IP desk phone, a mobile device, or a computer – and they can be part of the same system.

Phone number sharing the professional way

Although simply reducing the number of in-use phone lines to just one isn’t the only step in creating an efficient phone system, thankfully doing so is an easy task thanks to the list of necessary configurations actually being quite short and can easily be done by anyone with the permission to make modifications to the system.

A single outbound caller ID

User and group extensions

Things could easily descend into chaos if every phone rang each time the system receives an incoming call. As such, assigning an extension to each employee will help to manage a single phone number, as will setting up an answering rule with which callers can navigate themselves to the right person for their query. This way a single, shared phone number will be maintained but since callers can immediately forward their calls to an extension, the main line will never truly be busy.

An even better system is to have admins set up ring groups in which multiple users share the same extension or phone number. This creates a phone system with an even more logical structure by, for instance, basing the ring groups on departments within the company. Not only this, but calls forwarded to ring groups are also more likely to be answered – especially if the devices assigned to the group in question ring simultaneously – while users are able transfer calls to another employee within the same group much easier.